Thomas Balling Rasmussen

What I do

Connecting CFO and CMO worlds. I design and deploy evidence-driven strategies that turn marketing into a profit engine.

With 20+ years of global experience across marketing, commercial, finance, and analytics, I've guided around £2bn in commercial investments across 36 brands in 26 markets on five continents. My core strengths lie in profit-focused marketing strategy, behavioural science, and organisational leadership – especially translating marketing science into financial outcomes.

Core Expertise

Commercial Strategy • Brand Portfolio Optimisation • Marketing Investment & Measurement • CLV & Acquisition Economics • Market Expansion • Team Leadership

Career Highlights

Marketing Leadership at Scale

Global marketing operations across complex, multi-brand portfolios in regulated markets.

Led global marketing across 10+ brands spanning three continents and 15+ regulated markets with £120M+ annual budget
Directed 100+ specialists across 13 teams. Restructured department around core distinction between teams that build mental availability versus teams that capture existing demand. Regrouped SEO, PPC, and affiliate into one demand-capture unit, clarifying accountability
Built organisation-wide capability through Marketing Summits with world-class external speakers, tailored workshops on creative effectiveness and attention research, and seminars translating brand science into practical application – shifted department culture from intuition-led to evidence-led
Centralised global sponsorship function; implemented machine-vision broadcast analysis to quantify brand exposure on assets including Inter Milan main shirt

Commercial Transformation

I find what's broken and fix it – strategy, measurement, creative effectiveness.

Implemented "fewer, stronger, longer" creative asset strategy delivering estimated 100%+ effectiveness gains over time while cutting agency/production costs by 70%
Applied brand science to creative asset development; research on key market showed 400% increase in sub-5-second brand identification
Engineered new marketing impact metric based on cohort analysis that exposed faulty measurement; became backbone of investment reviews and unlocked £20–40M annually in allocation flexibility
Executed retrospective deep dive on £200M+ multi-brand, multi-market spend over seven years; findings forced fundamental revision of strategic assumptions at exec level
Ran incrementality tests to identify attribution fraud and false causality; reallocated spend to higher-confidence channels and improved decision quality across commercial organisation
Automated global CRM operations, eliminating configuration errors and vastly increasing productivity; an approach still ahead of industry standard nearly two decades later

Marketing-Finance Integration

Bridging the gap between marketing activity and P&L outcomes.

Developed proprietary financial models allocating £1bn+ cumulative marketing investment across brand portfolio, on track to deliver £5bn+ in measurable returns
Led U.S. market entry strategy during regulatory transition; scenario planning, M&A screening, and partnership negotiation for new market expansion
Defined and refined CLV and CAC/CPA measurement frameworks across organisation; two decades applying these metrics to drive investment decisions
Built and ran quarterly review cycle covering 1,000+ brand/market budget pitches and outcome reviews annually; fundamentally changed how marketing investment was controlled and measured

Current Advisory

Independent consultant since 2024, providing strategy advisory to senior leadership on marketing and commercial effectiveness.

Recent engagements include marketing and commercial strategy for FTSE100 operator (£150M+ marketing budget multi-brand portfolio across LatAm, Canada, and Iberia) and launch marketing for the inaugural Legends Charity Game, Lisbon. Example workstreams include attribution analysis, media mix modelling RFP and project steering, category entry point mapping, marketing metrics audits, and multi-year cohort performance reviews.

What People Say

Thomas has a way of cutting through the noise and getting to the core of what really matters. He is a superbly logical and data-driven person, who looks at marketing with an astonishingly practical and result-oriented view.

Senior marketing technology leader

Former colleague

Thomas is one of the most analytical marketeers I've worked with. He was instrumental in driving through seismic changes to our marketing functions, particularly around how we view & manage brands; category drivers and entry points; ATL/BTL strategies for growth; and measurement frameworks. All that aside, also a great person to work with.

Commercial Director

Internal stakeholder

Thomas is a unique individual with versatile abilities who can succeed in almost anything you throw at him. I experienced that myself when I asked him to transform our marketing operations team into a highly scalable and reliable one. [...] introduced new processes, procedures and tools which streamlined the operation.

Group CRM Director, FTSE50 operator

Line manager

Thomas consistently brought new perspectives, challenged everyone's thinking, and pushed for a data-based approach to marketing decision-making. He made a huge impact in how we think about marketing and we really appreciate it.

VP Strategy, FTSE100 operator

Client

Philosophy

I believe in finding out what actually works – and doing more of it. Too much marketing operates on convention, gut feel, or whatever the last agency pitched. My approach is different: apply genuine marketing science, get resource allocations right, cut what isn't working, and build businesses on evidence rather than ego.

Marketing should make CEOs and CFOs confident, not nervous. Confident that investments are grounded in how markets actually behave. Confident that spend is allocated to what moves the needle – whether that's building mental availability over years or converting demand today. My job is to replace gut feel and overconfident attribution claims with decisions based on likelihoods, trade-offs, and commercial outcomes.

Education

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania – General Management Program
Copenhagen Business School – MSc & BSc, Economics and Business Administration
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science – How Brands Grow (studied under Prof. Byron Sharp & Prof. Jenni Romaniuk)