Keith Mills is one of the most popular and richest Businessperson who was born on May 15, 1950 in Brentwood, Brentwood, United Kingdom. Mills is chiefly known for inventing the Air Miles (in 1988) and Nectar Card (in 2002) loyalty card schemes.
Loyalty Management UK was started in 2001, which produced the Nectar Card in September, 2002. In December 2007, the company was sold for £350m to the Canadian company Aeroplan, in which he had 46% of sharehold, netting £160m.
From September 2003, he became Chief Executive and International President of the London 2012 campaign which saw London selected as host for the 2012 Summer Olympics. He served as Deputy Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. At the end of the project Mills was awarded the Olympic Order.
Air Miles was set up in 1988 when Mills started the Loyalty Management Group, then known as Air Miles International Group BV. He had the idea in 1987 when working at his advertising agency, which had Shell and British Caledonian as clients who were looking to make the most of their customer base without devaluing the image of the products. People would buy Air Miles from Shell petrol to use on British Caledonian. He approached British Airways and they liked the idea. He then sold similar ideas in the United States and Canada, moving to the United States in 1990. In 1993, the US Air Miles system collapsed, costing him £15m. In 1994, his 49% sharehold of the scheme was sold to British Airways, although he still retains the intellectual property rights.
Mills worked for over twenty years in marketing and advertising. Having left school with no qualifications, he started with The Economist at the age of fifteen as a copy assistant and then at the Financial Times and Investors Chronicle, where he was responsible for their marketing programmes. From there he moved into advertising in London. In 1981, he led a management buyout of the London office of the New York-based company Nadler & Larimer, becoming the chief executive. In 1985 he found Mills, Smith & Partners. He was also a non-executive director at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club but stepped down in January 2016.
He enjoys sailing; in 1999 he was member of a team captained by Alex Thomson that won the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. He founded Team Origin in 2007.
