About us

Planning Express is owned and operated by Liz Bielinska and Katrina Michel.

Liz Bielinska

Liz has been in account planning for 12 years and market research for 17 years. Originally from Manchester, she began her career at BDH, Manchester. In 1998 she moved to Omnicom's Martin/Williams Advertising in Minneapolis USA, to run the planning department, growing the discipline from 6 to 16 staff.

There, she pioneered creative thinking techniques and brand strategy development processes and worked on a variety of massive US clients such as Cargill, Target, LL Bean and E*TRADE. She returned to the UK in 2005 and for a brief time consulted for a number of Manchester Ad agencies.

She rejoined BDH/TBWA as a board director and head of planning in February 2006. She left in Jan 2007 to set up Planning Express Ltd. She lives in South Manchester.

Katrina Michel

Katrina has over 20 years experience with agencies such as Publicis, Ogilvy and JWT, in both account planning - she has twice held Head of Planning positions - and business development. Before Planning Express she was Chairman of Cheetham Bell JWT in Manchester.

She has worked across a wide range of categories and brands both in the UK and globally, including the highly successful launch of Huggies across Europe, the 'Nicole, Papa' Renault Clio launch, the 'What Happens in your Kitchen?' campaign for Magnet and global campaigns for Lemsip and Gaviscon. Previous clients also include the COI, Ford of Britain, Kellogg's and Guardian Media Group.

She has won 5 IPA Effectiveness Awards and was editor of Area Effectiveness Works 5. She is a Governor of Manchester Metropolitan University

Rebecca Ashley - Associate

Rebecca is a graduate of MMU and has 12 years experience as an Account Planner. She joined Planning Express in 2008 from TBWA where her previous clients included ODEON cinemas, ghd, COI, Patak's, Morrisons, Carex and Wickes. Rebecca has won 4 IPA awards.

Rob Gray - Associate

Joined Planning Express from TBWA Manchester in October 2007. An Industrial Economics graduate from Nottingham University and former graphic designer, Rob became an account planner in 2003, when he joined BDH\TBWA. He has been the lead planner on Brother UK, Brother International, Schwans, Westland, ATS Euromaster, and WD-40, and also worked extensively on Henkel, Morphy Richards and Breville. Rob has worked on several research projects for COI.

Rob is an IPA Effectiveness Award winner. He has extensive experience of pitching and focus group moderating.