Hugh Davidson (marketer)

In 2021, the Trust began a project to research the process of scaling up successful women's development projects. The project involves a literature review, qualitative interviews with front line and senior charity workers and a quantitative survey (in partnership with philanthropy experts Alliance)

In 2016, Hugh Davidson was awarded an MBE for services to Charities and to the community of the Isle of Man.

One of the Trust's projects (in Odisha) developed with Samudram and Oxfam gained a UN Equator Award for poverty reduction in 2010 and the beautician project was given a Save The Children Phoenix Award for Innovation. The H&S Davidson Trust estimates that to date it has transformed the lives of 60,000 people through higher income and greater empowerment.

In the early 2000s, having sold his majority stake in Oxford Strategic Marketing to the management, he used the proceeds to create a charitable trust with the aim of using the same practical, measurement based approach he'd applied to marketing, to now transforming lives of very poor women and children in West Bengal and Odisha in India, Vietnam, Ghana and Bangladesh.

Davidson has written a number of influential books, characterised by a practical approach that prioritises action and implementation, including “Offensive Marketing” which sold over 100,000 copies and “Even More Offensive Marketing", which was a Finalist in the 1997 Financial Times Global Business Book awards. Co-authored versions have been published in Germany (with Professor Anton Meyer) and the USA (with Professor Warren Keegan). Offensive Marketing was described as "Practical wisdom in an inspired packaging" by Philip Kotler.

Davidson was Chairman of the UK Marketing Society and gave the keynote speech at the Society's 50th Anniversary Conference. He is a Fellow of the Marketing Society and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.