About James

Clear thinking. Working change.

Digital delivery consultant, senior strategist and founder of JAi Digital. Based in Cardiff, working with teams across the UK.

JAMES WATKINS / ABOUT JAMES

Cardiff / strategy / systems / delivery / leadership / judgement · Cardiff / strategy / systems / delivery / leadership / judgement · Cardiff / strategy / systems / delivery / leadership / judgement ·

James Watkins at a desk with an open notebook, looking at the camera

Founder / strategist / delivery leader

Strategy that survives Monday morning.

I'm James Watkins, founder of JAi Digital. I work where marketing, technology, operations and leadership overlap - where important digital work becomes hard to see and harder to move.

Commercial grounding

Twenty-five years in sales and marketing.

Over 25 years in sales and marketing, fifteen of them in digital. I started selling advertising space in Newport in 1997. Digital came next: my own agency, search and penalty recovery in insurance, then eight years running digital marketing across 14 phs Group brand websites with a budget of over £1M.

The move to JAi Digital

The next opening.

When phs restructured in 2025, I founded JAi Digital. I had retrained in AI workflows and Python with Microsoft, and could see the same kind of opening I saw when search was new.

How I work

Make the evidence visible.

I make the evidence visible, frame the decision and stay close enough to delivery that the thinking survives contact with reality. The point is not a better deck. It is a better change.

Career timeline

Commercial grounding. Digital depth.

2017 - 2025

Senior Digital Marketing Manager, phs Group

All digital marketing across 14 brand websites and nine business units, with a budget over £1M and a team of up to seven. Reported quarterly to the CEO. Full story in Work.

2015 - 2017

SEO Manager, The Moorhouse Group

Cleared a Google algorithmic penalty other specialists had missed; organic traffic rose 130% in six months.

2011 - 2015

Director, Metamorph Media

Founded and ran a digital and creative agency: SEO, PPC and websites. Top-three rankings in competitive industries, number one for “web design Cardiff” and “SEO Cardiff”, and an 80% proposal win rate.

1997 - 2010

Sales and marketing

Advertising sales in press, radio and direct marketing across South Wales. The commercial grounding the digital work sits on.

Awards won by the phs marketing team I was part of.

Three CIPR PRide Cymru wins, 2019, for phs Period Equality
Three CIPR PRide Cymru golds, 2021, for COVID-19 response campaigns
Two Chartered Institute of Marketing awards, 2021
CBRE Supplier Innovation Challenge Diversity and Social Value award, 2024

Working with AI

Judgement stays with the strategist.

One senior person, with AI in the analytics, systems and workflows. Machines take the manual work. At phs that meant an early custom GPT on the sales document library and ChatGPT training for the marketing team. Now it is how JAi Digital delivers.

Remote first. When an office is needed more than two or three days a week, South Wales works and Bristol is the furthest I travel.