Research and strategy work to help the founders get this charity up and running.

Providing brand and advertising strategy services on projects in the sports, education, DIY and charity campaigning sectors.

I have joined and worked on a project with the Creative Impact Club, the Peckham-based not-for-profit powered by FSC (the Future Strategy Club) which is on a mission to increase prosperity in their local communities. CIC is made up of over 500 talented creative professionals across more than 30 disciplines, whose creative skills are used to fundraise and work with local social impact start-ups, charities and community initiatives.

Following the sale of BJL to Dentsu, I continued with strategy leadership on key ex-BJL accounts as part of a larger department and added Moretti and Generali Insurance to my client portfolio. Led the enhancement of the offering to existing clients by taking full advantage of new resources and expertise available in the Dentsu network.The Cooperative Bank – Following a brand investment hiatus, developed a comprehensive creative strategy for The Co-operative Bank which successfully re-established The Bank’s ethical credentials and led to a 33% increase in current account applications. With the climate crisis in the news, the fact that The Bank has not supported fossil fuel production since 1997 was a great start-point, but we also needed people to realise that they might be inadvertently supporting fossil fuel production by virtue of where they bank. The strategy focused on closing the gap between how people think about ‘my bank’ and ‘big banking’ - bought to life in the ‘Withdraw from this’ campaign - an Effie Awards strategy case study finalist.Halfords – 2020–23. Led the brand and advertising strategy from pitch, which has focused on educating people about the brand’s expanding, high value service offering, resulting in significant increases in consumer awareness and consideration of those newer services.

Directed the Strategy Department with a team of six people and provided strategic leadership or oversight for all the clients in BJL’s portfolio as well as on new business pitches. Clients included Ronseal, The Co-operative Bank, Halfords, Subaru, Swinton and BASF. Sat on the BJL Board.Led the strategy for Ronseal for several years (at BJL & Dentsu Creative) to drive brand saliency at the start of the DIY season each year. The strategy acknowledged the inconvenient truth that painting fences and decking is not many people’s idea of fun. This insight informed a series of social and PR-amplified, award-winning campaigns that encouraged, cajoled and helped people to get on with the DIY, resulting in spontaneous awareness increases each year (2015 to 2023) despite continually decreasing budgets.Uncovered the key insight that unlocked the strategy for Swinton Insurance which was that the industry’s shift to self-serve aggregator sites was leaving many older customers with doubts about their cover – doubts that Swinton could address. This led to the ‘Swinton turns nagging doubt into nothing to worry about’ which drove immediate positive impacts on brand and commercial KPIs.

Built a 10-strong multi-disciplined Strategy department to include specialists in shopper, events, social media and digital strategy as well as brand and advertising strategy – all focused around supporting and fuelling Samsung’s rapid UK (and global) growth across several electronic appliance sectors.Developed a pitch-winning strategy for the Samsung NX Camera that led to the ‘#wearedavidbailey’ campaign, which brought together 143 David Baileys and let them loose with the camera to demonstrate its enabling combination of ease of use and high-quality outputs. The campaign generated 900,000 views on YouTube, 11M impressions on Facebook and most importantly, led to the cameras being sold out in 11 weeks. Consequently, the campaign was awarded at Cannes, Kinsale and in the Eurobest Awards in 2013.

Led on strategy development projects for several brands in the Bacardi and GSK stables using proprietary methodologies which centred around specific approaches to qualitative research and client workshops.Supported GSK in pivoting its brands from illness to wellness, which was very challenging for needs-based brands such as Tums (indigestion) and Piri (antihistamine).

Led strategic thinking on clients including Unilever (Hellmann’s Europe and Comfort global), Nestle (UK), American Express (International), DHL (Global) and Cancer Research UK.Directed brand and advertising strategy that allowed Unilever’s Comfort brand to adopt a single, global campaign rather than separate regional ones – achieved major production savings as well as economies in brand stewardship.Led the creative strategy for the launch of Comfort with Fresh Release Technology, which achieved the highest ever Millward Brown PreView score for branded impact with the ‘Do da Moves’ campaign.Drove significant increases in usage frequency of Hellmann’s across Europe with an advertising strategy that inspired new usage occasions, dishes and meals.

This role was about ensuring consumer insight was at the heart of product and offer proposition development as well as communications development.

Planner on various accounts including: TFL - for the Central London Congestion Charge launch, John Smiths, Npower & TV Licensing.Developed the pitch-winning creative and messaging strategy for TfL’s Central London Congestion charge, a campaign that contributed to the smooth introduction of the scheme, and that won an IPA Effectiveness Gold Award in 2004.Worked with qualitative research agency partners to develop a creative strategy for TV Licensing that ensured our campaigns struck a balance between credibility and proportionality when talking about the legal requirement to have a TV Licence and the risk of detection. TV Licence evasion rates were kept below target levels in this period.

Directed the Visa International Brand Tracking study and provided consultancy services to client. I transformed reporting formats to make them more visual and easier to understand.

A role providing research, insight and strategic support to the marketing departments of The Times and Sunday Times.Drove digitisation and visualisation of newspaper sales data to transform company’s understanding of sales patterns and trends.Developed insight-led strategy behind the "Under the skin of Sports” campaign for The Times.Led editorial research project that helped shape the revamp of the Weekend edition of The Times in 1997.

From Graduate Trainee rising to Account Manager working on a variety of accounts, from Unilever to Levis. This included a year's placement in Milan, Italy, where I was responsible for adding Italy to the scope of international studies as well as local projects.