The strategist behind ZGMC
Chartered Marketer. Digital specialist. Serving trustee.
I'm Zack Grimes, a Chartered Marketer with over a decade across marketing, communications and PR — most of it spent in organisations where the budget was tight, the scrutiny was high and getting it wrong had consequences beyond a bad quarter.
My specialism is digital. I plan, build and optimise multi-channel campaigns across paid, organic and earned media, and I'm as comfortable inside an ad account, a search console or an analytics platform as I am in a board paper. That combination is rarer than it should be: plenty of strategists can't read the data, and plenty of practitioners can't make the argument to a board. The value is in doing both.
I was Director of Communications at the Laurus Trust, where I built the scalable systems that supported the trust's expansion from 8 to 17 schools over three years. I currently serve as a Trustee at Hulme Grammar School and chair the Business Development Exchange at the Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network. I hold Chartered Marketer status through the CIM and a Level 3 in Education and Training.
Education is where I built my reputation, and it remains a core sector. But the discipline transfers: the same work that helps a trust protect its standing helps a business win customers and a charity win funding. Visibility, credibility, decision. The scoreboard changes; the mechanism doesn't.
How I work
I lead with evidence. Strategy that can't be measured is decoration. Every engagement starts with what the numbers actually say and ends with whether they moved.
I build capability, not dependency. The consultancy trap — paying for a temporary fix, watching the gap reopen the moment the consultant leaves — is real and expensive. I train your team deliberately so the work sustains itself.
I keep governance central. Boards, trustees, regulators, procurement, FOI, the public record. I've operated with all of it and I build strategies that survive contact with all of it.
I'll tell you what I think. You're paying for judgement, not agreement. If the plan is wrong, I'll say so before the board does.
Why work with ZGMC
You get director-level strategic marketing and communications expertise at a fraction of the cost of a full-time executive hire — and without the agency model where senior people sell the work and juniors deliver it. You work with me, throughout.
Outside the work
I'm Manchester-based, a dad, and a school governor by choice rather than obligation. The sectors I work in are ones I have a personal stake in, which is probably why I take the reputational side of this so seriously.
Start with a conversation, not a proposal
A 30-minute discovery call. I'll tell you what I'd do, whether I'm the right person to do it, and roughly what it costs. No pitch deck.