I help create and capture sustainable demand for brands by unleashing the power of creativity.
ONE
Let’s define a positioning for future growth and calibrate a consumer-centric compass to navigate a more interesting purpose, promise, and personality in the brand experience.
TWO
Let’s design and build a dynamic and enduring brand platform and operating system to inspire a more connected, omnichannel ecosystem of brand expressions.
THREE
Let’s create compelling content that ensures more people notice, remember, and relate to the brand in more buying situations, in the moment or in the future.
I believe a marketer’s best bet is creativity.
Here’s a selection of work that worked with the help of my strategic direction, influence, grit, and passion for marketing innovation.
Strava
Strava means Strive in Swedish, and there’s an infinite number of reasons why people are striving for more. From the profound to the simple and sometimes silly reasons why, it’s all worth celebrating. We turned the focus towards the Strava community with this idea that will prop up a new brand platform for years to come.
This Is Why We Strava represents a strategic focus on building a more diverse and inclusive community for a brand typically known for athletic performance and achievement in running and cycling.
An internal video that I wrote and directed to educate, tease and build hype for Strava’s new brand positioning platform.
American Cancer Society
Cancer is a formidable opponent to many patients, families, and carers. But the human spirit's strength, courage, and tenacity give us one hell of an advantage in the fight. That insight became the cornerstone of a new brand positioning and campaign for the ACS in 2015. The strategic thinking behind this won Gold in the 4As Jay Chiat Strategy Awards and triggered a new wave of incremental donations and attention.
McDonald’s
If you’re known and liked in Australia, you get a nickname. Aussies love “Maccas”. We leveraged that insight to help bring this iconic American brand to stand out amongst the crowd of more ‘true blue’ Aussie brands in the lead-up to Australia Day. And yes, we really did change the name of the brand - despite just being briefed for a TV campaign. This integrated idea won a Gold Media Cannes Lion, Bronze PR Lion, and Cannes Effectiveness Lion the following year because it sold a lot more burgers than prior years’ efforts. [Read the submission]
Pfizer Men’s Health
Men avoid seeking help and talking about erectile dysfunction because it’s embarrassing and emasculating. Through deep insight work, we discovered that the more they understood that the condition is often a symptom of more acceptable general health causes, the more inclined they were to talk to their doctor. This campaign drove thousands of new silent sufferers online to find help. It won Best of Show at the IPA Best of Health Show in London, a bronze at Cannes Lion, and an APG Creative Strategy GOLD. Read the submission.
KitchenAid
The iconic stand mixer was both a blessing and a curse for the KitchenAid brand and business growth ambitions. But using the equity it had helped build amongst makers and bakers, we set out to redefine the brand as ‘the mark of a maker’ with a range extending from fridges to frying pans. The fully integrated campaign that still endures as the brand’s communications platform centers on the insight that, for some, food feeds the body but making feeds the soul.
Skittles
Many perceive Skittles to be just about colors. For Superbowl 2014, we needed something fresh to remind everyone of Skittles’ fruitiness in Taste the Rainbow’s first-ever big game ad. Using consumer research and social listening; we uncovered the insight that while nearly everyone loves the random mix of colors and flavors, for many fans, there’s always the one you prefer over the rest. We called this Flavoritism. The spot was in the Top 20 in the US Today Ad Meter and won a Silver in Film at Cannes Lions.
KitchenAid: A Woman’s Place
KitchenAid exists to make possibilities in the kitchen. So after discovering stories of the struggles of budding female chefs and entrepreneurs, it felt right to apply this brand purpose to creating awareness of the issue and helping women overcome the barriers in a male-dominated industry.
Teach.org & Ad Council
When faced with the challenge of recruiting more diverse graduates into teaching as a profession, we had to find what it was that made the job special. With fame and riches off the table, we used research to understand that, unlike many jobs, there’s never a dull day in teaching. There’s always something new and unexpected when dealing with kids, and you get to be innovative and creative, unlike many other professions. That insight made its way directly into a highly effective campaign.
Delta Dental
Dental Insurance is a hard category to stir excitement and interest around. So rather than sell the functional needs, we had some fun with the emotional benefit. After all, it’s not just about maintaining healthy teeth and gums; it’s the confidence you get from a great smile. Because a smile can change anything and everything. That was our insight, and Smile Power was the idea for a new brand platform to help reposition Delta Dental. And it was fully embraced and applauded by the 50+ affiliated member companies.
Tim Tam
Australia are mad for their Tim Tams. By observing how people spoke about their love of the simple chocolate cookie, we were inspired to celebrate this unreasonable passion with responses to what we saw and heard on social platforms. One of which was someone’s wish and wild imagination, which we decided to bring to life as a live experience that delighted commuters one sunny morning.
Young people seemed to dismiss the risk of herpes infection as something older generations had to worry about. Yet 1 in 6 Australians carried the virus without knowing. We wanted to bring attention to this in a surprising way using media not typically associated with health awareness messages. The 'Out of sight but not out of fashion’ print campaign ran in only a few fashion and lifestyle magazines but the PR about it garnered national media attention and spurred conversations that broke through with the message and gave young people the facts.
AHMF Herpes Awareness
Find out if you’re the one.
That was the message in this campaign for herpes awareness. The insight: Young people dismissed the threat of herpes as an STD of yesteryear. After all, most didn’t know they had it when they did anyway, so what’s to worry about? This campaign mimicked the fashion pages of a magazine to trick people into reading about the features and price paid for ignorance around the threat that affected 1 in 8 people in Australia.
View the campaign in full here.
Herpes: It’s out of sight, but not out of fashion
McDonald’s Loose Change Menu
McDonald’s wanted to bring attention to their value menu with a range of items priced at only 1 or 2 dollars. Rather than scream and shout about the low pricing, we told stories about how easy it could be to treat yourself to a trip to Maccas. Charming and funny films about acquiring loose change ran over a number of years, making the value menu the biggest driver of incremental footfall.
Skittles
Taste the Rainbow was a successful campaign, creativity and commercially, over many years. But not every ad had proven to be effective. Added to this, the global rollout of the campaign was slow, as international markets were not convinced of its relevancy and appeal for their local needs. Over 2 years we evolved the campaign with what we’d identified as critical creative success factors, bringing internal stakeholders along for the ride for more rapid adoption. The Taste the Rainbow campaign, and a range of new executions, was soon being used in over 40 markets. Including ‘Skittles Pox’, which proved to be the most effective Skittles ad in its history and used over many years in 28 markets.
Eclipse Chewy Mints
Launching a chewy mint needed some explanation. The nation knew these mints as hard, while gum was for a soft chew. From simply trying the product, and listening to the consumers describe the experience, we thought it was interesting to highlight the progressive cooling sensation that built over each chew.
Starburst
Starburst needed a more distinctive positioning and personality to avoid advertising misattribution. The campaign was confused with Skittles. It had all gotten to weird but needed more wonderful. We tapped into the innocence of the brand and celebrated child-like imagination to ask one of the candy category’s big, unanswered questions: how is something that solid so juicy? The Unexplainably Juicy campaign soon become one of the most effective advertisers in the whole of Mars’s portfolio and the campaign was embraced by dozens of international markets within the first year of launch.
NSW Police Gun Amnesty
This campaign was planned to make unregistered gun owners aware of the opportunity to turn in their guns with no questions asked. To cut through, we positioned the message around what they could be risking by holding onto their illegal guns: the chance it gets into the wrong hands, of course. This arresting campaign exceeded expectations. The print and poster campaign, along with the PR it generated, helped 5000 unregistered firearms to be handed in, and applications for firearm registration spiked by over 21,000.
Qantas / Tourism Australia / British Lions Rugby
Encouraging British Rugby fans to splash out for a trip to Australia required some insight. We discovered that the desire for a trip was there, but difficulties arose for many when trying to convince a spouse of it. There was no one better to get them ready for that chat than the most successful coach in Lions history. This spoof video went viral, helped by the attention and coverage earned from mainstream and sports media.
Lipton Ice Tea
Ice tea sounded like just hot tea gone cold to tea-loving Australians. We had to find a way to sell Lipton Ice Tea as a refreshing drink for those steaming hot summer days. With tea being a more natural coolant for the body, we played up its strength as a drink less artificial. A winning Effie case study proved that this successfully lifted sales of the drink by more than 30% and increased penetration by 12 points.
Other odd bits and pieces of work
