Infinite Group, the Swindon-based field marketing firm, has appointed Jean-Francois Cahorn as its new managing director to lead it into a new phase of growth.
Jean-Francois, known as JF, pictured, joined the business eight years ago straight from university and has lead teams for a number of major clients including Philips, TomTom and Sony. 
He has extensive experience of all areas of field marketing – from of account management and training to events and sales – and is now overseeing a big recruitment drive to expand infinite’s talent pool and ensure each client has the right team to get top results in a fast-evolving marketplace.
Originally from Canada, he joined South Marston-based infinite in 2007 as a client manager on its Philips account after completing a Master’s in International Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Bristol.
He was quickly promoted to account controller in charge of both Philips’ domestic appliances arm and consumer electronics arm.
Most of his time was spent in the field, training retail staff and promoting products at shopping centres and big events such as roadshows.
After three years overseeing the Philips teams, JF took over as client services director for TomTom where much of his role involved staging promotions at big events such as Bestival and Goodwood. He even dressed up as Santa in his quest to promote the brand.
A year later he returned to Philips to work on the transition of its TV business after it was sold to the Chinese firm TPVision.
He was promoted to strategic account director for Sony CE, managing a team of about 150 people in the field with a strong focus on achieving a rapid return on investment.
When infinite’s previous managing director and co-founder Nigel Stone announced his retirement, JF was approached by the senior directors who encouraged him to apply for the role.
JF said it had always been his long-term ambition to reach managing director or board level but that he did not expect to achieve it so soon.
“I said from the start that was the longer goal, it was my vision to run the company, it is great to have achieved it sooner than expected,” he said. “I have taken over as MD at a really exciting time for infinite.
“We are entering a new period with a change of office and a big recruitment drive to help us continually adapt to the fast changing retail market.”
JF’s priority as managing director is to continually engage with all infinite’s clients and understand their goals, ensuring the firm has the right people working on each account to deliver top results.
“One of the biggest challenges in this industry is getting the right people because most of our staff are out in the field so it is all based on trust,” he said.
“We have to constantly evolve and respond to changes in the market, you cannot allow things to stagnate.”
He wants to see infinite expand its work as a consultancy in the retail, field marketing and sales arena, making use of the huge amount of data it collects from stores and events all over the country.
“We have people all over the country gathering valuable market data on things like sales figures, footfall, product displays,” he said.
“Advances in technology are changing the way we can collect this data and feed it back to our clients, I want to see this taken to the next level for infinite to take on more advisory work and start publishing reports based on that data.”
