Alex Pickworth

I cut my teeth in operations, fixing real problems on the ground. At Aramark I rescued a major campus account and grew meal-plan sales by 65%, then pushed a national POS overhaul so decisions were finally based on clean data. That bias for practical results carried into Mindshare, where I moved from research to planning for Walmart, Mazda and HSBC, using insight to win share against bigger budgets and to reach multicultural audiences with work that actually landed. Detroit sharpened the strategy. On Chevrolet I helped launch nameplates, including the Bolt EV, managed serious budgets, and learnt how to align creative, media and product teams around audiences that buy. Back in Toronto at OMD I built data planning muscle for launches, negotiated smarter buys, and proved it in the numbers. At GTB I took an analytics team under pressure and turned it into an innovation engine with pilots, automation and a simple “effort vs impact” system. Results followed, including a pandemic-era sales lift and big jumps in ad recall. Most recently at OMD EMEA I led customer-journey planning for Mercedes across diverse markets, creating cohesion, improving qualified-lead efficiency, and building the habit of learning from every campaign. That end-to-end view is the core of my consultancy: find the signal, make it usable for your teams, and scale what works.

What clients tend to value

Proven efficiency gains and savings: 11% Spot TV savings for Ancestry, 65% campus sales growth from an on-the-ground turnaround.

Systems that scale: regional dashboards, continuous-improvement groups, and cross-team reporting that reduce repetition and speed decisions.

Clear commercial impact: 25% incremental sales uplift during Covid-19 and a 48% ad-recall lift on EcoSport from smarter targeting and creative alignment.

Launch discipline across markets: EV and nameplate GTMs that balance global consistency with local relevance, supported by post-campaign learning loops.

Focus on effort vs impact: operating rituals that cut low-value work, reallocate to winners, and make the team measurably faster.

If you need sharper targeting, cleaner operating rhythm, and results you can point to, that is exactly what Hacking Potential delivers.

University of Guelph — BA History, Minor in Business Administration
Trained me to research fast, separate signal from noise, and build clear narratives from complex material. The business minor grounded that thinking in commercial realities.

Humber College — Marketing Management
Gave me a hands-on toolkit across segmentation, media, CRM, and analytics. Helped me turn consumer insight into plans that ship and move numbers.

IDEO U — Foundations in Design Thinking
Strengthened human-centred methods: framing the right problem, prototyping quickly, and running workshops that surface sharper ideas from cross-functional teams.

IBM — Enterprise Design Thinking
Added structure for working at scale: aligning stakeholders, setting measurable outcomes, and keeping teams focused on user value from brief to delivery.