Resume
summary
A passionate creative leader with 20+ years experience of building brands, digital innovation, advertising and content creation at top ten agencies. I've worked as both a creative and a strategic leader often on large global pieces of business. I'm known as a change agent, strong client partner, natural collaborator and an inspirational leader who knows how to build brands, create engaging experiences and tell compelling brand stories in any channel. I also seem to have a knack for winning business.
career
mar 2016 - present: executive creative partner, brandPIE
I’m one of two partners in Brandpie. I work alongside the CEO to lead the US business and have helped drive rapid growth in just a few short years, From a standing start Brandpie is now one of the most highly awarded brand consultancies in the US market with an enviable client roster. More importantly, we’ve created a genuinely nurturing culture that fast-tracks young talent, is incredibly collaborative and is simply a lovely place to work: all while delivering exceptional thinking and creativity to our clients.
JAN 2014 - 2016: Executive creative director, rapp New York
I partner with the Managing Director to lead the New York agency. I arrived to help the business progress its transformation to a digital powered agency specializing in high precision connected experiences. In the first year I have helped RAPP win numerous digital awards and secure significant pieces of new business (social media activation for HP, SAP’s global e-CRM business, Nespresso, NBC Universal mobile innovation and Gilead’s digital and CRM business for Harvoni (a cure for Hep-C).
I am a member of RAPP’s global leadership team.
2007 - 2014: chief creative officer, rapp london
On joining RAPP, digital made up only 5% of their revenues. I was recruited specifically to help change this. Just three years later digital made up the bulk of revenues (70%), we regularly won creative awards for our digital work, an independent YouGov survey showed clients ranked us the UK's 2nd best digital agency and Forrester placed us number 1 in their Wave survey.
Along the way I restructured the creative department to bring in exceptional digital talent, rebuilt our development function, introduced project management to the business, helped our CEO recruit digital talent across the business and partnered him in developing countless strategic alliances with key partners.
I was a founding board member of our RAPP Labs innovation unit, which now has a presence in most of our major markets. And I ran a number of innovation projects across the RAPP global network.
We also expanded our roster, winning pan-european and global clients (eg GSK, Philips and Skype). I was creative lead on all three pitches and most of our other many new business wins. For a number of key clients (eg: Eurostar, Lovefilm, Philips) I also acted as Global Strategy Director.
I regularly helped the network on global assignments and was one of only three London employees to sit on our global Creative and Strategy leadership team. I looked after five offices: four in the UK and one in the Netherlands. I was responsible for around 60 creatives, including 2 ECDs and 5 CDs, countless writers and numerous designers and UX specialists.
2003 - 2007: associate creative director, ogilvy london
I was creative lead (advertising, interactive and direct) for American Express (EMEA) and IBM (Pan-European). During my time at Ogilvy I also won two major integrated local accounts: First Great Western and Halifax Bank of Scotland.
2000 - 2003: creative director, redwood new media
I joined Europe's largest customer magazine publisher to help found the UK's first digital content agency. I helped grow the business from four people to almost 200, securing business from American Express, Boots, Eurostar, Harvey Nichols, Volvo and Volkswagen. In addition to winning numerous creative awards my personal highlight was pitching for, developing and launching wellbeing.com - the UK's first fully integrated, real-time, content platform (online, tv and magazine) for Boots and ITV.
1999 - 2000: head of copy, TMW
I helped introduce digital creativity into the agency, but worked predominantly on direct marketing pieces of business, including British Airways, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nissan. During my time at TMW I put particular emphasis on mentoring the junior creatives, improving their craft skills and helping them develop client facing presentational skills.
1998 - 1999: associate creative director, EHS
I was creative lead on the Tesco account developing and launching the e-commerce platform and online iteration of the UK's most successful loyalty program, Tesco Clubcard. During my time at EHS the agency was voted 'Direct Agency of the Year' by Campaign magazine. Tesco's e-commerce platform is recognised as the industriy benchmark for best practice.
1996 - 1998: copywriter, Proximity
In the course of 18 months my partner and I became the agency's most awarded creative team, gaining recognition for our work on Thomas Cook and Volkswagen. We also developed the agency's first website project for the Automobile Association. During my time at Proximity the agency was voted 'Direct Agency of the Year' by Campaign magazine.
1995 - 1996: copywriter, microprose software
My first introduction to digital. I created interactive CD-ROM manuals for best selling computer games (PC, PlayStation and Nintendo) and concepted and wrote all marketing materials including PR, direct marketing and press advertising. For the last few months of my employment I was given the role of acting creative director.
1993 - 1995: junior copywriter, pulse
Straight from University I joined a small integrated marketing agency as a junior copywriter working across direct marketing, print advertising and sales promotion for drink brands such as Bombay Sapphire, J&B Whisky and Smirnoff.