Our Founder
Jarmila Yu
Founder, YUnique Marketing | Consulting CMO | Growth Mentor | Speaker
I’m a business and marketing leader with 30 years’ experience helping businesses, brands and people realise their potential.
Today, I work alongside ambitious founders and CEOs at pivotal moments in their business journey, bringing the strategic marketing leadership, commercial perspective and trusted challenge they need to grow, scale and build valuable businesses.
But YUnique Marketing has always been about more than providing marketing expertise.
I created YUnique Marketing because, throughout my career, I could see opportunities to do things differently, to give ambitious SMEs access to the kind of senior marketing leadership they often lacked, to help talented people do their best work, and to build a business where strategy, expertise and people come together to create meaningful impact.
That belief still shapes everything I do today.
Why I founded YUnique Marketing
The idea behind YUnique Marketing started long before I launched the business in 2016.
During my corporate career, including my time at IBM, I had the opportunity to work with businesses of very different sizes and stages of growth. In one role alone, I supported a community of around 250 business partners, from small IT businesses to organisations employing hundreds of people.
It gave me an extraordinary window into the realities of growing an SME.
Again and again, I saw ambitious businesses investing in marketing without access to the senior strategic marketing leadership that larger organisations could take for granted.
They might have talented marketers. They might work with good agencies. They were certainly investing time, money and energy.
But who was setting the strategy? Who was challenging the brief? Who was making sure the activity connected back to what the business was actually trying to achieve?
Too often, businesses were jumping into tactics before establishing the strategic foundations and then wondering why their marketing wasn’t delivering what they needed.
I could also see another gap. Traditional consultancies could provide excellent strategic advice, while agencies and specialists could provide excellent execution. But somebody still needed to connect the two, to hold the strategic direction, bring the right expertise together and make sure everyone was working towards the same commercial goal.
I believed ambitious SMEs deserved access to that level of experienced marketing leadership without necessarily having to employ a full-time CMO.
So, I decided to build it.
YUnique Marketing was created to give founders and CEOs access to experienced CMO-level thinking, leadership and challenge in a way that worked for their businesses, bringing strategy ahead of tactics and helping them make better use of their finite time, money and people.
I wasn’t trying to give SMEs more marketing.
I wanted to give them better marketing leadership.
Hear more from Jarmila
The story behind YUnique Marketing
Hear Jarmila talk about YUnique Marketing, why it exists and the thinking behind the business.
Watch the video →
Marketing on a budget
Jarmila discusses how businesses can make smarter marketing decisions when time, money and resources are finite.
Watch the interview →
Why YUnique?
Building a business differently
When I founded YUnique Marketing, I made another conscious decision: I didn’t want to recreate the corporate world I had left.
I wanted to build a successful business, but success for me wasn’t about building the biggest team or gradually moving myself away from clients into managing people.
I love the work.
I want to be in the room with founders and leadership teams, asking the questions that need asking, challenging thinking, developing strategy, mentoring people and helping turn ambition into action. That’s where I know I create the greatest value, and it’s still where you’ll find me today.
But no one person can, or should, be an expert in everything.
Over a long career, I’ve had the privilege of working with some exceptional marketers, specialists and agencies. I’ve also seen highly experienced people leave traditional corporate environments for all sorts of reasons: restructuring, changing life circumstances, caring responsibilities or simply wanting a different way of working.
Many have become outstanding independent specialists. They know their craft. They take enormous pride in their work. And they share my belief in quality and creating genuine value for the client.
I’ve handpicked a trusted group of those people to work alongside me when a client needs their particular expertise.
That means YUnique Marketing can bring together the right capability for the challenge, without the costly infrastructure and overheads of a traditional model. Our remote-first, flexible model keeps us lean, reduces our environmental footprint and means clients invest in experienced people and the work that creates value, not expensive offices.
Exceptional expertise. Without the traditional overheads.
I remain personally involved, setting the strategic direction and bringing the people and work together around what the client is trying to achieve.
For clients, it means access to excellent specialist expertise under experienced CMO leadership.
For the people I work with, it creates opportunities to concentrate on doing more of the work they’re brilliant at.
And for me, it’s another way of giving something back to a profession that has given me so much.
It’s a model I’ve built deliberately around clients, great people and great work.
Making a difference beyond the business
I’ve always believed that success brings with it an opportunity to contribute.
For me, building YUnique Marketing has never just been about the clients I work with directly. I’m passionate about developing people, strengthening the professions and communities I’m part of, and sharing what I’ve learned so that others can build better businesses and careers too.
That’s why, alongside my client work, I’ve consciously built a portfolio career that allows me to contribute in different ways.
I chair and support professional and business organisations. I mentor business leaders and marketers at different stages of their careers. I work with universities and initiatives developing the next generation of talent. And I’ve spoken at more than 150 events and been featured in the media over 90 times, sharing ideas, experience and perspectives with audiences ranging from entrepreneurs and business leaders to marketers, students and emerging leaders.
Not everyone I reach will become a YUnique Marketing client, nor do they need to.
If something I’ve shared helps someone see an opportunity differently, make a better decision, find the confidence to try something new or recognise what makes them and their business distinctive, that matters to me too.
It’s one of the reasons BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. BE DIFFERENT. has become such an important part of what I stand for.
Be bold enough to have ambition. Be brave enough to challenge convention and try something different. And recognise that being different isn’t something to hide, in business, it’s often exactly what gives people a reason to choose you.
Speaking & Inspiring Audiences
Ideas should travel.
Speaking gives me the opportunity to take the thinking, experience and insights I develop through my work and share them with many more people than I could ever work with directly.
Across 150+ speaking engagements, I’ve delivered keynotes, joined and moderated panels, hosted conversations, delivered masterclasses and contributed to conferences, summits and business events for audiences ranging from entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs to senior business leaders, marketers, students and emerging talent.
My talks draw on 30 years of real-world marketing and business experience and explore the issues I’m passionate about; business growth, marketing strategy and leadership, brand and differentiation, customers, people and capability, AI and the human edge, and what it takes to lead and grow with confidence in a changing world.
Whatever the subject, I want people to leave with something useful: a different perspective, a new idea, a question they hadn’t considered or the confidence to take action.
BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. BE DIFFERENT.
Looking for a speaker, panellist or moderator?
If you’re creating an event that aims to challenge, inspire and equip business leaders and marketers with ideas they can put into practice, I’d love to hear about it.
Speaking Engagements
Leadership & Contribution
I believe communities are powerful.
Bring people together around a common interest, belief or ambition and ideas can become conversations, conversations can become collaborations, and collaborations can become action.
Throughout my career, I’ve deliberately contributed my time, experience and energy to the business, marketing and education communities I’m part of, sometimes as a member, sometimes as a mentor or ambassador, and often in leadership and Chair roles.
For me, community works best when it’s circular. You lean in, you learn, you contribute generously and, together, you create something that makes a difference.
There’s a common thread running through the organisations, initiatives and causes I choose to support: helping businesses and people realise their potential, bridging the gap between education and the world of work, developing our professions, and creating opportunities for people to do their best work.
I’ve been fortunate to help build some of these communities and initiatives from the ground up, and to lead and contribute to others at important stages in their development.
Current Leadership Appointments
- Chair — Ambassador Network, Association of Business Mentors
- Chair — Industry Advisory Board, Royal Holloway Business School, University of London
- Chair — Knowledge Development Committee, Worshipful Company of Marketors
- Court Assistant (Board Member) — Worshipful Company of Marketors
- Local Leader — Surrey, Hampshire & Berkshire, Enterprise Nation
- Strategic Marketing and Business Growth Ambassador — South Region, Institute of Directors
- Member — People & Inclusion Committee, Data & Marketing Association
- Member — Mentoring Committee, Worshipful Company of Marketors
Previous Leadership Appointments
My commitment to leadership and community stretches back many years across marketing, business, education and local community life. Selected previous roles include:
- Chair — Surrey & Berkshire Branch, Institute of Directors (previously Vice Chair)
- Chair — Talent Committee, Data & Marketing Association (previously Vice Chair)
- Chair — Business Women in Surrey
- Chair — World of Work Group, LVS Ascot
- Chair — Parents Association, Hammond Junior School
- Chair — National Childbirth Trust, Windlesham, Bagshot & Lightwater
- Council Member — Surrey Chambers of Commerce
- Business Representative — Surrey economic growth and employer forums, including One Surrey Growth Board, Invest in Surrey Business Leaders Forum and Surrey Employer Representative Bodies Group
- Steering Group Member — Digital Organisation & Society Research Centre
- Contributor — Women in Enterprise, All-Party Parliamentary Group
- Advisor — The Entrepreneurs Network, Entrepreneurship All-Party Parliamentary Group
- Co-Founder — Networking for Good
- Parish Councillor — Windlesham Parish Council
- Enterprise Adviser, Employability — The Careers & Enterprise Company
- Marketing, Communications & PR Specialist — The Executives Association of Great Britain
- Marketing, Communications & PR Specialist — Lightwater Business Association
- Member — Corporate Engagement Board, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home
Mentoring & Developing Others
Developing people has been a consistent thread throughout my career.
Over the years, I’ve mentored entrepreneurs, business leaders, mid-to-senior marketers and emerging marketing talent through programmes and initiatives for organisations including the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Data & Marketing Association, Worshipful Company of Marketors, B2B Marketing/Propolis, Royal Holloway Business School, University of London, Association of Business Mentors, Business Leader, Enterprise Nation, Help to Grow Management Programme, Enterprise M3 Growth Hub, Small Business Britain, Be the Business, Virgin StartUp and Peter Jones Foundation.
My contribution has gone beyond participating as a mentor. I’ve also conceived, developed and helped lead mentoring programmes and initiatives designed to connect people with the experience, challenge and support they need to develop and progress.
Some of these have been individual programmes; others have developed into longer-standing relationships and leadership roles. Collectively, they’ve given me the opportunity to support people at very different stages of their business and career journeys, and to help create some of the structures that enable others to do the same.
Credentials & Recognition
My professional credentials and external recognition reflect a career-long commitment to professional standards, continued development and contributing to the marketing, business and education communities I work within.
Professional Credentials & Standing
- Chartered Marketer (CMktr)
- Diploma in Marketing (DipM)
- Fellow — Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM)
- Fellow — Institute of Data & Marketing (FIDM)
- Member — Data & Marketing Association
- Member — Chartered Institute of Public Relations (MCIPR)
- Liveryman — Worshipful Company of Marketors
- Freeman — City of London
Recognition
- Honorary Fellow — Royal Holloway, University of London, 2026
- Top 100 CMO — Global Ranking of Most Influential CMOs, Richtopia, 2017
- fEntrepreneur #ialso100, 2021 — Named among the UK’s 100 inspiring female founders
I was incredibly proud to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Royal Holloway, my alma mater, recognising my professional achievements and contribution to the University and wider community.
Awards
Media & Commentary
Over the years, I’ve been featured in the media more than 90 times, contributing insights and commentary on marketing, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and growth.
My views have appeared across business, marketing and mainstream media, as well as industry reports, reflecting both my professional expertise and my experience as a business founder and leader.
What could we achieve together?
Whether you’re a founder or CEO looking for experienced strategic support, an organisation looking for an event speaker or content contributor, or someone who simply believes there could be an opportunity for us to work together, I’d love to hear from you.
The best conversations often start with a simple question, an ambitious idea or a challenge that needs a different perspective.
If you’re interested in requesting Jarmila as a Keynote Speaker at one of your events, CONTACT US HERE.
PROFESSIONAL.
QUALIFIED.
ACCREDITED.
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