ABOUT

I was invited by the CEO of one of the Publicis Groupe companies – comma – to set up a new unit for Creative Development & Brand Management within the Publicis offices in Baker Street.

The remit for the unit was to raise the game on creative delivery – particularly with regard to design execution – by supporting the agency's Creative Directors on an ad hoc basis. This started with designing 3 press campaigns for an account that was felt to be looking "shaky". That account went on to become one of the agency's most profitable, trebling its spend over the next 5 years.

From this success was born 'The Think Tank' – a team of up to 20, including an assistant, designers, writers, creative artworkers, proofreaders and project managers – with an open remit.

During the 6 years I headed up the Think Tank, my team and I worked on a wide range of projects across many of the agency's accounts – ATL, BTL, integrated and digital.

Work ranged from the traditional campaign styling and typographic design briefs, the transliteration of international campaigns for the UK market, designing client intranets and ensuring brand synergy across channels, to creating environmental design themes for presentations and pitches to clients, from conceiving invitations and Press Launch initiatives for interactive TV, to devising animated motion graphic title sequences for client-sponsored digital channels.

At the same time, my role also developed into one of Brand Guardian and stewardship on 3 key agency accounts – Renault, Hewlett-Packard and UBS.

This included developing and implementing the new "One Voice" brand strategy for HP, resulting in London becoming the lead agency for EMEA. International coordination was also key to my role in the rebranding of the newly merged global operations for UBS with our new "You & Us" strategy. I also conceived, designed and delivered the dealership campaign to sit alongside the launch ads for the Renault New Clio.

Basically, any 'nut' deemed too tough to crack, came our way – and a varied bag of nuts they were!