I'm Will, an AI & marketing educator, creator and speaker.
After 20 years helping the world's top brands and marketers make technology useful, I'm now a dedicated educator.
As well as my AI for Marketing community (join the waitlist), I run courses at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the American Marketing Association and the Digital Marketing Institute.
I also turn up every day on my social media channels and email newsletter, giving free tutorials, advice, and walkthroughs of the latest tools and tactics.
How I Got Here: My Career from Y2K to Today.
Building on the Early Web
I started out building websites on the early internet, on platforms like GeoCities. Later, I became obsessed with Second Life and MySpace. I built my own arts centre in Second Life, pictured below, and built several large communities on MySpace.
Music
In the 2000s I was in a band, using MySpace to find listeners, meet other musicians and industry people. I loved the fact that you could make something, put it online and see what people thought. Learning to promote the band taught me a lot about building audiences before I thought of it as marketing.
MySpace
When MySpace advertised for staff in its growing UK office in 2007, I honestly felt this was my calling. I knew the site inside out, and believed in the promise of social media to connect the world and democratise creativity (despite how that's played out, I still believe that in my heart!).
Honestly, it was the first ever job I'd ever had that I was excited to turn up for. Within weeks, I was flexing my HTML-butchering skills to help build pages for TV, film and music campaigns, swiftly got drafted into the content team and eventually became Editor for the UK and Ireland.
It was an amazing place to learn. I ran the comedy channel, commissioned original content, events, podcasts, livestreams and so much more. I interviewed lots of the music and movie stars of that time, including Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher, Ricky Gervais, Jonah Hill, Pendulum etc etc.
Alongside my early MySpace work, I taught A-level Music Technology at Thames Valley University, on Saturdays. I was so lucky to get access to proper big music studios, with the freedom to experiment, learn and then teach it all to the students, guiding them through the entire production process.
It's here that I learned about the power of practical hands-on learning. The theory is important, but you don't truly know something until you do it yourself. Seeing 16-year-olds bring professional-sounding music tracks to life cemented my love of teaching in this way.
Advertising and Harkable
After MySpace, I joined top ad agency DDB as a social media strategist, working on brands like Volkswagen, Guinness and Budweiser. I thought it was so cool that you could get paid to come up with ideas to use technology in interesting ways, and see those ideas come to life.
But I wanted to move faster on emerging trends and tech, so in 2010 I co-founded Harkable, a digital creative agency in London. We worked with clients like Samsung, Spotify, Microsoft, Net-a-Porter, Penguin Books and Nike Foundation and more.
My role covered a bit of everything, but I loved coming up with ideas, pitching them and representing the company at events and in the media. Running a business with all the financial stuff, the hiring and firing etc, taught me a lot of things that I still draw on today.
Books
Away from technology, I've written two books illustrated by my wife, Stacey Marsh, both published by Prestel, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Cocktails of the Movies, first published in 2015, brings together film history, cocktail recipes and Stacey's gorgeous artwork, which you can buy prints of here. It was a labour of love (seriously, writing any book is a marathon!), and we're still really proud of it.
We followed it in 2023 with Cheers to TV, exploring drinks inspired by television's characters and stories.
TV and presenting
Over the years, I've presented videos for TechRadar, EE, Microsoft, Samsung, T3, BBC and more. I sometimes appear in the media to share my expertise on current technology stories.
Teaching and speaking
When I left Harkable in 2016, training became the main focus. Directly and through the institutions I run courses for, I help the world's most loved brands use social media, content marketing and AI to grow and engage their audiences in more meaningful ways.
Content creation
In September 2024, I returned to content creation with a focus on explaining AI simply, through video on TikTok initially. My following there grew to 100,000 followers in just 100 days - it was clear that people really wanted accessible, practical information about AI, without the hype or BS that plagues this topic space.
Now I show up every day for 400k+ followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X to share practical walkthroughs, tutorials, tips, and updates on making AI useful in your everyday life and work.
Today, I'm building the best community for marketing people to learn AI. With weekly live classes and tons of resources, I'll make you the AI boss at your workplace.