Who we are
Led by Alexia Leachman, Blossoming Brands is a team of branding and marketing specialists. Not only are they impressive at getting the day job done, they also have a mountain of experience in coaching, training and consultancy.
Alexia's passion for business and developing brands and people, led to the creation of a company that inspires, develops and nurtures brands. Building brands, whether they are businesses, products, services or people, is what we love doing.
Between us we've worked with some great brands. Big brands, niche brands, celebrity brands and cool brands, so when it comes to branding, you can be sure that we know what we're doing.
Feeling nosey? Why don't you check us out?
Alexia Leachman 
Stephanie Spencer
Ming Blackburn
Andrea Budden
Charlotte Horn
Alexia Leachman
Alexia has worked with a fair few top brands and businesses in her 15-year career. She's worked at retailers and manufacturers in all sorts of business sectors including health and beauty, food, housewares and DIY. And, did we mention agriculture?
A CIM qualified marketer, Alexia's worked all over the marketing sphere; retail buying, marketing management, category management, product development, Far East sourcing, brand management, sales strategy and account management. When she was looking for something different she found coaching and NLP. Since then, she's trained with Tony Robbins, Richard Bandler, Paul McKenna and The Coaching Academy.
Brands that Alexia has had the privilege to work with include Boots, Tesco, Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels, Dulux, Crown, Superdrug, St Tropez, Barbie, Cosmopolitan, Sainsbury's, Roxy, London Fashion Weekend and The BRIT Awards.
Alexia loves:
- Creating a sparkling new brand strategy with lots of fizz
- Getting stuck into the detail to understand what's not working
- Helping people to work out their personal brand and bringing it alive
When Alexia's not working, you'll find her planning her travels, poking fires, recycling, eyeing up chocolate or reading the wine list, among other things.
Stephanie Spencer
Stephanie is our PR guru. She started life working in advertising for one of the greats, Olgivy & Mather and then George Patterson's before moving into PR. She worked for a bunch of large PR agencies before setting up and running her own successful agency for over ten years.
In that time she worked on a ton of brands that include Seven Seas, Smirnoff, Barbie, Alberto Culver, Andrew Collinge, Jungle Formula, Cutex, St Tropez, Bergasol and Littlewoods.
So, if your PR needs a kick-start, Steff is the lady for the job. Her super creative mind will come up with more ideas than you can cope with to get PR working for you.
Stephanie loves:
- Pestering journalists with all the great new stuff her clients are up to.
- Getting her creative juices going working to your objectives and budgets.
- Being part of the whole marketing family
- New Product Development and helping with advertising strategies too!
When Steff isn't working, you might find her scouring for bargains in TK Maxx and Ebay or giving her friends the Trinny and Susannah treatment. She also loves dance music, good food and wine!
Ming Blackburn
What Ming doesn't know about new product development isn't worth talking about. Whether it's from the Far East, the lab or the kitchen, from super healthy to pure indulgence, Ming has launched it: chocolates for Gordon Ramsay and new Mates condoms, to health supplements for Sainsbury's, and a range of store cupboard essentials for Gillian McKeith.
As well as being a dab hand at all the usual marketing stuff, she's also super organised and the calmest project manager you'll ever meet. So if you have a complex marketing project that needs getting over the line, Ming's the best there is.
Ming loves...
- Briefing and reporting on marketing research projects
- Developing great new products and working with R&D to make it happen
- Packaging design projects and getting stuck into the whole artwork process including the print management bit
When Ming is not working, she either has her head in a pile of books studying for her MA in Psychotherapy or is working at one of her many voluntary projects. And if she's not there, she's at the gym.
Andrea Budden
Andrea is Blossoming Brands' online specialist. With over ten years experience in sales and marketing, most of which was spent in digital marketing, Andrea has worked with a load of international brands such as HSBC, Orange, AMEX, Lloyds and BT.
Not only is Andrea a guru when it comes to the usual digital suspects (online acquisition projects, affiliate and search engine marketing, SEO, online sponsorship and applications developments) but she is also a whizz at executing strategic plans with precise timing to maximise impact and build your business.
Andrea loves...
- Sorting out online acquisition projects that aren't working and putting strategies in place that deliver.
- Pulling your digital agencies into line and helping you to get them to work harder for you.
- Training your staff to get the most out of your online environment.
And, in her spare time, Andrea loves expressing her creativity through her acting and writing poems. She's also a mean juicer.
Charlotte Horn
Charlotte is our creative marketer with bells on. For the last 8 years she's worked both agency and client side giving her a fantastic skill in balancing the commercial demands of a successful business with the creative process.
From rescuing ailing accounts on the agency side to creating compelling marketing plans for clients as dynamic as the City of London, Charlotte is adept at every aspect of marketing. From marketing plans and outdoor advertising campaigns to tactical, experiential, secondary packaging and promotional programmes. Not to mention, her experience in retail, merchandising and direct marketing.
She's had a global FMCG role in Travel Retail and gained an in depth knowledge of super premium alcohol brands from her time at Bacardi.
Charlotte also understands how to market luxury and premium brands (not to mention enjoying them herself from time to time!) and knows exactly how to engage with the consumer on an emotional level. What else would you expect from someone who has worked with the likes of Bacardi Rum, Grey Goose Vodka, Dewar's Whisky, Noilly Prat Vermouth, Ballantine's Limited and Volvo Trucks?
When the opportunity arose to project manage a promotional trip to India for the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, she jumped at the opportunity. Through managing a diverse group of stakeholders and multiple agencies, we delivered 47 events in 6 days.
And having spent over 6 years as an international consultant for big guys like GM, BA, New Holland, and Fiat, Charlotte brings oodles of dazzling business experience to the Blossoming team.
When we're not throwing loads of work her way, Charlotte loves to fish (strange thing for a girl, we know) scour the sky for the northern lights and wants to do backing vocals again...