We launched the ‘Come and See’ campaign with two films directed by Jonathan Glazer: ‘Gladiator football’ which tells the story of Calcio Storico, a bone-crunching game which takes place in Florence at the end of June and ‘Urban Deer’ which shows the strange phenomenon of wild deer that enter an Essex council estate at night.
‘City Climbers’ follows Vadim and Vitaliy, known as ontheroofs, on their latest climb in Dubai and ‘Skijoring’ features Skijoring champion, Franco Moro, as he trains in Argentina.
All the content is housed on a specially created digital hub, where people can browse ‘how to’ films that give tips on techniques relevant to each story, such as how to shoot fast moving action or how to shoot in low light.
I was CD on this fully integrated campaign, which encompassed ATL, BTL, social media, digital, events, experiential, retail and brand identity.
We thought the idea of using people with pale skin to launch ‘Golden Skins’ crisps was very simple and would make an interesting photographic project. We chose the Dazed & Confused photographer William Selden as we liked the look he had used for the Spiritualized album ‘Amazing Grace’, which was an evocative image of an arm with luminescent, creamy skin tones.
On the day of the shoot, due to a lack of albinos in the original casting, we made a last ditch attempt to get some along, by putting an announcement out on the radio ‘for all albinos to make their way to the studio in E8 for a potential cash sum’. I wouldn’t recommend this approach: we were besieged throughout the day by albinos of all shapes and sizes, none of whom fitted the brief.
Members of the Territorial Army are often dismissed as ‘weekend warriors’, overgrown Boy Scouts like Gareth from The Office. Our task was to drive recruitment by building the credibility of the TA to show that, in reality, they are trained and ready to serve alongside the regular army.
In partnership with ITV we ran a series of 17 one minute ‘live’ broadcasts, in the middle of prime time TV programming, showing them serving alongside the regular army in a war zone, ‘live’ from Afghanistan.
Many young people love the idea of joining The Army but don’t think they have what it takes. The Step Up campaign takes the audience through everything a recruit goes through, using an Army icon; the boots. The audience is, quite literally, put in the shoes of a young soldier and taken on a recruit’s journey to becoming a capable, brave soldier.
The tv ad was directed by Simon Ratigan and was shot over 2 weeks in Cyprus and Salisbury Plain with a platoon of soldiers from 3 PARA.
We continued the boots theme in print, on tins of boot polish (handed out at graduate recruitment fairs) and door mats placed outside Job Centres. The campaign drove over 200,000 unique visitors to the campaign microsite.
Back in 1999, we projected a naked Gail Porter onto the Houses of Parliament to promote voting for lads mag FHM’s 100 sexiest women poll (it was the 90s). The stunt was surprising enough to make it onto ITV News at 10.
Directed by Dom & Nic, Dante Ariola and Brian Beletic. At the time Levi’s were struggling as a brand, hit by the ‘Jeremy Clarkson’ effect, teenagers didn’t want to wear the same jeans as their dad. The solution was reinventing the jean.
The new products were called engineered jeans and had a ‘twisted side seam’. We decided to refer to them as ‘twisted jeans’ and made a series of ‘twisted’ love stories. The adverts were a massive success and the product is still sold in shops today.
‘Key Party’ directed by Mattijs Van Heijningen
‘That’s My Car’ was directed by Kevin Thomas.
We heard anecdotally that people had been amusing themselves by coming out of pubs at closing time and chasing after cars shouting, ‘That’s my car!’
Photographer: Frank Budgen
These photographs for Coco de Mer erotic shop feature people at the moment of orgasm. Rather than being faked in a studio, these were done for real over the course of 2 weeks at the owner Sam Roddick’s house (daughter of Anita, founder of Body Shop) using sex toys sold in her shop. After the first one Frank came downstairs and announced that he needed a cold shower.
When casting people from modelling agencies proved unsuccessful, we ended up trawling sex clubs, using friends of the shop, barmaids, porn stars and even the Danish Account Director from Saatchis did one.
Frank fully embraced the project, so much so that he was still sending in extra shots two weeks after the posters had gone up.
This was a campaign that was in our student book. We sold it to Warr’s Harley Davidson on the King’s Rd. It became notorious as part of the ‘yob advertising’ debate. Directed by Joe Public.
‘Kite’ Director: Vince Squibb
‘Global Energy’ Director: Chris Palmer
This global campaign ran in 37 different countries. Directed by Psyop. Photography by Rankin.
‘Lemonade’ tells the story of an entrepreneurial young American girl who sets up a lemonade stand that accepts a variety of different currencies. It demonstrates that as the global financial landscape evolves, even the smallest businesses will be multinational in the future.
The ad was shot in Los Angeles by Traktor, using only natural light. This is the speciality of the Director of Photography, Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, who also shot The Tree of Life and The Revenant, using the same technique.
A regional press ad for Lynx. Thanks to Nik Upton for posing as the handsome cad. He was a bit of a ladies’ man at the agency at the time.
Directed by Tony Barry. This Christmas anti- drink driving ad went viral and won a Cyber Lion at Cannes.
A website to promote Malcolm Venville’s film ’44 Inch Chest’, featuring Ray Winston.
As CD on Tourism Ireland, I was responsible for the ‘Go where Ireland takes you’ campaign, which celebrated getting sidetracked in Ireland. To bring the idea to life on radio, we created an interactive radio campaign where listeners could choose where they went by retuning their radios to different stations. Featuring Ardal O’Hanlon (Dougal from Father Ted).
The brief was to position Selfridges as an integral part of London life. We thought it would be funny to compare it to the alternative life in the country. Photography by Graham Cornthwaite.
An injunction is the quickest way to put a stop to domestic abuse, as it puts distance between the victim and their abuser.
This interactive poster for the National Centre for Domestic Abuse encouraged passers-by to drag the abusive man away using their mobile phones. Users could either enter the website address or scan on the QR code to start interacting immediately.
‘Last Orders’ was directed by Oshii Mamoru, the cult manga artist who made the original ‘Ghost in the Machine’.
‘Warriors’ was directed by the Brothers Quay and ‘Sisters of Murphy’s’ was directed by Chris Palmer.
Directed by Danny Kleinman. As part of the ‘Keep Walking’ campaign, ‘Diver’ tells the story of Raul Bravo Garcia, one of the original cliff divers of Acapulco.
