Daryl Warner

Everyone has a secret in the closet. Daryl Warner has one hundred and thirty of them. Since 1984 I Spy’s head of business development has been amassing the finest collection of trainers this side of Niketown, focusing on the very best of the swoosh.

Warner started off on the classic sales route into media, working in classified on his local paper at the Oxford Courier Newspaper Group. He then moved to London where he started working for Datamonitor, the market information group, cold calling potential clients.

It was a hard knocks school of selling, a “cold-calling supermarket”. “Every call was monitored; and if you didn’t make sales you didn’t stay.”

Warner spent over two years on the sales floor before moving to the online space and starting his digital career at Overture. It was here that he learnt the ropes of paid search and first worked for I Spy boss Jim Brigden.

His next challenge was to entice FMCG clients to invest in Ask Jeeves. At the time the category was extremely cautious about all things digital and in this tough environment he persuaded a number of blue chip brand to invest.

The place where Warner really showed his online sales expertise, however, was Value Click working for both the VC Media ad network and Commission Junction, the leading affiliate network.

 At VC media he secured large ad spends though advertising agencies for clients such as Sky, Apple, and NTL as well as securing the network’s first-ever direct advertisers.

In late 2007 Warner was asked to start up the sales team at I Spy and he hasn’t looked back. “I Spy is totally focused on great results and a strong working relationship with all its clients, it’s great to be part of such an experienced team,” he says.