A giant living chocolate hen travels across the UK and the story is picked up by US channel News HD, episodes of which are released as content in the run up to Easter.

Creative Director Across Social, Digital, Content, ATL

This campaign was the launch of a completely new brand campaign we developed for ASDA, the next 18 months of work was lined up to follow. Then, out of the blue, Walmart globally re-aligned the account into Publicis Group. The rest of the work, which got even better, was to never see the light of day. The whole team was heartbroken, we had done something pretty special with ASDA.

More Than were appearing high-up on aggregators but, even at a slightly higher price, customers were opting for more trusted brands. Enter Morden Surenns - fictional founder, cut-through work and the simple rule that we only ever say something if we have something of value to share.

As well as an ATL campaign we produced a social and digital campaign, creating a unique driving game emulating the product. The safer you drive the more points you get. Internal comms work included a launch film with Morden personally referencing individuals within the company. We also produced extensive brand guidelines, a small selection of pages from which can be seen below.

Since More Than has been living up to it’s new end-line the brand has gone from strength to strength, with sales steadily increasing. Royal & Sun Alliance had given the brand a year, they were going to fold it. instead, they’ve increased the marketing budget in all channels as well as taking on the high profile sponsorship of ITV Drama. We did More Than.

Creative Director Across Social, Digital, Content, ATL, Design / Co Writer

BBC One was seen to be feeling out of touch with audiences, struggling to capture new and younger viewers. We needed the channel to connect with different people as well as the huge variety of cultures in the UK, rather than talk at or to them as was perceived to be the case at the time.

We introduced channel ‘blips’ more commonly seen on commercial TV, brief films branding the channel top and tailing trail breaks between programmes. This new set of idents had a charm and warmth beyond anything BBC One had ever done before. They were topical and reactive, reflecting a wide variety of aspects of UK life. From the weather to Chinese New Year, big sporting events to cultural moments like royal births or new years day hangovers, as well as being relevant to the time of day; bath-time, dinner time etc. We did this by assembling a permanent in-house animation team with all creatives able to submit ideas for blip creation, so we could quickly and cost-efficiently produce relevant work.

The public absolutely loved them. Forging an invaluable connection between audiences and the channel, you can see a small selection of the many films we created here. This huge shift in creative strategy for BBC One laid the foundations for the similarly reflective and excellent Martin Parr idents that were to follow.

Creative Director and one of many creatives.

Historically Eastenders had had the highest viewing figures. In recent years it had slipped into third place. We needed to bring back lapsed viewers and woo new ones.

Working closely with series producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins and BBC Drama Controller Ben Stephenson, we created a year long campaign (of mini campaigns) that would leverage the upcoming storylines to their absolute fullest potential. We turned Eastenders into a ‘whodunnit’ to grip the nation; ‘There’s A Killer Amongst Them”.

It was a long journey with contributions from most of the creative department; specially shot ads on air and social media, clip based trails and teasers, digital advertising, PR and even digital outdoor. There’s just a small selection of the campaign to look at here.

Just over a year since we’d started we achieved what the BBC Director General described as ‘climbing a mountain’, Eastenders re-claimed the top soap spot. The team even got a message from the cast thanking them for their fantastic contribution.

Creative Director and co-writer.

The fifty year old of today is a very different person to the fifty yer old of fifty years ago. It was time for Saga to address this in respect to it’s business. Months of strategic work led us to a clear brief, a new line and campaign to cover all aspects of this huge business; travel, cruise, home and motor insurance, money, investment and pensions. One of the biggest challenges in advertising Saga was that people would never associate themselves with the people they saw in the advertising, thinking of themselves as much younger. So to overcome this we developed a campaign that meant you would never actually see the people that were using Saga products, only the backs of their heads or simply reference to them.

A two year project to make Saga a modern digital brand, working closely with the in-house team at Saga, it was to eventually include work as diverse as; logo, end-line, advertising, cruise ship livery, website UX, holiday brochure design, brochure fold-out covers, social media, legal documents, resort notices and signage, staff uniforms, head office literature and signage, product brochures, direct mail, company transport, illustration style, photography style, brand iconography, brand font, Saga Magazine and extensive brand guidelines (a selection of pages from which are below), as well as running workshops on site to draw on Saga employees experience and make them feel part of the journey. All this has provided the springboard for all aspects of the business and marketing to take giant leaps forward. For decades Saga was a brand people were embarrassed to be associated with, already this is starting to be no longer the case - keep doing.

Creative Director Across All Channels, Design, Social, Digital, ATL / Co Writer

This did better for ASDA than any post-Christmas campaign for them had done in years. So well that we had to find David Paton, lead singer of 70’s band Pilot, to re-record his hit ‘January’ as ‘February’ so we could extend the campaigns media schedule. We’d also secured Jack Whitehall as the new voice of ASDA in the upcoming brand campaign, so he agreed to do these too. The TV campaign was supported by a radio campaign.

Creative Director Across Digital, ATL / Co Writer

The previous series of The Voice had suffered a drop in viewers. The format was suffering partly because the winner didn’t win a record deal, as they did in commercial competitors formats, instead they would seem to disappear from the public eye. We had to make people believe that the series was worth following because the eventual winner would become a big star.

Working closely with Head Of Entertainment Moira Ross and Producer Ed Booth at Wall To Wall Productions (the programme makers) we created the “A Star Will Be Born’ campaign. It consisted of shot ads along with other firsts for the franchise; a two-minute special trail with the star judges singing a track themselves and trails using designed caption gfx with clips, plus an end-line; ‘You Aint Seen Nothin’ Yet’.

The series launched with it’s biggest audience since it first started and achieved a far higher retention rate than previous years throughout the series. We went on to repeat this success with the ‘Songbird’ campaign for the next series. The turnaround for The Voice brand was so successful that rather than compete with it, ITV decided to buy it.

Creative Director across campaign & writer on ‘A Star Will Be Born’. Creative Director on ‘Songbird’.

Awarded Gold at Promax BDA Europe, the main awards for the television design and promotions industry across Europe and the rest of the world. These are some of my favourites.

The landscape has changed dramatically with the arrival of channels like Sky and BT Sport, but also with the looming threat from OTT channels such as DAZN. BBC Sport has never stood for anything in it’s own right, against this new landscape it needed to. Not just in respect of audiences but also to give it weight around the rights-negotiating table - difficult against the competition’s £millions.

The oppurtunity for BBC Sport was exposure. It brings together the whole nation for the biggest sporting moments - everyone’s got a seat - a rally cry for viewers and a compelling argument in rights-negotiation.

For the first time various sport assets were brought together under one umbrella with an end-line and the ‘stadium’ gfx end-sequence. Ads were made more effective by having cut-through creative executions, giving greater value to the assets themselves, rather than being just clip based. Despite this they would still be still turned around in three weeks and within the sub £25k budgets, thanks to a clear system of creative development and trusted production partners.

The result is that BBC Sport now stands for something relevant to audiences. And it’s still holding on to some of the most important events in the sporting calendar, despite it’s huge financial disadvantage.

Writer - brand. Creative Director across campaign and individual executions

It’s easy to forget that back when we won the EDF energy pitch they were the most hated energy company in the UK. Falling foul of an ofgem ruling, in an unprecedented move they were asked to ‘give back’ £4.5m to vulnerable and needy customers rather than pay a fine. They had effectively mislead customers during the sales process and they were the worst performing supplier out of the big six according to Consumer Focus. Our task was mammoth.

Whilst the company changed from within we developed the ‘Feel Better Energy’ campaign, extolling the virtues of their products with an irresistibly lovable new face for the company, a small dancing robot called Zingy.

The campaign was incredibly successful. EDF had to pull the product a month after launch as their infrastructure couldn’t cope with the demand. Once up and running again the company and campaign went from strength to strength. It’s still running eight years later.

Creative, creative director.

Heinz was losing market share to supermarket own brands. We had to make people believe that a white label substitute would be substandard, that spending a few more pence was worth it.

Some things in life just have to be, and in this case, ‘it had to be Heinz’. The campaign was so effective across TV, print and radio that it made Heinz the fastest growing of the top ten manufacturers and continued to run for almost ten years.

Creative, writer

To build anticipation for the the launch of the Audrey Hepburn ‘Chauffeur’ Galaxy TV ad, we created a social campaign and film. Set around the story that the ad was actually shot in the 50’s with Audrey Hepburn, but was thought to be lost forever when the film canister was lost on it’s way back to London. Found, but damaged, all these years later technology was being used to restore it - as we teased the release date of the lost film. We premiered the film with a huge drive-in cinema event in London, followed of course by a showing of Breakfast At Tiffanys.

It was the first time anyone had attempted to re-create someone entirely using VFX in film, TV or advertising. Framestore did such an amazing job that Hepburn’s sons were brought to tears when they effectively saw new footage of their mother, as well as Mary McCartney’s lovely photograph of her on set.

The reason for the iconic campaign was simple. Galaxy had always had 49% of the market share to Dairy Milk’s 51%. The target was an extra two percent market share. For the first time in it’s history Galaxy outsold Dairy Milk. The campaign was so successful that Mars ran it for almost five years and rolled it out (as ‘Dove’ chocolate) in various territories around the world. Why have cotton, when you can have silk?

Creative, creative director

Creative

Creative (joint with Tim Snape / Matt Fee)

Creative

However, the complaint’s weren’t about the creative. They were about the content. People simply didn’t believe what they were being told. I remember one particular gentleman’s response in a research group after being told about potential displacement and flodding; “Yes maybe, but not down here on Farnham.”

Over a hundred feet long and directly under The London Eye for a whole summer, I’m honoured to have made a small contribution to one of the most famous and iconic spirit campaigns of all time. Absolut privilege.

Creative

The oldest footage ever hand coloured frame by frame, from the very first Olympics, married to the technology of today, to create a beautiful film celebrating EDF Energy’s sponsorship of the Olympics. Directed by Danny Kleinman, we trawled through fourteen hours of original footage from the International Olympic Committee. Most surprising of all was that of a man and a kangaroo in boxing gloves in a boxing ring and a runner having a cheeky cigarette. Quite different to the Olympics of today.

Creative

Creative Director, co-creative

On the evening of 5th February 2004, twenty one Chinese illegal immigrant labourers horrifically lost their lives to the incoming tide on Morecombe Bay, after picking cockles off the Lancashire coast. They had come to the UK in search of a better life.

This campaign launched Nick Broomfield’s high profile and moving documentary ‘Ghosts’ about the tragedy.

Creative

Creative

A series of Idents for Mars Planets, written for the sponsorship of iconic sit-com ‘Friends’ on E4. A campaign that ran for 4 years.

Creative

The Abstract movement was rebellious so it was only fitting that BBC4's Abstract Season was too, taking over normal trails in a season where ‘BBC4 Goes Abstract’.

Group Creative Director

Because of the nature of the similar production values and look of the content, BBC3 ads were blending into one for people who hadn’t engaged with the channel. In the build up to migrating the channel online to iplayer it was vital that this was overcome so that the programmes themselves, and not just the channel, would become destinations for viewers.

We introduced bespoke creative, graphic effects and typographical branding to each of the series ads, establishing a different tone of voice for each strand. With some, such as The Revolution Will Be Televised or Backchat ads you see here, we specifically wrote and shot trails. Al of this, which was done within the existing budgets, elevated the value of BBC3’s assets in a way they had never been before.

It worked incredibly well. In BBC3’s first eighteen months on iplayer it more than doubled it’s brand reach - all despite the content production budget being slashed from £80m to £30m when it went online. There’s just a small selection of all the work we did here.

Also here are some trails done for BBC2 and BBC4 seasons and programmes using existing clip based budgets to create bespoke films instead.

Group Creative Director across all series and channel creative

Sorry Michael.

Creative

These ads are talking to parents as much as they are to children. In a crowded children’s TV market, the opportunity for CBBC beyond entertainment is one of heritage and responsibility. Leveraging the values of programmes parents remember themselves, as is the case in films such as ‘Made With Children’ and ‘Blue Peter Attitude’, helps persuade them to choose CBBC as the default station for their children. As more commercial channels attempt to woo audiences with their superior buying power for famous characters and franchises, positioning CBBC in this way couldn’t be more important.

Group Creative Director

Creative

Creative

Creative

The ads for ‘The Fall’ and ‘LIne of Duty’ you see here were specially scripted and shot. The others are great examples of what can be achieved with clip-based content.

This is a more important medium than ever, not only in the film and growing OTT television industry, but also with the advent of marketing content on social media. The need to populate ongoing relationships with consumers, whilst working within relative budgets and time frames position it as a valuable and potentially powerful tool for agencies and brands alike.

This is just a very small selection of some of the work I have overseen (well over a hundred trails), in this case for BBC drama.,

Group Creative Director

Creative

Creative

Pick-up trucks were not used in the UK. Chelsea tractors were though, at the time their emergence was particularly under fire for lots of reasons. This created a marketing oppurtunity for Nissan’s down to earth, but big, Navara pick-up truck. I actually drove one for a few weeks whilst working on the campaign, the line was literally born out of the way other rivers reacted to it on the road. The campaign and end-line worked wonders for the Navara and the pick-up sector, and the Nissan Navara is now the benchmark for pick-ups in the UK.

Creative

Creative

Fat free oven chips, the yang to the ying of full fat donuts and muffins.

Creative

Creative

Creative

Creative