SCRIPTWRITING, DISPLAY CHOREOGRAPHY, CONTENT

In early 2022 Pringles launched its first global refresh in more than 25 years with a playful Mind Popping ad created by Grey London. The film, featuring a bust of Charles Darwin, puts forward the theory that humans evolved solely to enjoy Pringles.

To support the launch, experiential agency onepointfive hosted a five-minute mind popping building projection light show at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London – chosen because it too was built to the hyperbolic paraboloid shape of a Pringle! The show was broadcast live on the Pringles YouTube Channel.

MY ROLE: Working closely with the awesome team at onepointfive, I helped develop the initial supporting launch ideas and then wrote and choreographed the five-minute building projection content.

Click here to watch the whole performance, originally broadcast live in February 2022…

SPRING 2021

TV AD, SOCIAL SUPPORT, IN-STORE DIGITAL SCREENS

After a challenging Q1 due to stores in lockdown, Three wanted to come back all guns blazing with a compelling consumer offer to kickstart the re-opening of thoer stores, communicated in an impactful and engaging way.

We used an old visual technique of kaleidescopic imagery presented in a modern, contemporary, fresh way. The viewer was taken on a journey through four high value gifts that they could choose from if they bought a new phone at Three.

The audio was a key part of the film - and after a tough negotiation we were very lucky to secure a classic 70’s Jackie Wilson soul track which could have been written for what we were doing.

Credit where credit is due…this is the awesom team of people who helped make thhis happen:

Agency - BPL Marketing
Director - Piggy Lines
Executive Producer - Andrew Porteous - The Progress Film Company
Producer - Heeva Hamed -- The Progress Film Company
Motion Graphic Artist - Ben Adam-Harris - Broken Antler
Stylist - Imogen Frost
Still Retoucher - Tony Swinney
Sound Engineer - @Marmaboog

MY ROLE: I was asked to devlop a range of thought-starter platforms and ideas, which were then shortlisted , refined and ultimately one idea was selected. I developed a number of script options and was then asked to Creatively Direct the film to its conclusion, helping to chose a Director and Production Company and liaise between them, the agency and client until we had landed the finished film a few days before broadcast.

IDEAS ON EVERYTHING

FILMS, SOCIAL CONTENT, TV, EVENTS, INSTORE, ON PACK, SHOPPER JOURNEYS TRADE PROMOTIONS, PRODUCT LAUNCHES…AND RELAUNCHES, CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT, LOYALTY, SPONSORSHIP….and much more…

Ok, in some respects the last year or so has sucked - but in other ways it has been liberating and inspiring. It’s been about circumnavigating the negatives and turning them into positives.

Working largely remotely has focused the mind and streamlined the creative process to make it what it should be - all about the idea that best answers the challenge posed.

From designing and co-writing (and artworking) an 80-page book for an iconic golf course and developing a positioning for Canada’s answer to Napa Valley, to creating MOOsic playlists for cows in the Philippines and turning dogs into shampoo scientists. From using a footy pundit’s namesake and naming a lockdown cocktail chatbot, to relaunching an iconic piece of clothing and dressing up a new agency’s creds.

On the basis only one idea can run in answer to a brief, not everything comes off, but having conceived multiple ideas for over 20 brands in the last 18 months, when they do, it’s still a great feeling - like the recent TV spot for Three Mobile - see previous case history.

These are just some of the brands I have worked on recently which for many of them, as is the lot of a freelancer, I would love to show you the work for, but confidentiality dictates that is not possible!

Airborne (US market)
Alaska Milk (Philippines)
Burberry (UK, US, China)
Ceder Creek Wine (Canada)
Cheetos (Global market)
Costa Express (UK)
Football Index (UK)
Halti (UK)
Knorr (France)
Lindt/Lindor (UK)
Maker’s Mark (Global)
Mission Hill Wine (Global)
Pet Head (UK)
Pringles (UK)
Smarty (UK)
Sunbites (Global)
Tetley Tea (UK)
Three Mobile (UK)
Travelex (Europe)
Walkers (UK)
Walton Heath Golf Club (UK)

If you would like to see what ideas I can unearth for your challenges, I’d love to hear from you. In strictest confidence of course!

FILM, SOCIAL CONTENT, FAN EVENT

The McLaren Senna was created to offer the purest connection between man and machine. The most track focused road car McLaren have ever built. Destined to set the fastest lap times. Inspired by one of the greatest ever racing drivers. And his absolute dedication to be the best he could be.

Having developed the global positioning for the newest hyper car from McLaren Automotive, we set about making a film that would in equal measure excite, enthuse, instil wonder and move people. This would be the first time anyone would see dynamic footage of the car.

Produced with the help of award-winning automotive film experts Carnage Films and directed by Piggy Lines, the film sets up how the attitude and achievements of legendary Brazilian Ayrton Senna, three-time World Drivers’ Champion with McLaren, led to the creation of this incredible vehicle.

With the blessing of and help from the Ayrton Senna Institute, Formula One Administration Ltd, and BBC Sports Archives, Challenge the Impossible first aired at the Geneva Motor Show in 2018. The first-half tribute is made all the more poignant by the inclusion of amazing race footage with original commentary from the equally legendary Murray Walker and James Hunt.

In the countdown to the launch a series of social media teasers whipped up enthusiasm and in just one week from first showing we achieved over 180,000 views. To put that in context, a competitor brand launched two films at the GMS and over the same time period got 6,000 and 9,000 views respectively.

MY ROLE: Writer/Art Director, Creative Direction. Involved from initial planning stage through to final implememntation at all levels. Working closely with Carnage on the shoot in Spain and I also acted as main negotiator between Mclaren and Formula 1 Administration and BBC Archives.

ON PACK, INSTORE, WEBSITE, SOCIAL, CONTENT FILMS

Strongbow wanted to re-engage a millennial audience with mainstream cider. We leveraged their Let’s Own It proposition by giving festival goers the chance to own the moment they arrived at the venue. We challenged them to not hang around the fringe. To go big or go home. We decided Strongbow should be the brand to signal the start of an unforgettable experience with mates. With every pack of Strongbow we offered music fans the chance to win an ‘Epic Festival Entrance’ worth up to £10k at some of the UK’s best festivals.

MY ROLE: Having creatively lead the oringinal pitch with the agency team I was involved in orinination, ideation and development of the work that won. I then directed the creative team and designers who developed the work that was implemented, helped on logistics along the way and attended events as they happened to quality control and develop key learnings for the next iteration.

LIVE EVENT, CONTENT FILMS, SOCIAL MEDIA, RADIO

Fiat wanted to create noise around the launch of its new 500 model. A creative platform for ATL launch was already in place. Our idea stemmed from that. We asked rising star Ella Eyre to take an iconic track and re-master it. For the launch we revealed the track and car in a live performance to a specially invited audience of Motoring and Lifestyle journalists, Celebrities and Fiat VIP’s. The car was situated on a giant vinyl disc stage and drove round triggering elements of the track.

We collaborated with a producer and the artist to rework The Emotions, Best of my Love. For the live performance we chose Potters Fields Park next to Tower Bridge. A stylish VIP structure was created to host 150 key invited media, bloggers, celebrities and influencers.

Post event the team worked through the night to edit and release video content and photos to be used across strategically planned channels, including Fiat and Ella’s social pages, Bloggers and Press.

We partnered with Capital Radio to highlight the collaboration between the car with the Artist. Test drivers at dealers could win Spotify subscriptions and dealers brought in DJ’s to play sets with iconic track playlists.

The campaign achieved a staggering £8.5million PR value against a target of £0.5million and trounced it’s 35million media impressions target with a whopping 812million.

MY ROLE: Working closely with planning and account teams from concept development to implementation. Creatively Directing a design team on all aspects of execution and playing an integral part of every aspect of the implementation.

EVENT MANAGEMENT, CONCEPT CREATION AND STORYBOARDING, SCRIPTWRITING, CREATIVE DIRECTION, ODD-JOB AND HANDYMAN!

Our objective was simple - drive penetration and awareness of Pepsi Max at the UEFA Champions League final as one of the main sponsors. And our strategy was to put the brand at the heart of the excitement in the days leading up to the final in Cardiff.

The unwavering passion of football fans takes them on a journey from joy to despair; nervous anticipation to ecstasy; disappointment to elation. No other moments in life provide the chance to feel and express these emotions with such intensity.

So, we created an unforgettable immersive journey, literally powered by fans’ passion for the beautiful game. And our unique VR experience combined the latest cutting-edge technology, with live actors to deliver a truly unique and memorable experience.

MY ROLE: Overseeing the creative team in the pitch process, presenting the initial work and then staying closely with the project as a tight deadline had to be hit. I helped develop the initial concepts and the inevitable re-direction once the pitch was won, then at the event helped on serving up best-in-class delivery and putting together the wrap-up film. I could even be found doing the last-minute touch-up painting on the stand as it was about to go live!

FULLY INTEGRATED, ON PACK, MULTIPLE EVENTS, ON/OFF
TRADE, ONLINE, DIGITAL, PR, PARTNERSHIP AND SHOPPER MARKETING

InBev set us a challenge - to make the brand “smile again”. We chose to leverage a dormant relationship with The Institute of Contemporary Art, put it together with the more mainstream platform of music and create a series of unique events in iconic venues.

The Chemical Brothers working with United Visual Artists in Trafalagar Square, supported by Calvin Harris and Novak 3-D Disco, who also toured the regional events, resulted in: over 140k applications for tickets, 170k visits to the website, 35,000 touchpoints with consumers, 11,000 samples distributed, over £3.5m worth of PR value, BBC lunch and evening news and a 1-hour special on Channel4.

MY ROLE: I conceived the idea, I then acted as ringmaster helping to manage and leverage the talents of a number of agencies within Engine, the brand’s ATL agency Leo Burnett, and the main partner, the ICA.

STRATEGIC DIRECTION SUPPORT, CAMPAIGN AND CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT, DESIGN, ART DIRECTION AND COPYWRITING, FULL SHOPPER JOURNEY TOOLKITS

As an agency we worked with Philips at a global level, developing insight-driven Shopper Marketing campaigns, implemented through global toolkits. We would often produce 30-40 a year.

Our scope covered many divisions and brands - Personal Care: Male Grooming and Female Beauty (including shavers and body groomers for men and hair dryers, epilators and skin care products for women). Heath & Wellness: Philips Avent and Sonicare. In addition we worked with the Domestic Appliances team, covering everything from the latest cordless vacuum cleaner to the newest trend-led innovation in healthy drinks appliances.

MY ROLE: Working closely with Creative Director Allan Guy and a large team of designers, art directors and writers, I was involved in overall management of the team, helping with client liaison, regularly attending sessions at head office in Amsterdam and often rolling my sleeves up and getting stuck in at a granular lever developing product positionings and campaign roll-out details.

FILM, DM, DESIGN

A Private Box at Wembley Stadium is one of the most prestigious places on earth from where to watch world-class sport and entertainment. So when asked to develop a series of brochures to communicate the benefits of owning one to prospective buyers, only truly innovative and luxury design concepts would help the communication live up to its billing.

In one we showcased spectacular photography of the iconic venue and its benefits using a revolutionary never been used before binding technique. In another we embedded a video screen into the brochure that on opening played a 3-minute film we shot at Wembley stadium with Sir Geoff Hurst on the day England were playing a friendly against Germany. Not easy when there are seven lawn mowers on the pitch doing their thing!

It was also pretty special filming Sir Geoff on the pitch who then handed over to the then FA Chairman, Greg Dyke up in one of the boxes.

The mailing resulted in at least two boxes being sold - not bad at over £80,000 each!

MY ROLE: Initial concept creation, scriptwriting, creative direction.

EXPERIENTIAL, LARGE-SCALE EVENT,
BRAND SHOPPER MARKETING

To develop Sainsbury’s position as THE family-friendly supermarket during the summer trading period, we created an amazing day out at Althorp Estate in Northampton. In conjunction with DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 2 movie.

12,000 visitors were entertained to 8 hours of live family entertainment by 16 brands, a 22-piece orchestra, 3 world class acts, 2 Hollywood superstars and one giant Panda!

The event culminated in Hans Zimmer’s first ever live UK performance and with the CEO of Sainsbury’s and the Chinese Ambassador to the UK in attendance, this was a truly mould-breaking experience.

We had enlisted the help of Harvey Goldsmith and his organisation to deliver the performance side of things on the day and numerous other service provoders along the way.

We also developed 12 of the 16 brand experiences at the event, one of which was the Guinea Po Petting Zoo for Dettol, to showcase their new hands free dispensing anti-bacteriaL hand wash. We sourced 16 cute ittle guinea pigs to play baby pandas. at the end of the day we sadly were one short. Someone had seen fit to nick one!

MY ROLE: This was a massive team effort to land and implement the activity. I headed up the creative and design team and on the day did everthing from film the evnt hanging out of a chopper to helping to ensure all the brand experiences went without a hitch.

GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED

For several years we created and implemented Peugeot’s stand at the GFoS. In 2013 we put a 55-ton surf machine at the heart of their stand and got voted the best stand of the festival that year.

The focus for the brand at the 2014 festival was to be on highlighting all the advances and innovation achieved over recent years, as well as nod to their 125-year anniversary – hence the theme Reaching New Heights.

We installed a 40-foot high gravity drop ride on the stand and after a short introductory video, visitors could not only see the brand’s models in a new light, they could view Goodwood itself from a new angle.

Pragmatisnm is a great tool to have in the creative toolbox. There was a very tight budget, but we needed something to rev vistors up as they sat on the gravity drop seats waiting for take-off.

I created a 90-second film only from footage that existed either in their archives or found on social medai sites. The film celebrated the fact that a Peugeot 208 T16 had smashed the Pikes Peak record - the famous annual ‘race to the clouds’ in Colorado Srings.

The film was cut to look like eight different Peugeot’s were racing up the hill to reach the top…amazing what you can do with no budget!

MY ROLE: Working with the account team, ideating the whole activity, help with implementation on-site and conceiving, writing and editing the film.

CONTENT FILM, DIGITAL & SOCIAL MEDIA, EXPERIENTIAL

Challenged to devise a pre-launch campaign linked to their global platform, we commissioned Feel the Love by Rudimental to be the soundtrack and hip hop dancer Marquese Scott to be the body of the campaign. A No.1 single, 25-date UK experiential tour and feature at The 2012 Goodwood Festival of Speed later, we had broken Peugeot’s 10-year record for advance orders – and reached over 10.5million views on YouTube.

Winner of 2 x IPM GOLD AWARDS for
AUTOMOTIVE and SOCIAL MEDIA

MY ROLE: Part of the original pitch team that secured the Peugeot business for a 5-year period, I developed the original creative and concepts behind this campaign, together with Craig Lawrie and Chris Wareham, the legendary planner and head of experiential respectively.

SALES PROMOTION, INTEGRATED PROMOTION

As Official Treat Provider of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Cadbury wanted to promote awareness of their involvement and leverage the sponsorship investment.

The result was the biggest on-pack Cadbury promotion ever. Consumers had to Unwrap Gold to win tickets to the Olympics Opening Ceremony or individual events, with daily runner-up prizes. We seeded winning bars in every UK postal district and Irish county and as the countdown began, all round Britain winners of the most sought-after prize of the year emerged, each showcased locally with an exciting story of what it felt like to unwrap gold.

This was a major national activity and involved a large agency goup putting it together includig Fallon, PHD, Full Six, Pretty Green and PromoVeritas.

MY ROLE: My main focus was working out what the core on pack activation was going to be - and whilst offering tickets may seem a fairly obvious one, you wouldn’t believe how many iterations we had to go through to satisfy all the stakeholders! I also made the awards film for the multi-agency group.

EXPERIENTIAL, OUTDOOR, LIVE EVENT, DIGITAL, SOCIAL

Want impact and exposure for a new natural drink brand launch?

Simple. Put a 55-ton surf machine in the heart of the City of London and invite office workers to form teams of surfers to compete against each other! Visitors could surf, sunbathe and drink Naked Juice to their heart’s content.

Providing a natural boost to city workers, the result was almost £300,000 worth of PR coverage including ITV’s Daybreak with total consumer reach of 93m, 9,000 web site visits and 17,500 Naked samples distributed during the five-day event.

MY ROLE: I worked on the original concepting of the activation and closely with the amazing experiential team who moved heaven and earth to deliver the activation. I helped develop the overall look and feel of the campaign - and in order to deliver authenticity, I located an illustrator who was a surfer from California (although ironically had moved to Glasgow), to develop a style that fely in tune with the provenance of the brand.

Faced with a Wrigley’s re-launch, Trident needed to reduce high stock levels before launching its own new initiatives.

A radical idea was required to take the sting out of Wrigley’s tail.

After lengthy negotiations with all the major record labels, we signed the world’s hottest star to perform at the O2 for one memorable night, exclusively for Trident consumer and trade customers.

We turned the Trident pack into valuable currency by which tickets could be obtained. Outdoor, magazine and radio, and an extensive social media campaign whipped consumers into a frenzy during the build up to the 02 spectacular.

On the night, we had 16,000 visitors at the 02, and Cadbury/Mondelēz (owners of Trident) entertained 1,500 trade customers.

MY ROLE: We had a big team of creatives working on this across a number of agencies (Advertising, PR, Activation, Shopper) and my role was to coordinate all the comms, create a number of trade sell-in videos and dance my socks off on the night (ahem). But I also came up with the original idea that answered this brief - although originally it wasn’t actually with Beyoncé - believe it or not, a band that were selling more records at the time - but they declined because they didn’t like chewing gum!

AUTUMN 2021

FILM, WEBSITE, SOCIAL MEDIA, LIVE EXHIBITION, INSTORE

September 2021 saw the 40th Anniversary of prestigous Walton Heath Golf Club hosting the 1981 Ryder Cup, when arguably one of the strongest US teams ever visited our shores to play in the now iconic three-day match between the USA and Europe.

Including non-playing Captain Dave Marr, they arrived with 37 Majors between them and would add 13 more in the years that followed, making a total of 50 - unsurpassed to this day for a single team, although as the action unfolded in the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, the present day US team broke the record for the biggest winning margin, making it 19-9 versus 18½-9½ in 1981.

The ‘81 team boasted some true golfing legends, including Tom Watson, Ray Floyd, Tom Kite, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Ben Crenshaw, Bill Rogers, Hale Irwin and Jack Nicklaus. The European team, captained by European Tour founding father, John Jacobs, included Nick Faldo, Mark James, Bernhard Langer, Bernard Gallacher and Sam Torrance, who would all go on to captain Ryder Cup teams themselves one day.

At the heart of the 40th Anniversary celebrations was a 12-minute film of messages from many of these legendary players sent in to the Club in the run up to the 2021 match, as well as an exhibition of special photographs curated by former Getty Images UK Sales Director Marc Webbon and Club Archivist Robin Clark, and the launch of a special edition collection of merchandise sold in the Club shop.

A number of memorabilia items were disvovered and put on display in the Club and the whole activity was supported with an Instagram and Twitter campaign during the staging of the 2021 Ryder Cup.

My Role: I came up with the idea of staging the exhibition, launching the merchandise and putting together the video - and then made it all happen - writing all the copy, designing the exhibtion boards and editing together the video. A number of Walton Heath Members including former PGA European Tour Director, Tim Shaw, current NBC Golf anchor Tom Abbott and Marc Webbon were instrumental in getting the golf legends to agree to take part, to whom I am eternally grateful.

As the world shut down to silence during the lockdown of 2020, I helped one of the world’s top 100 Golf Clubs, with over a thousand Members, find its voice. What started out as the idea for a short newsletter, turned into a bi-monthly interactive communication vehicle, fuelled by content from Members and the wider golf community.

There were seven editions, formatted to make it easy for the less digitally savvy to navigate and it culminated in the publication of a 92-page printed book, with all proceeds going to the Captains’ chosen charity.

In addition we launched a video channel on Vimeo and YouTube with nearly 40 interviews with Members and Staff, health and exercise advice, backyard swing tips from the Pros and a film to get everyone back in the swing when lockdown lifted.

In its own small way, the final compendium of Holed Up will serve as a reminder to future generations of the biggest crisis to affect our lives since the second World War.

I have also developed a number of other campaigns for the Club, including the re-branding and communication one of Europe’s top amateur tournaments - The Walton Heath Trophy; developing a strategy for, and re-designing all member email communications; advising on the Club’s social media strategy and execution, and developing a 10-month ad campaign in The Daily Telegraph on the back of our relationship with the Justin Rose Junior Golf Championship.

TONE OF VOICE GUIDELINES, PRODUCT POSITIONING, GLOBAL TOOLKITS, EDM TEMPLATES, UCG HUB CREATION, DIGITAL ADVERTISING & DIRECT RESPONSE MEDIA, BROCHURE DESIGN, ATL TEMPLATES

Pioneers of the all-inclusive, Club Med are the experts in friendly, upscale, multicultural holidays. Founded in 1951 with a unique concept based on the heritage of Happiness, the brand has evolved to a more exclusive platform, offering an impressive range of Winter and Summer resorts and interesting city stop-overs, in 72 countries around the globe.

Following a 6-way pitch in January 2014 the Global team in Paris appointed Initials as their sole strategic marketing agency, and we also work ad-hoc with the UK team.

Key to the success of our work was defining a new tone of voice epitomising the Spirit of Club Med that reinforced their unique premium positioning.

MY ROLE: I helped lead the original pitch-winning team, then working closely with the Planner, oversaw creative teams whose work covered most aspects of online and offline communication, as well as providing content for all Club Med’s social media channels.

GUERILLA MARKETING

A few years back at Initials we were engaged by the Head of Mischief at Paddy Power to come up with, well, some mischevious ideas.

They’d had great success erecting a Hollywood-style sign of their logo at the Cheltenham races and wanted something of that ilk to run at Muirfiled at the time of The Open.

If you know anything about golf, you’ll be aware that Muirfiled is one of the most prestigious (some would say stuffy) private clubs in Scotland (if not the world), so doing anything around that was going to be a logistical challenge.

Our first idea was to have a tanker sailing up and down the Firth of Forth with a giant logo on the side - and a golf hole built on the deck, with which we’d offer Paddy Power customers the changce to play for the £1Million hole-in-one challenge.

All sounds great, but would it actually work? This lead to a bonkers 24 hours when myself and the inimitable James Willoughby went udnercover up to North Berwick, hitred a birdwatching boat and set about using satellite technology to work out how big the logo would appear on the side of the boat and whether or not the tanker could be seen from the course. We also managed to secure a tanker to be used and had a pencil on its hire at a mear £80k for the week!

In the end we concluded that there was not enough area of the Forth seen from the course and we recommended tha clien didn’t run the activity - much to their surprise, as they said most agencies would have persuaded them to do it jsut for their own gain - so they paid us a load of fee money anyway!

Beneath the tanker idea you’ll see some of the other ideas we considered along the way way too.

MY ROLE: Mischief-maker, conceptualiser, logostics worker outer, undercover agent.

SHOPPER MARKETING, CREATIVE STRATGEY, GLOBAL PROMOTIONS

The brief was to develop a global creative activation platform - crucially without using the iconic Grouse that had charaterised all previous work for many years.

We had to start from scratch and chose to focus on celebrating everyday little achievments that give people a reason to enjoy a glass of The Famous Grouse at the end of the day.

We created an ownable creative platform that focused on bringing reality to relatable every day moments and that touch of playfulness which is often lacking in the category.

An extremely versatile creative platform made it easy for markets to use or adapt the material to their specific requirements, including on-going creative hotline for bespoke occasions or channel activations.

MY ROLE: Developing concepts from start to finish, designing and writing the whole toolkit and introducing and presenting the toolkit to over 20 markets around the world in 3 separate sessions using online conferencing.

CONTENT FILM

As part of the pitch process to secure a piece of business on Monkey Shoulder, on Friday pm before the final presentation the following Monday, we were asked to create a piece of content to use on the Social channels. We were told it had to leverage the hype around the Oscars. Oh, and demonstrate their quirky sense of humour. I was duely dispatched to work something up over the weekend.

Come Monday morning, having had my head down all Sunday, all my own editing, animation and voice-overs, this was the result. It never saw the light of day, but the client was later quoted as saying “that was what won you the business”.

MY ROLE: Writer, Director, Editor, Animator, Voice-Over

SALES PROMOTION, DIGITAL

Featured on-pack, online and in selected media, the multi-channel campaign offered ‘carefree empty nesters’ the chance to win incredible travel experiences.

With a unique pack code consumers could win an amazing holiday - with one a day up for grabs - to destinations including the Grand Canyon, Taj Mahal, Rio de Janeiro, and Pompeii.

Winners had the opportunity to choose their own Breathtaking Experience from a shortlist. Stunning iconic pictures of prize destinations were used, with the Trebor pack inserted into the visuals to create strong memorable visual imagery.

MY ROLE: Coming up with the idea and getting the visual imagery landed.

COMPLETE 360° THROUGH-THE-LINE ACTIVATION

This was another set piece extravaganze from Cadbury involving a team of agencies - Fallon (ATL), PHD (Media), Elvis (Digital), Golin (PR) and Initials (Shopper and Pack comms - and originators of the core idea).

The requirement to reflect the brand’s joyful positioning has always proven tricky within the context of an on pack promotion. Joy means so many different things to different people, but by landing the insight that a pleasant surprise elicits joy in all of us, we managed to deliver an idea that decoded joy in a tangible and meaningful way.

We created an on pack promotion that we believe to be a first of its kind – one with a prize fund that consumers wouldn’t know the identity of unless they took part and won! Indeed, the prize fund would be completely tailored to the winners and kept secret until the last possible moment, meaning that the element of surprise could be truly heightened.

It was backed by a £2.5m TTL campaign across TV, VOD, CINEMA, SOCIAL, YOUTUBE, OOH, and a live EXPERIENTIAL event in Covent Garden including Freddie Flintoff, a team of actors, scratch cards, free chocolate and one lucky £10,000 surprise winner!

Consumers buying Cadbury bars could enter a URN online, scratch a virtual scratch card and reveal if they were one of 20,000 lucky winners. £500 winners completed a questionnaire online, providing insight in to what brought them joy. These were then studied by a team of “Joy Agents” who in turn personalized prizes to ensure the maximum amount of joy could be delivered.

We saw lucky winners choosing to get married, fly off to have a professional theatre lesson on Broadway, get up close and personal with the big 5 on Safari in South Africa and visit a Comic Convention in San Diego!

MY ROLE: I can’t take any credit for the delivery end of this campaign, that was brilliantly done by teams in each agency focusing on their areas of expertise. But what I was involved in was the original ideation of this and a number of other concepts that lead to this route being chosen and the pitch and sell-in to the client. Credit too also, to the Initials account team of James Willoughby and Phil Norris for making the whole thing happen.

EXPERIENTIAL, OUTDOOR, EVENT, DIGITAL, SOCIAL

Towards the end of the summer 2011 we launched Miller Genuine Draft in England and Wales with a city-by-city takeover of fully integrated outdoor and in-bar communication and engagement programme of activity.

This kicked off with a giant outdoor digital countdown poster. We also developed and managed an ongoing Social Media hub – an innovative network for consumers that drove footfall to outlets.

Finally a series of themed Halloween evenings in Ireland and Scotland created a focal point for the brand’s ongoing music activity.

MY ROLE: I worked on MGD for a total of about 5 years developing On and Off Trdae activities. In this I was responsible for liasing closely with the global creative agency in Canada and landing their new ATL campaign in the UK launch. I worked as copywriter, art director and oversaw the design team on all projects.

All too often agencies are so focused on the brands they work on, they forget about their own. I’ve always felt strongly that it’s vital to care as passionately about your own agency brand as you do those of your clients.

Ensuring you have a well thought through mission, vision, purpose and agreed values that the whole agency live by is an essential part of any agency success.

Here’s a snapshot of the many projects I‘ve been involved with - some as just a writer, designer and art director, others as a lead and instigator.

BRAND ENGINEERING, APP, SOCIAL MEDIA

Rooted in the insight that there are considerably more barriers to embarking on outdoor decorating tasks than their indoor equivalents, AkzoNobel asked us to find a way to inspire and encourage people to introduce more colour to their outdoor projects.

So we hit on the idea that if what Dulux provided for indoors projects was INspiration, it stood to reason that what they offer to inspire people for outdoors projects was OUTspiration.

We created a single App that gives users inspiration, emotional support, factual know-how and promotional incentive that combine to motivate them to nail the outdoor task. And crucially was linked to weather information from the Met. Office to ensure users had the most up-to-date information on the one thing that affects our incentive to undertake work outside - the weather!

MY ROLE: This was part of a wider raft of work that won the below-the-line Dulux business for the agency - a pitch which I lead creatively, working with a number of creative teams on different brands within the AkzoNobel portfolio. I developed this work together with creative partner Allan Guy.

WHERE WILL YOU GO?

PARTNERSHIP ACTIVATION, BOOK PUBLISHING, SHOWROOM POS, DM, ADVERTISING, WEBSITE

To date BMW had done very little promotional activity to IncentivIse test drives. But they had a problem. They were launching a new model of the X3 and wanted to shift all the old stock as fast as possible.

The X3 was aimed at young urbanites who like to take off in a car that could suit their adventurous weekend spirit.

We approached the publishers behind the hugely successful Mr & Mrs Smith boutique hotel guide and persuaded them to let us create a bespoke branded book that was given away free to anyone test driving a BMW X3 (it usually cost £19). We also produced a special trade version for BMW dealers who were incentivised with free weekend breaks by reaching sales targets.

A BMW branded website was also built, mirroring the main Mr & Mrs Smith site, and instore communication was created for key dealerships. A mailing pack went to all BMW hot leads, as well as press and targeted online ads.

Over 8,000 books were claimed and 3,500 cars were sold in the period up until the new model was launched.

MY ROLE: This was one of the first large-scale cross agency activities within the ENGINE Group. I helped conceive the original idea, sell it in to the client and I also helped negotiate the deal with Mr & Mrs Smith.

BRAND POSITIONING, TV, PRESS, INSTORE

OK, this work is a little old now, but I loved working on this account. They always had small marketing budgets, but we sweated every penny and working with some amazing production companies we managed to create some great work.

Every year they would focus spend on the pre-Christmas gifting period and the brief was simple - get 13-14 year-olds to put the Guinness Book of Records on their Christmas list..

Our stratgey was to wherever possible focus on records that the reader or viewer could think - ‘I could do that!”

MY ROLE: I came up with the new positioning, wrote and Creativelty Directed all the TV films and conceived, wrote and art directed all the press AND got the agency to break a world record which I believe still stands to this day!

Asked to increase the relevance of Malibu to its core 18-24 audience, we developed a new creative direction, bringing to life the brand heritage with a contemporary Caribbean vibe.

The Mish Mash Tour hit 90 Student Union and UK bars, with DJs, MCs and drummers showcasing music tracks mashed together.

Communicated via multi-channel media on and offline, sampling and promotions, Mish Mash attracted 42,000 consumers and saw brand affinity scores increase by 10%. And in support, a whole summer of On and Off Trade activity helped to make sales shine under sunny skies.

MY ROLE: I helped conceive the whole activation, creatively directed a team of designers to deliver all the communication requirements and was the main creative client contact. But it took an awesome team of account handlers to deliver the whole campiagn on time and on budget!

SPONSORSHIP, EXPERIENTIAL, SAMPLING, CONTENT, OFF TRADE ACTIVATION

Edrington, owners of The Famous Grouse, wanted us to do someting to put the brand on the map. Famous for its animated Grouse ads at Christmas, they were looking to do something to give the brand more legs throughout the year.

Working with comdey talent specialists Sparkle (give Caroline a call, she is an awesomely talented lady!), we put together a comdey tour that included the likes of Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle.

We then extended the idea into the Famous Grouse’s sponsorship of Scottish Rugby and pre and post match entertainment was sorted at Murrayfield, with the brand owning the route from the centre of town to the stadium.

MY ROLE: I lead the creative charge on ideation, execution and implementation, ably assisted by a very talented group of account handlers and comedy specialists who made it all happen.

In 2006, what InBev wanted was simple. A powerful new brand proposition that could position Castlemain XXXX as the antidote to modern metrosexuality, take Australian lager communication back to its roots and act as a springboard for a whole range of above and below-the-line activity.

There is no doubt Aussie beer advertising in the 80’s and 90’s had produced some of the most memorable campaigns (both Fosters and XXXX), and the task was a little daunting. But we were up for the challenge…

The line THANK XXXX FOR THAT may seem simple and obvious - but all great ideas often are. What was so great about it was that it opened the door for us to set up our communication in any way we wanted - as long as it fed into the attitude that XXXX was looking for, and to be honest a lot of the communication in the on and off trade wrote itself.

In support of XXXX’s sponsorship of Rugby League we came up with the idea of providing the best seat in the house - built on to the back of an Australian Ute that could visit any ground and park up pitch-side, or visit garden parties around the north of England, for prize-winners to enjoy the hospitality of. Authenticity was key, so Andrew Colyer, our talented account lead duely found two - in the outback - and had them shipped over ready for restoration and tarting up a bit, XXXX-style.

MY ROLE: I was copywriter, art director and designer on most of this, leading the initial client pitch and delivering the finished campaign.

Thomson where known best for mass-market summer and winter holidays. But they also wanted to reposition their winter offering as a more specialist niche player that really understood expert skiiers and snowboarders, and they asked us to create something that encouraged brochure requests.

Working with Andy Pilkington - art director and fellow ski enthusiast (him boarding, me skiing), we devised a campaign that used the classic piste-map style illustration, of three of the hardest black runs in Europe, which between us we knew pretty well - Valleé Blanche in Chamonix, Chavannete between Champéry and Avoriaz and Le Fornet in Val d’Isere.

But we had an idea how to get a really unque set of copy written. For each location we found a copywriter who lived in the area. We then got each of them to ski their respective pistes in the morining and write the copy as soon as they finished, whilst it was still razo-sharp in their minds.

The result was an awesome set of ads and a huge increase in brochure requests from Thomson. And Sgt. Pilko and I sat back and glugged gluhwein to our hearts’ content!

Tango launched with a new TV ad that depicted a parallel world in which the moment that humans had invented tea, they invented Tango instead. Our job was to create an activation campaign that dramatised that thought.

We created the Tango Tea Ladies.

They visited offices around the country delivering samples. But they also fronted a four-week media partnership with the Mirror and Daily Record. We had also dIscovered that there was a unique time printed on every can and bottle (the time that it was filled in the factory), and therefore had an instant win mechanic on the pack, without having to print anything else!

We published winning times in the papers and on air with a networed radio promotion, offering uniquely Tango prizes. The activity launched with a 4-page special pull-out in the Mirror giving all readers a free 500ml bottle and resulted in a 15%increase in volume in the impulse sector compared to the previous year.

In 1997 I was asked to come up with an idea to launch Strongbow Smooth - a smoothflow cider that harnessed the popularity of beers like Boddingtons, who had launched with a new system, making their product much creamier. (Creamy smooth cider?…I know!).

I love this campaign because when I wrote the line Smoother than the smoothest smoothie, I had only one person in mind, and told the account team we had to hire the legendary Leslie Phillips (God rest his soul). They laughed and said it would never happen. Now I come from the school of, ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ and promptly told them to go off and ask his agent. Which they did. And he said yes. Much to my enourmous surprise.

Together with another legend, brilliant writer and early mentor of mine, Terry Grafton, we wrote a trade sell-in activation which went out on cassette. The twist was, if Leslie said a certain phrase, the person listening to the audio had won a prize.

He arrived in the studio, was charm personified, insisted on regaling us all with his catchphrases for half an hour while he warmed up his silky smooth voice, and did the whole 15-minute script in one take. He then gave me a beautiful original print of himself that he allowed us to retouch for the print campaign you see here.

He was an absolute legend.

Ding dong.

The challenge here was to get teenage girls to see Diet coke as their first choice soft drink. And this was back in the mid 90’s. No internet to speak of. No smartphones. The only social media they knew of then, was when they got together in the rest room.

We developed a relationship with a whole stable of teenage girls’ magazine titles and created the Diet Coke Just 4 Card. Given free to readers, it offered ‘plastic power’ in their pockets, entitling them to regular rewards provided by third parties. Monthly features gave prominence to the brand and different offers maintained consumer interest and built loyalty.

Additionally, the Just 4 Card gave free phone time, renewable via a ringpull collection, which provided ongoing data about loyal users.

I came up with the original idea, and all the original creative, then worked with a team of designers to deliver the ongoing features.

At the last minute, Golden Wonder became the official snack supplier to the British Olympic Team - I know, it wouldn’t happen today!

We were asked to maximise that sponsorship through some form of activation. We came up with Medal Mania - an in-pack scratchcard featuring gold, silver and bronze medals that when scratched off, revealed instant cash prizes.

We enlisted the help of English, Scottish and Welsh Olympians to front the campagn and pitched against the above-the-line agency to do the TV ad - and won. The ad was directed by the legendary Morgan Hutchins and the best bit -we could not find the right sound effect for the ‘scratching’ of the scratchcard, and in the end we recorded the editor having his bald head scratched with a box of matches!