Think Beyond appoints Oliver Meade to spearhead new purposeful sponsorship proposition

Think Beyond has appointed Oliver Meade as its Senior Director, Commercial Partnerships.  Meade joins to spearhead Think Beyond’s mission to evolve the sponsorship landscape by delivering a new proposition to the market focused on creating partnerships that achieve greater commercial returns by embedding meaningful social change at their heart.

The newly created role reflects growing client demand for support in this area. Meade will be responsible for helping Think Beyond’s brand and rights-holder clients build strategies and identify meaningful relationships that deliver impact, value, and growth.

Oliver will oversee the management and continuous development of Think Beyond's suite of partnership services. For brands, this includes impact-driven sponsorship strategy, property identification, rights fee and asset negotiation, sponsorship activation, and storytelling. For rights-holders, services include purpose-based commercial strategy, partner auditing and integration, risk identification and mitigation, and impact programme development.

With a career spanning client-side, agency, and rights-holder roles across Australasia and the UK, over the last decade, Meade has worked with some of the world’s most recognisable brands, including Heineken, Moët Hennessy, BMW, Nike, and Chelsea FC.

Oliver joins Think Beyond after a tenure at Three UK, where he led the brand’s partnership with Chelsea FC since 2020, overseeing the three-year front-of-shirt deal and, most recently, making history by launching Three as Chelsea FC Women’s first-ever women’s-only principal partner.

Meade’s campaigns - including the award-winning #TalkMoreThanFootball initiative with Samaritans and An Interview 100 Years in the Making which used cutting-edge AI technology to give a voice to a women’s football trailblazer Lily Parr - have been praised for blending meaning, innovation, cultural relevance, and social progress.

“Oly’s deep cross-sector experience and his proven track record of delivering campaigns that drive commercial success, brand impact, and societal change make him an outstanding addition to our business,” said Sam Shave, Managing Partner at Think Beyond.