After a period at legendary advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi and a number of regional independents, in 1999 I joined OgilvyOne, London, as a Copywriter. The following year I moved into the 'just emerging' Interactive side of the business. I became creative lead for digital marketing on a number of key agency accounts. The result was a series of ground breaking work that delivered significant business results for IBM, Cisco and Cancer Research UK.
In 2005 I moved with Ogilvy to San Francisco to help establish a new office serving Yahoo!. In partnership with the Executive Creative Director and Managing Director, we built the office around five core clients (Yahoo!, IBM, iShares, Playstation, Cisco). The team was 85 people generating approximately $20M in revenue. By the time I left the agency in 2008, I had been promoted several times and was leading the Creative Department as a Senior Partner.
BBC TV Licensing
The Ask
Reinforce TV Licensing law and encourage a habitually evasive audience to buy a TV licence.
The Solution
For our low income audience, the fine of 1,000 GBP is a considerable amount of money that, if they had to pay it, would mean they would have to go without in some other significant part of their life. Put in this context, the annual subscription fee of 120 GBP was a much better option. With this proposition, we used the characteristics of the medium to create a sense of urgency and action.
Results
Over 100,000 of the UK’s worst evaders persuaded to buy a TV licence.
PlayStation 3 - Twisted Metal
The Ask
With very little money, create awareness and excitement among the fan base around the next release of the Twisted Metal franchise - Twisted Metal: Head On.
The Solution
With so little funding, we had to improvise. The entire cast of the videos, other than Sweet Tooth, were members of the creative department that took a road trip to LA for the shoot.
The dedicated audience already appreciated the merits of Sweet Tooth, so we needed to remind them of why they loved the game and get them excited about the new title. With no media budget and only a pre-purchased skin on Gamespot, the entire campaign needed to live in the free media of social platforms, viral videos and email.
Result
Gamers loved it, with hundreds of threads across forums and thousands of social shares of the videos.
IBM AT WIMBLEDON
The Ask
Enrich the tournament experience for those who attend. Extend it to those who can’t. Make I.T. and business decision makers aware of Wimbledon’s ebusiness infrastructure and drive consideration of IBM solutions.
The Solution
Using the “Can you see it?” creative platform running at the time, prove the flexibility, speed and performance of IBM's e-business solution by scaling a 300 member local tennis club into an international realtime spectacle for 250 million fans.
Results
Within the UK:
Over 100,000 landing page visits
Over 2,000 contact forms downloaded
Over 32,000 video clip screen savers downloaded
Over four million unique users to www.wimbledon.org
Over 20 million exposed to the Transvision screen