What makes me different
A clearer understanding of ideas than B2B creatives.
A clearer understanding of business than B2C creatives.
Bringing clarity, simplicity, style and impact to dry, impenetrable, complex briefs.
Flexibility - I’m just as happy working on small or large briefs, on my own, with a writer, in a team, with a client, with millennials, seniors, remotely or on site, firefighting, presenting and tackling the nasty tricky briefs that no one wants to touch.
Playing unnecessarily complicated jazz chords.on guitar.
snapshot
16 years in B2C. Board director of the fastest growing agency in UK.
12 years in B2B. Chief Creative Officer of the Omnicom B2B specialist agency
4 media firsts. 32 different award winning projects. Career pitch win rate of 52%.
POV
B2B is a very different mindset, one that B2C agencies don’t even know that they don’t know. It’s given me a broader understanding and a more mature outlook than individuals that have remained in B2C.
highlights
National Blood Service. Concept originator, writer, art director of award winning campaign so effective it was taken off air.
Teacher Training Agency. Concept originator, writer, art director of award winning campaign. Harnessed a simple human truth. The only ad David Attenborough has agreed to appear in, first to feature a serving UK prime minister. David Abbot asked if he could use the idea for an Economist poster.
Deutsche Bank Autobahn. Concept originator, writer, art director on a digital impact award winning campaign for an algorithmic trading platform targeting equity traders, a small, hard to reach, time poor audience, notoriously hard to impress. 17% engagement for an average of 2 minutes, a digital world first, interactive elements morph across sites from leaderboard to MPU. Many financial publishers upgraded their OS just to be able to run it free for Deutsche Bank.
Gemalto. Concept originator, Art Director on a brand purpose campaign to global C suite. Creative and internal engagement awards. Gemalto became the fastest riser on the ESE (France stock market.)
Corning. Positioning origination for the most watched corporate video of all time.
AWARDS
Work has been awarded at BTA, Cannes, Creative Circle, Eurobest, One Show, D&AD, Digital Impact Awards, Art Directors Club of NY, BMA Ace, NY Festival, Epica, Aerial and perhaps more importantly internal client awards.
SPECIALITIES
Simple, big, flexible, appropriate campaigns that match the budget available.
Distilling complex briefs into very simple visual ideas.
Collaboration, internal or external, from management consultants and other agencies to UX designers.
Strong, relevant organising ideas that fit each part of an aligned, personalised customer journey.
Making diminishing budgets go further.
Creating meaningful coms from generic brand guidelines.
Empathetic management of creatives, clients and millennials.
Current role - CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, DOREMUS
Doremus is the B2B specialist of the Omnicom Group, a strategic consultancy with direct access to the C suite. B2B Agency of the year according to The Drum.
B2B is very different to B2C. Each business category has a different language, clients and customers know a thousand times more about their subject than agency staff. The business unit leaders have far more power than the marketers, budgets are lean and marketing is often the battle ground for internal politics. Much time is spent gently educating clients and helping them secure buy in from C suite. Success involves understanding the complexity of B2B audiences and their community ecosystems, the longer, more considered purchase process, multiple decision makers and stakeholders, the complex internal politics, and the new tools like ABM.
When I arrived at the agency the client list was 95% wholesale financial. My task was to broaden the client list and raise the standard of creativity. We are now 15% wholesale financial and have won several creative awards. I have partnered with management consultants, internal client departments and many Omnicom agency partners. I've built and led a largely virtual team and helped clients navigate digital transformation while raising their understanding of how creativity can work for them.
Clients include Hewlett Packard, Intel, Deutsche Bank, ING, Credit Suisse, Corning, Grant Thornton, Gemalto, Algomi, WSJ, State Street, Yara, Shell.
Inspiration:
“Less, but better, is more.” (Dieter Rams)
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” (Alvin Toffler)