Greg Mitchell | Creative Director

Molson Coors brand Sharp’s Brewery were launching a new cask ale – a Hazy IPA called ‘Solar Wave’. Hazy IPA’s are a fast growing beer category, and Sharp’s wanted to use this launch moment to both drive awareness of Solar Wave and drive reappraisal of the Sharp’s brand, which had low awareness despite the success of its best selling beer, Doom Bar.

Sharp’s is a relatively young brewery that still feels connected to its founder Bill Sharp. It’s this type of genuine human connection that the brand believes in championing through its beer. We dramatised this with a mockumentary film that gently poked fun at the marketing industry’s obsession with all things AI, and its tendency to jump blindly on the latest tech hype bandwagon (metaverse, anyone?). Through the eyes of an exasperated landlady, we tell the story of what happened when Sharp’s took an ill-advised decision to develop an ‘AI barman’ and place it in that sanctuary of real human connection – the local pub.

We knew that the chatbot's voice had to sound authentic so we conducted a virtual casting, exploring a number of AI voice generators. We eventually landed on a voice from Murf AI that hit just the right almost-but-not-quite human notes of misplaced enthusiasm that we wanted, and used the AI software to fine tune the intonation of various phrases.

15s cutdowns of the film ran in paid social, while the full two-minute edit was shared organically in owned, shared and earned channels.

Results:
21m Impressions
Over 1.6m earned media reach
89% View-through rate
1.9% Click-through rate (double Meta’s benchmark average)
Over 570,000 pints sold in the three months from launch, with an 11% sales uplift during the campaign
Solar Wave on track to become Sharp’s second largest cask beer in volume sales behind flagship Doom Bar in 2024.

Awards:
Lovie Awards 2023 (Marketing, Advertising & PR: Video Ad Long Form) – Bronze
Lovie Awards 2023 (Marketing, Advertising & PR: Video Ad Long Form) – People’s Lovie
The Drum Awards 2023 (Social Media: Social Film) – Nomination

Client: Molson Coors / Sharp’s Brewery
Agency: Eulogy
Role: Writer / Creative Director
Director: Kyle Jon Shephard @ Studio Yes!

In the lead-up to the 2019 PGA Championship in New York, adidas wanted to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of their sponsorship of golfer and recent Masters Champion Sergio Garcia. To commemorate the moment, the brand was releasing an updated version of the shirt he wore when he burst on to the global stage at the same tournament twenty years earlier. It was a round during which he hit one of the most famous recovery shots of all time. When he found his ball resting dangerously up against the roots of a tree, Sergio closed his eyes, took a full swing and somehow managed to find the green – the perfect expression of creativity, adidas’ central brand pillar.

We wove this story into a career retrospective that ran on the @adidas global brand channel, @adidasgolf and @thesergiogarcia during the week of the tournament. With multiple edits running across the major social platforms, the film totalled over 650,000 total views and over 1800 engagements or shares, making it one of adidas’ best performing pieces of global social content that year. The film supported PR activity around the anniversary, was screened at an event at the adidas flagship store in New York, and helped drive earned media coverage from lifestyle publications like Esquire to golf blogs like bunkered.co.uk.

Client: adidas
Agency: Hill + Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director
Director: Sam Hurlock
Production Company: Hack Studios, Austin TX

As a four-time winner of the New York City marathon, Mary Keitany only enters one or two events a year. She spends the majority of her year training for these events at altitude at her training base in Iten, Kenya – a very different environment to the streets of New York City. We told a story of how she uses her imagination during her training runs to transport herself 7000 miles to the streets of New York to visualise her upcoming race strategy. The film ran on @adidas global brand channels and @adidasrunning the day before the New York City Marathon, generating over 275k views and 174 comments.

Client: adidas
Agency: Hill + Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director
Director: Jim Pilling @ Vidsett

Liquid Death were looking for help launching their disruptive canned water brand into the UK market with earned media coverage for their anarchic content campaigns.

I led creative on the winning pitch response, one that demonstrated a deep understanding of the brand's DNA and it's "entertainment-first" ethos, as well as how to make the launch a compelling news story for UK media.

The UK launch brief was to drive press coverage around a content campaign that the brand was developing with Blink 182's Travis Barker entitled 'Enema of the State – the world's first celebrity-endorsed luxury enema kit'. Our press outreach included mailing these collectible enema kits to key journalists, resulting in 47 pieces of earned media coverage with a reach of 347m.

The relationships we established at launch enabled us to drive ongoing earned coverage as each new monthly campaign dropped. As the brand's first and only UK agency, we also recommended brand-appropriate, UK-specific influencers and content campaign ideas to the US-based clients, riffing off UK culture and reacting to current UK media stories.

Liquid Death secured brick-and-mortar UK store retail listings with Co-op and Nisa in August 2023, and has gone on to be stocked by Tesco and Ocado.

Agency: Eulogy
Client: Liquid Death
Role: Creative Director

American Express wanted to use paid social to drive awareness and adoption of the Amex app’s Pay With Bank Transfer and Chat functionalities to a Millennial and Gen Z audience, whilst increasing their perception of Amex as a brand that uses the latest technology to facilitate an efficient lifestyle.

Paying off your balance and dealing with customer services aren’t the most exciting aspects of being an American Express Cardmember. The Amex app’s Pay With Bank Transfer and Chat features mean you can deal with these day-to-day life admin moments quickly and easily, and spend more time enjoying the more exciting aspects of card membership like travel, dining and entertainment experiences.

Using summer lifestyle moments of an open water swimming break and eating out at a seafood restaurant, our campaign spoke to the universal truth that ‘some things are best done fast’ – be that getting into a cold lake for an early morning swim and eating an oyster for the first time, or paying off your credit card balance and activating a new Amex card.

The campaign reached 760,000 unique users. It generated over 53,000 link clicks with a click-through rate of almost 4 x the benchmark. Cost-per-click was 82% more cost-efficient than anticipated.

Client: American Express
Agency: Eulogy
Role: Creative Director
Director: Chris Fowles @ Forever Pictures

adidas had seven athletes competing in the 2019 NBA Playoffs. We were tasked with preparing a suite of reactive social content to have in hand should any of these players win the NBA Championship. We researched biographies and editorial angles for the players that told both player and brand stories, and prepared scripts and treatments for each. Scripts would drop off the table as the playoffs progressed and teams were eliminated.

When the Toronto Raptors beat favourites Golden State Warriors to win the 2019 NBA Championship, we were ready to post immediately on @adidas and @adidasbasketball Instagram. Leaning into adidas brand territory of ‘creativity and imagination’ we told the story of the night Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry stayed out on court at the Scotiabank Arena until the early hours of the morning after missing a game-winning shot, practising and visualising his next buzzer-beating shot with just the cleaners for company.

The post achieved over 580k views and 88k likes.

Client: adidas
Agency: Hill + Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director

adidas wanted to announce their signing of World and Olympic champion downhill skier Mikaela Shiffrin on their @adidas and @adidasterrex global social channels. Mikaela is a genuine sporting polymath, using her downtime to weave activities like tennis, hiking, windsurfing, piano, guitar playing and even flying in fighter jets into her training. We lent into this truth and introduced her by telling the story of the ‘Complete Creator’.

Client: adidas
Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director
Production Company: Otherworldly Productions, Denver CO

At 37 years of age, Kenyan distance runner Gladys Cherono is still challenging for, and winning marathon events at the highest level. As she prepared for a tilt at a record 4th Berlin Marathon victory, we told the story of how she uses the power of her mind to break through the kinds of barriers that her rivals associate with her age. Shot at Gladys’ high altitude training base in Iten, Kenya, the film ran on the flagship @adidas global brand channel and @adidasrunning along with shorter Instagram Stories edits, generating 220k views and 276 comments.

Client: adidas
Agency: Hill + Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director
Director: Jim Pilling @ Vidsett

During 2018/19 Huawei were taking bites out of Apple and Samsung’s share of the smartphone market. I managed a 12-strong team of social strategists and designers across Huawei’s retained Global Social account. This encompassed always-on content, reactive tactical briefs and driving awareness and buzz around its twice yearly flagship device launches. Servicing this demanding and fast-paced account meant adapting the usual agency methodology to create a cross-functional team working within a Scrum process. By the end of 2019 we had helped Huawei increase its Instagram following from 500k to over 1 million, and overtake Apple as the world’s second best selling smartphone manufacturer.

Community Briefs (#CapturedonHuawei)
Huawei enjoys a highly engaged – and visually sophisticated – social following, especially where photography is concerned. Each month we set the community a topical photography brief that would show off the key features of the latest phone. Users were invited to share their best shots using the hashtag #capturedonhuawei, with the best submissions reposted to @Huaweimobile.

Influencer Briefs
We engaged smartphone photographer influencers each month to create hero images on the same theme as the community brief with which to inspire our engaged following – from architecture and cityscapes to nature and festivals.

P30 Flagship Launch
We supported the launch of the P30 in social firstly with newsjacking posts around Samsung’s S10 launch that teased the P30’s superior camera, a hero launch event announcement post, and a over 100 key feature posts that were created in advance, and adapted and published in real time from the floor of the launch event venue in Paris whilst the launch keynote was in progress.

P30 Masterclass
One of the key features of the Huawei P30 was its superior ability in low light conditions. To sustain interest in the device following its launch, we engaged a smartphone photography influencer to produce a series of shots to showcase this capability. This formed the basis of a series of Instagram stories in which she shared her pro tips on how to get the best of the P30 when shooting in low light.

Client: Huawei Global
Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director

Intel briefed us on a film to launch their powerful 13th generation CPU ‘Raptor Lake’ to a global audience of gamers.

A powerful CPU is essential for providing a continuous sense of immersion in a game. High processing power means rock solid gaming performance, avoiding the kind of glitching and lag issues that can jolt you back to reality, impeding your progress in the game and impacting your enjoyment.

In collaboration with with Bandai Namco, we told the story of an epic session in which the power of Intel’s Raptor Lake chip helps a gamer get so immersed in Game of the Year ‘Elden Ring’ that he completes it in a single sitting, rather than the days and weeks of gradual progress that the incredibly challenging game requires.

Directed by Femi Ladi through Somesuch, virtual production was used to create a visual sense of immersion. We designed a computer-modelled gaming room environment – complete with collectible merchandise from the game – and beamed out through a huge semi-circular LED screen, with the walls of the room being replaced by supersized gaming footage.

Client: Intel
Agency: Superunion
Role: Creative Director
Director: Femi Ladi @ Somesuch

Staropramen briefed us on a ‘brand act’ for social that would reinforce its brand purpose: ‘inspire the expert within’. With food pairing a big theme for the brand, the brief required us to position Staropramen as the perfect beer to pair with hearty comfort food during the winter months.

Leaning into the burgeoning trend for Ramen that’s taking the young foodie audience by storm, we partnered with expert Ramen chef James Chant, owner of Matsudai and Kanada-Ya restaurants to develop ’StaroRamen’ – a unique ramen dish that uses Staropramen beer as its key ingredient – the recipe includes marinating cubes of confit pork belly in a Staropramen, soy sauce and sirin marinade for up to 24 hours.

The dish was made available to order as a special menu item at all five of Kanada Ya’s London restaurants, as well as at Matsudai in Cardiff. A static carousel co-posted to Staropramen and Kanada-Ya Instagram announced the collaboration with a call to action to order the dish at one of the restaurants, and pair it with a bottle of Staropramen. It also inspired the expert within by inviting followers to create the dish themselves at home using the recipe included the post.

Over 660 StaroRamen dishes were sold across all restaurant locations, with the menu extended into January from its original December end date due to popular demand.

Results:
6.46m reach across Staropramen Instagram channels
26% average engagement rate (vs 1-3% industry benchmark)
640 StaroRamen dishes and beers served

Client: Molson Coors
Agency: Eulogy
Role: Creative Director
Awards: UK Social Media Awards 2024 (Best Use of Social Media for FMCG) – Shortlist

Gillette briefed us on a social influencer campaign as part of their partnership with Movember 2020. With the UK firmly in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, all funds raised from sales of Gillette x Movember razors and trimmers would be used to support the mental health of NHS and other frontline workers.

It was more important than ever for the brand to be a genuine voice in the mental health conversation, and we found one in star YouTuber Jim Chapman. Jim had already spoken openly about his own struggles with mental health and anxiety, and would be able to deliver our message in an authentic way to his 2m+ social followers.

We created social content around key moments in the month - a hero launch film that dropped on Jim’s and Gillette’s channels on 31st October encouraging guys to shave down and grow a mo. Posts driving awareness of the fundraising Gillette x Movember razor packs. Update posts during the month to drive mo-related engagement. Finally, a celebratory post to wrap up the campaign on November 31st.

Client: P&G / Gillette UK
Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Role: Creative Director

In early 2019, Huawei were the subject of a stream of negative global media headlines. H+K London were briefed to pitch some purpose-led ideas for brand activations that could provide a positive news story.

We proposed a brand partnership with San Francisco eco-startup Rainforest Connection. Rainforest Connection upcycles disused mobile phones to create a network of remote, solar-powered listening devices that helps protect large areas of rainforest from the threat of illegal logging. The phones are programmed to recognise specific sounds – chainsaws, car engines etc – and automatically alert the local ranger station. Huawei could help scale the operation with a ready supply of phones, and put its AI technology to work to create a smarter listening network. After we presented the idea, the client subsequently decided to make it and run it in its home market of China with our WPP sister agency Ogilvy Shenzhen managing and producing the work. It won Silver for Innovation in Mobile at the One Show China and was shortlisted in the Innovative Use of Technology at Cannes Mobile Lions 2019.

Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Client: Huawei

Role: Creative Director (Concept)

Arla UK briefed us to communicate its sustainability credentials, drive brand awareness and build trust with consumers. They wanted an earned-first platform that would deliver far reaching media coverage and that could be leveraged through the line. We took a backroom scientific trial and turned it into ‘Poo Power’ - Arla UK’s most engaging campaign ever.

Arla had a commitment to become carbon net zero by 2050, but this was rooted in hard science and supply chain analysis. Why would anybody care?

Lurking among a range of internal steering committees at Arla was a small scale project focused on anaerobic digestion - turning cow dung into biofuel. We turned this into a media story – Poo Power. With bespoke liveries for two poo powered milk tankers and a pair of genuine farmer spokespeople, we secured coverage on BBC Breakfast and ITV news, a total of 312 earned editorial hits across broadcast, print and online, 32 million media impressions and 8 million social impressions (the highest engagement levels of any Arla UK campaign).

Arla’s Poo Power story even managed to bring some light relief amid the breaking news of Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, and was the only non-political story to air while Trump’s condition dominated the airwaves.

Back in the boardroom, the Poo Power campaign took Arla’s target ‘trusted company' score to 44 - smashing the campaign target of 42. Since launch, Arla has been approached by 22 farmers and a number of biofuels specialists looking to get involved with the evolution of the project.

Client: Arla
Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Role: Copywriter / Co-Creative Director
Results:
• Coverage on BBC Breakfast and ITV News
• 312 pieces of earned editorial coverage
• 32 million media impressions
• 8 million social impressions (paid and organic)
Awards: SABRE Awards 2021 – Finalist

In 2020 WPP published a pair of white papers: MarTech 2030 and Data 2030. These reports looked at the many ways that advancing and emerging technologies will shape marketing trends over the next decade. Whilst packed full of valuable insights, these were long, dense documents so WPP asked us to to make the content more accessible by translating the key themes into short, snackable video content. Collaborating with character designer Ross Phillips of BAFTA and Emmy award-winning ‘Hey Duggee’ fame, we scripted and produced 9 films for digital distribution across and beyond the WPP network.

Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Client: WPP
Role: Creative Director

To showcase SapientNitro's innovation credentials to its clients and the wider world, we created SpeakEmoji – a voice-to-emoji translator to help out-of-touch adults reconnect with their smartphone-zombie kids over the Christmas holiday. Within a week of launch, it was hailed as one of the 'top 5 new apps' by Mashable and Digital Spy, and ranked in the top 20 most-downloaded social networking apps in the US. Total reach topped 350 million people – all achieved with almost no paid media.

Full project details

Brief
Create a fun, shareable way for SapientNitro to demonstrate its innovation credentials to current and prospective clients.

Solution
In the year when emoji took over the world, we developed SpeakEmoji - a tongue-in-cheek voice-to-emoji translator to help out-of-touch adults connect with their smartphone-zombie kids over the Christmas holiday. Available on iOS, Android and Chrome, it featured back-translation functionality and a custom keyboard.

Results
23 million social media impressions
Total reach of 350 million people
Top 20 social networking apps in the US
Mashable – 'Top 5 new apps'
Digital Spy – 'Best new mobile apps'
AdWeek – 'Best holiday cards 2015'

Awards
Creative Circle Awards 2017 – 1 Silver, 1 Bronze
MAA #DoDifferent Awards 2017 – 1 Winner, 1 Highly Commended, 1 Shortlist
Lovie Awards 2016 – Gold & People's Lovie
MMA Global Smarties 2016 – Gold
Cristal Festival 2016 – Gold
Cannes Mobile Lions 2016 – 2 Shortlists
BIMA Awards 2016 – Shortlist
AdWeek Project Isaac Awards 2016 – Gold
The Drum DADI Awards2016 – 1 Winner, 1 Commendation
Kinsale Sharks 2016 – 1 Silver, 1 Bronze
Masters of Marketing Awards 2016 – 1 Winner, 2 Shortlists
W3 Awards – 2 Silvers
Epica Awards 2016 – Shortlist
Digital Impact Awards 2016 – Winner
Digiday Awards 2016 – Shortlist
MediaPost Appy Awards 2016 – Winner
Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2016 – Shortlist
Creativity – Editor's Pick

Client: SapientNitro London
Agency: SapientNitro London
Role: Creative Director
Production Company (launch film): Radical Media

To help launch the BlackBerry Z10, we gave the new device to cult movie director Robert Rodriguez, who used it to co-create a short film with BlackBerry's online audience. Driven largely through social channels and media partnerships, the project involved Rodriguez inviting users to audition for a role, design a weapon and create a monster. Rodriguez selected the best user submissions, which were then brought to life by his art department and included in the film using green screen technology.



Full project details

Brief

As part of an ongoing campaign, devise an engagement mechanic with which a high-profile director could co-create a piece of content with the help of BlackBerry’s fan base and a BlackBerry Z10 smartphone.



Solution

We opened up the pre-production process to the community, enabling them to pitch ideas for different elements of a short film to the director, Robert Rodriguez. He selected the best of these ideas and incorporated them into the film using green screen and CGI technology. Fans were also able to download a script and act out a role in the film, with Rodriguez selecting the best video submission and including it in the final cut. Engagement was driven through the BlackBerry and Robert Rodriguez social channels, with content and submissions housed at a microsite hub.



Results

The online films received:

Over 29 million views

Over 8,500 creative submissions

100 million PR impressions

Drove over 650,000 visits to the Blackberry site

Client: BlackBerry

Agency: Razorfish London in collaboration with AMV BBDO

Role: I was involved as a Creative Director both in the project's early stages, helping to crack the interactive idea, and in later stages overseeing creation of the online comms assets. Experience Design CD on the campaign site was Matt Firth.


Awards: 
Campaign BIG Awards – Silver

Twenty dogs a day are put down in dog shelters around the UK due to insufficient resources. The Pedigree Adoption Drive wanted to drive awareness and engagement around a £100,000 donation it was making to dog shelters across the uk to help them keep more dogs alive long enough to re-home them. To do so, we created an virtual dog walking experience that implored dog-lovers to 'Save a dog from its last walk', and give more real shelter dogs’ stories happier endings. Users could take a shelter dog on a fun virtual walk around the web, playing with it and unlocking donations, with each walk ending in a safe and happy 'forever home'. The project was an Official Honoree at the Webby Awards.

Client: Mars Petcare
Agency: Hypernaked
Role: Senior Creative/ACD
Awards: Webby Awards – Official Honoree

Pedigree Jumbone is the world's longest lasting dog chew. We drove awareness and engagement online by writing a new and self-consciously goofy endline that spoke directly to internet culture - 'it goes om & om & nom'.

We re-edited the lead creative agency's TV spot around this idea, and launched it into both paid and owned YouTube channels. On Facebook, a 'Nom Machine' soundboard enabled users to add 'om nom nom' sound effects to videos of their own dogs to contribute to the world's longest-lasting dog chew video (the 'Non-stop Nom') in exchange for prizes.

The buzz generated online included several user remixes, and the response was so positive that the client chose to run the YouTube pre-roll on TV instead of the lead agency's TV ad.

Full project details

Brief
Jumbone makes your dog happier because it's the longest-lasting dog chew. Amplify a TV campaign by communicating this proposition in online and social media.

Solution
Internet culture loves to celebrate and share moments of eating joy. So much so that's it's adopted Cookie Monster's 'om nom nom' eating sound as its own. From this observation, we re-wrote and re-edited the TV spot, replacing the original endline with: ‘It goes om & nom & nom’. This was released as a pre-roll ad on 4OD and on YouTube. The ad drove traffic to the Pedigree Facebook page and the Jumbone Nom Machine – a Facebook app that let dog owners overlay any of 24 different 'om nom nom' sounds to videos of their dog chewing. Once uploaded, these clips were combined to form the Jumbone ‘Non-stop Nom’ – the longest-lasting nomming video. Online banner ads and search buys completed the traffic driving activity.

Results
The film received over 650,000 YouTube views. Pedigree's Facebook page attracted 20,000 new fans during the initial two-week activity period. Several users claimed to be using the soundtrack as a ringtone. The film made it into YouTube’s Most Popular ‘Pets & Animals’ video list, as well as being widely shared on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and video sites. It inspired numerous user remixes on YouTube, one of which is ten minutes long and has received over 280,000 views. Dog owners ‘nommed’ over 500 videos and photos of their dogs with the Nom Machine, creating a 12 minute epic nomming film. The pre-roll ad was so popular online that it replaced the lead agency's TV commercial, with two bursts on national TV generating further social media conversation. The new TVC has since been adapted to run across markets including USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It is still being aired on TV 6 years after it first ran.

Client: Mars Petcare
Agency: Hypernaked
Role: Senior Creative / ACD

Nokia wanted to drive downloads of 120,000 free licenses for the latest FIFA soccer game on their N-Gage gaming platform. It was the first FIFA game on mobile to be as genuinely playable as its console-based parent. To dramatise this, we got a crew of gamer stooges to take their usually private home gaming behaviour outside and into the very public London Underground (a perfect dead-time gaming opportunity) with hidden cameras capturing the results. All the films were collected on a CCTV style site, along with links to download the N-Gage application and the FIFA game. The work won a Silver Nomination / Graphite Pencil at D&AD.

Full project details

Brief
Nokia's mobile gaming service N-Gage had 120,000 copies of FIFA to give away for compatible phones. It’s a very playable version of the game, and perfect for N-Gage users, 20 to 40 year-old men (boys) in quick dead-time situations.

Solution
Football games are football games: you’re happy when you score, swear when you miss, develop ticks and screams, and sometimes don't move for hours at a time. Take this usually private gaming behaviour out of the living room, and combine it with public transport that’s suitable for N-Gage, hidden cameras and a gamer stooge. All the films are collected on a CCTV style site, along with links to download the N-Gage application and the FIFA game.

Results
All 120,000 copies of FIFA were downloaded.

Client: Nokia
Agency: Work Club
Role: Creative
Director: Theo Delaney

Awards
D&AD Awards – Silver Nomination / Graphite Pencil
Creativity – Editor's Pick

Powerade asked Iris to leverage its sponsorship of the NBA Europe Live Tour to their target audience of 'born sportsmen' and 'solitary fitness seekers'. Keen to avoid the usual urban clichés, we wanted to deliver something of value to the UK’s highly engaged and growing community of basketball players and NBA fans. Partnering with the NBA's 'Take to the Courts' event on Clapham Common, we created the UK's first motion-tracking shooting contest. This enabled London ballers to improve their technique with the same technology NBA teams use to hone their skills. Every player received a print of their shot arcs. The most consistent shooters competed daily for NBA Europe Live tickets, with two finalists competing during the half-time break at the Chicago Bulls vs Utah Jazz NBA Europe Live match at London’s O2 Arena for a trip to a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, NYC.

Awareness was created through the NBA UK Facebook community, press and online advertising. The event was oversubscribed with 697 Facebook guests (58% more than the NBA's host event) and over 200 players competing over two days in front of 5000 'Take to the Courts' visitors. Over 4000 bottles of Powerade were sampled by players and spectators. The Grand Final was watched by over 18,000 at the O2 Arena. In 2009 Powerade grew a commanding share of the growing sports drink sector.

Agency: Iris
Client: Coca-Cola UK
Role: Senior Creative / ACD

Powerade's 'Innergear' campaign positioned it as 'sports equipment for the inside of your body'. As Official Sports Drink of the RFU and WRU, the brand wanted to use digital to engage Powerade's 'born sportsmen' target during the rugby off-season.

An on-pack promotion gave amateur and school rugby teams the chance to win a visit to the hallowed turf of Twickenham for a training session of a lifetime. Under the guidance of the England coaching staff, the winning team was put through its paces on the pitch, with elite-level education and insights around hydration and nutrition before and afterwards from England team nutritionist Matt Lovell. Video content from the day lived on the Powerade website, enabling the online audience to share in the experience and excitement of the day and benefit from the professional hydration tips.

Supporting content enabled amateur rugby players to stay sharp in the off-season the same way the professionals do. Training drills put together in collaboration with RFU & WRU coaches were delivered on-camera by Wales star Shane Williams and released weekly on the Powerade website. These were complemented with content of international players Steve Borthwick, Paul Sackey and Shane Williams discussing their individual approaches to off-season training.

The activity helped Powerade grow a commanding share of the sports drink market in 2009.

Client: Coca-Cole / Powerade
Role: Senior Creative / ACD
Agency: Iris
Director: Helena Brooks @ RSA

To win the pitch for Budweiser's FA Premier League sponsorship, we turned the brief on its head. Rather than pretending that this most famously American of beer brands had a natural affinity with the English national sport, we acknowledged the odd-couple nature of the deal. Self-deprecating humour (a tough sell to a proud client) helped us reassure English fans that Corporate America wasn't about to unleash a cultural car crash on their beautiful game. The ad was voted one of the all-time 10 Best English Football ads by The Drum, and one of the 10 Best Football ads by FourFourTwo magazine, who said "the ad sparked a thousand pub debates, all of which came to the same conclusion: multiball was the future."

Full project details

Brief
Budweiser were losing market share amongst their core male target. They were 'Official Beer of the FA Premier League', but fans neither knew nor cared. We had to make them, and get them drinking Bud again.

Solution
We drove brand re-appraisal by admitting the inconvenient truth. America doesn't 'get' football the way England does, and a company as American as Budweiser sponsoring it isn't exactly a natural fit. We dramatised this cultural car crash in a reassuringly English way – with self-deprecating humour.

Results
Sponsorship awareness increased exponentially, and Budweiser's plummeting market share did a U-turn. The ad was so well received that the campaign was expanded into press, poster and programme sponsorship. Launching just as the American Glazer family had seized ownership of Manchester United, the ad became part of the story and a poster child for the fears United fans and the wider football community had about the American 'invasion'. The campaign was and continues to be name-checked in numerous national and international newspaper articles and blogs, including The New York Times and Fast Company. The ad has also proved phophetic – in 2021, when several American-owned Premier League clubs revealed their plans to join a proposed European Super League, fans responded by posting links to it in social media.

Client: Anheuser-Busch Inc.
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London
Role: Creative, Copywriting, Art Direction
Director: Scott Vincent @ Hungry Man

Recognition:
The Drum – 10 Best English Football Ads (August 2016)
FourFourTwo – 10 Best Football Ads (January 2010)
The Daily Telegraph – Ad of the Week (19 April 2005)
Campaign – Pick of the Week (April 2005)

To help activate Powerade's sponsorship of the 'Great Run' and 'Take to the Streets' running events, we created Powerade Pulse. Pulse complimented existing training apps like Nike+ by elevating music to a pacemaker role. It did this by scanning your music libriary, analysing the BPM of every track, and creating bespoke running playlists for different types of workout, complete with hydration reminders.

Full project details

Brief
Powerade wanted to leverage their status as Official Sports Drink of both the Great Run series and Take To The Streets, a series of events designed to get two million people active and fit in the UK between 2009 and the 2012 London Olympics.

Solution
When we spoke to runners about motivation aids, music was a common theme. But when you're training for an event like the Great North Run, running playlists get old quickly. Powerade Pulse dials up the motivational power of music by elevating it to a pacemaker role, providing the runner with an auditory cue to their target pace, as well as a constant supply of fresh running playlists. The desktop app scans the BPM (beats per minute) of the music you like to run to and creates a bespoke playlist to match the changing pace of your workout. Throw in personal hydration reminders, five workout types, multiple playlists and Nike+ integration, and it's all the motivation you need to get you over both the start and finish lines.

Results
The activity helped Powerade grow a commanding share of the UK sports drink market in 2009.

Client: Powerade (Coca-Cola UK)
Agency: Iris London
Role: Senior Creative / ACD

R/GA were helping Microsoft launch Windows 10 with the Microsoft Emulator – a digital experience that put Windows 10 devices in the palm of their prospective customers' hand, letting them explore the power of Windows 10 online as intimately as they could in a physical store.

As a freelance CD, I spent three months overseeing the creation of video assets and updates to the Emulator experience. Working as part of the Microsoft team's Scrum process, and liaising closely with the client, I oversaw pre-production and a shoot in R/GA’s in-house green screen studio, as well as the editing, compositing and rotoscoping in post production, ensuring that the final video assets could be seamlessly integrated into the Emulator responsive site.

I also oversaw a fast turnaround case study film for the client, and the video production for version 2.0 of the site, focusing on Windows 10’s cloud-based services. This required taking a range of technically challenging and more involved user journeys and rendering them as simply as possible across a range of connected devices such as laptop, mobile, tablet and XBox.

The experience was customised for consumers, businesses and post-sales, attracting over 12m visitors, with 43% chosing to “Buy Now” and an average dwell time of 5 min 28 sec.

Client: Microsoft
Agency: R/GA London
Role: Co-Creative Director

BlackBerry briefed us to use press advertising to communicate the superior security of BlackBerry's enterprise mobility management to business and IT decision-makers across range of regulated industries. Research told us that IT managers were more concerned with catering to the device preferences of employees than with protecting against real and growing corporate data security risks. To make them more receptive to our USP – end-to-end, gold standard security – we told stories that drove home both the reality of the risk and the potentially catastrophic consequences of corporate data hacking. Consequences that include huge clean-up costs, negative stock price impact, litigation and even business failure.

Client: BlackBerry
Agency: Razorfish London / New York
Role: Creative / Creative Director

As part of the launch activity for the BlackBerry Z10, we proposed 'Juice' – a native app designed to ship pre-installed on the device, and provide BlackBerry's productivity-obsessed users with insights from the data generated by their everyday phone usage. What started as a pro-active project ended up generating investment from BlackBerry of around $1 million, enabling us to build an MVP.

Full Project Details

Brief
Launch BlackBerry's all-new Z10 touch device and BlackBerry 10 OS globally to its core base of highly motivated, productivity-obsessed professionals.

Solution
Together with the BB10 OS, the BlackBerry Z10 learns and adapts to how you use it. We set this product truth against BlackBerry's brand purpose - 'champion of your ambition' - and came up with a way for BlackBerry to actually enable their users' success. Designed to ship pre-installed on the Z10 smartphone, BlackBerry Juice is a native BB10 app that tracks key productivity metrics across everyday device usage. As well as providing insights and motivation with which to improve personal productivity, the data gleaned from users globally would form the basis for an ongoing comms and real time engagement campaign. For example, we'd use digital outdoor posters to stoke the rivalry between world business hubs with stories like 'Londoners are more responsive emailers than New Yorkers' or 'France calls its mum more often than Germany'. The MVP was developed in partnership with BlackBerry's development team in Canada.

Client: BlackBerry
Agency: Razorfish London
Role: Creative Director

As part of the launch for the BlackBerry Z10, the Text Race lived on the YouTube homepage. By syncing their device with the ad, BlackBerry's productivity-obsessed audience could take part in a real-time texting race to compare their typing speed to that made possible by the Z10's new 'flick typing' technology. The work was awarded and nominated at several shows including The Webbys.

Full project details

Brief
Prove that the BlackBerry Z10's innovative 'flick typing' provides the best touchscreen typing experience.

Solution
Give users first-hand experience of the speed and simplicity of flick typing by challenging them to a real-time typing race: you and your phone versus the BlackBerry Z10. Running on YouTube's homepage, DoubleClick's Channel Connect technology enabled us to sync the banner to a user's smartphone - all activated with the simple capture of a QR code. The user could pit their own phone and typing skills against the Z10 by completing a set sentence, with the speed difference presented afterwards in terms of both time and number of keystrokes.

Results
Over 250,000 people text-raced the BlackBerry Z10 in 2 days. The Z10 saw off the challenge from every major smartphone, with an average typing time six seconds faster than its rivals. The project featured in numerous awards shows.

Client: BlackBerry
Agency: Razorfish London
Role: Creative Director

Awards:
Webby Awards - Nomination
Webby Awards - Official Honoree
Lovie Awards - Winner
People's Lovie Award - Winner
Campaign BIG Awards - Nomination
BIMA (Corporate) - Winner
BIMA (Engagement) - Nomination
BIMA (Integrated) - Nomination
BIMA (Multi-platform) - Nomination
BIMA (Tablet) - Nomination

Press ad for The Times newspaper’s promoting Johnny Wilkinson writing on the Rugby World Cup.

Client: News International
Agency: RKCR/Y&R
Role: Art Director

A poster campaign for LloydsTSB Health Insurance's sponsorship of England Rugby.

Client: LloydsTSB
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London
Role: Creative, Art Direction

Two press ads for Land Rover. 'St.Bernard' was nominated for an ANNA award.

Client: Land Rover
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London
Role: Creative, Art Direction
Awards: The ANNAs – Nomination ('St.Bernard')
 

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister briefed RKCR/Y&R on a campaign to recruit more women into the Fire & Rescue Service. The problem - for far too many women women a career as a firefighter simply wasn’t on their radar. They perceived it as a macho, male-dominated job, and as such weren’t considering it an option. Furthermore, many of the women that were signing up weren’t staying in the job long because of issues such as less-than-inclusive team cultures and lack of female facilities in fire stations.

We created a campaign designed to challenge perceptions of both potential applicants (women) and incumbent firefighters (men). Under the campaign line ‘The Fire Service needs Women. Not superwomen’ we busted the myth that being a firefighter is only for overly macho types, whilst educating male-dominated fire crews about the skills females can bring to the team.

Client: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
Agency: Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe / Y&R
Role: Copywriter / Art Director

Brief
Create awareness of obstetric fistula, a little-known childbirth injury affecting over 2 million women in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Drive donations for the simple operation that can reverse the condition.

Solution
The complex causes of fistula and its undignifying effects mean it makes for neither a news story nor an easy conversation. A TV and cinema ad used the idea 'hard to talk about, easy to cure' to explain obstetric fistula whilst acknowledging the discomfort often felt when discussing it. Long copy press ads in women's magazines laid out the causes and effects of the condition. Jars of marmalade were sent out as press packs challenging the 'marmalade test' – a tendancy of news media editors to filter out stories that might 'put readers off their breakfast'.

Client: United Nations Population Fund
Agency: RKCR/Y&R
Role: Creative
Production Company: Hungry Man

A press campaign promoting Virgin Mobile's Free SIM offer.

Role: Art Director
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London

Winning the brief to promote Carlsberg's Euro 2004 sponsorship from incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi, this global TV campaign positioned the beer brand as being just as essential to the spectating experience as the superstitious rituals carried out by football fans all over Europe.

Client: Carlsberg
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London
Role: Art Director
Director: Steve Hudson @ Outsider

Awards: British Arrows Craft – Bronze

Brief
Give away the last available tickets to the sold out V Festival in a way that will raise awareness of Virgin Mobile's headline sponsorship.

Solution
An integrated campaign involving digital, ambient, mobile and a live TV broadcast. Seed a YouTube film in relevant online communities. This drives traffic to a fun flash game incorporating a ticket giveaway. Book an evening of entire ad breaks Friday night on Channel 4 and broadcast live from the site on the eve of the festival. Run a series of SMS-entry competitions across the breaks and announce the ticket winners live on air.

Results
67,000 YouTube views. Over 29,000 game plays. Over 4,800 text messages. Sponsorship awareness level at 83%, an all-time high. The campaign was a finalist in the Campaign Digital Awards.

Client: Virgin Mobile
Agency: RKCR/Y&R
Role: Creative, Copywriting, Art Direction
Awards: Campaign Digital Awards - Finalist

A selection of print and TV work for Virgin Atlantic.

Client: Virgin Atlantic Airways
Agency: RKCR/Y&R London
Role: Creative, Art Direction
Director (Idents): Kit Lynch Robinson