Tony Cowling

Board Mentor
Criticaleye

Tony has spent most of his working life in the marketing information and research agency business and within one company, Taylor Nelson, for 40 years. However, during that time, Taylor Nelson went from:
Start up (he joined on day one in 1965), to stock market listing (in 1989), to Top 200 FTSE plc (in 2000), and the 2nd largest MR agency in the world.

Initially as MD, then as a FTSE CEO and later Chairman, Tony took the Group (Taylor Nelson Sofres plc) from a small UK company with a £5 million turnover to a fully listed plc with a market cap of £1 billion. When Tony retired in 2006 as life President, TNS had substantial operations in over 65 countries, a staff of nearly 15,000 and had made nearly 100 acquisitions across the world along the way.

Although all with one company, Tony has experienced virtually every aspect of corporate and public company growth.

He now has a number of directorships in small to medium size companies and likes to spend the working part of his life helping to guide SME’s over the various marketing and business hurdles from start up, to AIM and / or an IPO listing.

Tony is a past Chairman of the UK Association of Market Survey Organisations (AMSO), and a past President of Gallup International Association.

In January 2001, Tony was named as Market Research Industry Executive of the Decade by Inside Research - the leading USA newsletter for the MR industry.

Tony is a Criticaleye Board Mentor.