Using design and technology to create better conversations and purposeful innovation between people, brands, organisations and teams

Acting as an ambassador for The Coca-Cola Company, he presented Globally at industry conferences more than a dozen times on insight, good design and the importance of story-telling. To inspire the next generation of talent, he lectured at several art and design colleges & supported student award briefings and subsequent judging. As a chair, he led a broad collective of professionals through meaningful discussions across a broad range of packaging industry topics. A key achievement of the year was the design and facilitation of a workshop to help build the stills category innovation strategy for Central and Southern Europe. As well as a broad immersion for a cross functional team into new products, packaging and retail equipment, inspirational speakers from Absolut, Proctor & Gamble, Kinneir Dufort and Mintel helped inspire the group.

He received a challenge from the senior leadership team: “how to grow the business by 10% through packaging innovation alone”. His work comprised of design leadership training for his Global packaging piers and the design, development and execution of several Global workshops to understand consumer behaviour, technology trends and the creation of new business models for The Coca-Cola Company. The workstreams evolved into specific projects including; kids packaging, sparkling pouches and direct digital print with virtual/augmented reality. He developed a unique presentation tool for the kids packaging project called the ‘Lunchbox’ to dynamically show the insights, opportunity platforms and corresponding solutions. As an ambassador for The Coca-Cola System he spoke at several Global conferences on creating natural consumer appeal through insightful innovation.

The challenge from the senior leadership team was to align the Schweppes trademark structurally and visually in 138 countries whilst developing insights to build a sustainable product development strategy. He approached the challenge through a series of two immersive workshops. The first exposed attendees to the world of everyday adult luxury in: artisan bread, chocolate, wine, beer, perfumery and cosmetics to gather insights. The second used these parallel learnings and insights to construct a packaging and product innovation strategy resulting in the current execution of the Schweppes glass and PET bottles, led out of GB. Core to this was the development of a strategy that developed a better integration of the individual needs of marketing, design and R&D disciplines into a cohesive and tangible growth enabler for the system. As an ambassador for The Coca-Cola Company, he spoke at several Global conferences on the importance of innovation within the organisation and disruptive liquid packaging.

He was initially recruited to work on structural design, closure development and water within Europe. Working closely with the BSDA, he coordinated the beverage and closure industry to develop the child safety standards for flip top and push pull closures. In parallel, he co-ordinated the design, development and validation of the proprietary high flow Powerade closure for the system, releasing over £1M of savings per filling line per year as part of the implementation.As a core member of the Global water category leadership team that coordinated a $600M profitability shift over a 4 year period. One specific self-initiated packaging harmonization project during this period delivered $73.4M of tangible savings, whilst avoiding a further $10M of local development costs. The final 2 year initiative created a shared value strategy for the sustainable growth of the water category over the next 2-20 years.Through his enabling passion for inspiring creativity and innovation, he helped train up to 200 people per year in The Coca-Cola Companies innovation process: Ignitor. During this time he also ran several workshops a year to add value across the business including: natural and premium packaging, a new Consumer Interaction Centre for Europe and how our brands could embrace Iconic cities around the World. One idea was taken from the natural packaging workshop and developed to a proof of concept for natural fibre packaging with the gain or 3 patents.