Between 2006 and 2011 my role as European Account Director and then as Creative Director included responsibility for developing the strategic and executional approach for Fords partnership with the UEFA and the Champions League. The core of my role was leading the PR and activation requirements of our five European offices and in particular Ford’s sole and exclusive ‘Center Circle Experience’ where 12-15 children won the chance to be on pitch and wave the center circle banner at all 125 Champions League season games. Separately I devised and pitched Ford’s Feel Football campaign worth a budget of over €5m which brought the Ford brand closer to fans through topical debate as the social media landscape began to flourish. This campaign required my negotiation of ambassador agreements with several high profile football professionals, content production and event production. By the Autumn of 2008 Feel Football had earned a media value of nearly €10m.

In 2010 I was part of a pitch team which secured Allianz’s association with the London 2012 Olympics through the creation of ‘Team Allianz’. 11 Olympians of past and present inspired Allianz employees to become ‘outstanding competitors’ in their field through an internal facing campaign in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympics. The engagement campaign required the production of 32 videos, the development of intranet email groups between Team Allianz and Allianz staff, regional office visits by Team Allianz members for Q&A’s. Additionally over 1000 Olympic ticket and hospitality packages were made available to Allianz employees and their families. My role included contract negotiation, content production and London 2012 Olympic Park hospitality logistics.

Between 2015 and 2016 my role as Creative Director for PRISM on the Aston Martin Account meant that in addition to supporting the launch of its new marques, our team also had brand and content projects in support of its long standing association with the James Bond franchise. In 2016 ‘Spectre’ was released, directed by Sam Mendes and featured the Aston Martin DB10 which was designed and built for the sole purpose of featuring in the movie. My role involved the design and production of several Aston Martin brand catalogues for its DB9 and DB11 bespoke features. Additionally photo and film shoots to create press materials for the DB10. Finally I scripted, directed and edited a content film and entry materials which won Aston Martin a Cannes Gold Lion in 2016 for its amazing work with the DB10 for the Bond film.

In 2015 I operated as lead creative and Executive Producer to win the 100 Plus ‘Stay Thirsty’ TV and print campaign for PRISM. The role involved script development, talent acquisition (Brazilian football heroes Pele and Oscar, who replaced Neymar) as well all production deliverables of locations, director and crew, cast, and equipment. The 3 months of pre production and three shoot days plus post production management (including gfx for a stadium crowd) delivered a 30’ and 60’ commercial, 4 stings, 7 PR interviews with global media, a behind scenes edit and multiple social posts. Furthermore a photoshoot on location also provided images for our design work on the 100 Plus Asian print campaign and POS materials.

Following my success with Ford, Land Rover and Standard Charted, and against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis, in 2009 I was tasked to devise and pitch a radical new PR and Activation campaign to Shell to elevate the innovative purpose of Shell’s technical partnership with Ferrari F1 and its benefits to everyday car drivers. Time with Ferrari’s F1 drivers was limited, however our experience in content production and storytelling meant that topically developed and released technical stories across the F1 season, adding substance to F1 race narratives, could be captured efficiently with F1 drivers and broader Ferrari and Shell technical experts. Filmed content could be ‘spliced and diced’ and distributed across online and social media channels to maximise impact around F1 races as the video content landscape expanded. Leading with a placed TV documentary approach ‘The Power and the Passion’ in 2010, we secured a production budget to make a 30 minute documentary, and fifteen 2-4 minute short feature edits. These were made available to media with relevant driver, Ferrari F1 team and Shell expert comment. The 2010 and 2011 campaign secured over €16m in earned media with the ‘Power and the Passion’ airing in 147 countries.

In 2015 in my role as Creative Director I was asked to join JWT New York (part of WPP) in a global pitch to better position Rolex’s partnerships with global events such as Wimbledon’s Tennis Championship, and global ambassadors like Roger Federer. Our approach was to adjust Rolex’s association from one of simply an iconic partnership to one of a celebration of ‘an occasion’ where ‘iconic craftsmen’ were the heroes of making it the occasion that it is. This appropriately meant Rolex - worn for ‘an occasion’ could draw parallels with its own watchmakers iconic craftsmanship, the iconic craftmanship of Roger Federer’s tennis game, and the iconic craftsmanship of the Wimbledon ‘grass man’ who curates tennis lawns which are the best in the world. A series of content features were developed to tell the various ‘iconic craftsman’ stories and made available for online campaigns and press placed exclusives such as GQ, The Economist and Sunday Times magazine.

Between 2006 and 2009 my role at PRISM as Account Director for Standard Chartered Bank meant I was tasked to devise a PR strategy to better promote its Greatest Race on Earth competition with global city marathons. The Greatest Race was created by PRISM as national team marathon event to bring together Standard Chartered’s sponsorship of the Nairobi, Mumbai, Singapore and Hong Kong marathons. Over 30 countries took part and my PRISM team were responsible for recruiting teams, running the race office and race by race score in order to award the $1m prize to the winning nation team of four marathon runners which had the quickest overall time for completing all four arduous marathons. The strategy I proposed was to give the Greatest Race more of a visual identity though iconic photo moments and runner stories to move it from the sports pages to the news feature pages. We gave focus to the teams which came from all over Africa, South America, Europe and Asia. In 2008 I introduced ’The Golden Baton’ as a visual trophy for media press conferences when the marathon week was upon the city. The ‘Golden Baton’ was a gold plated relay baton and was perfect or photo calls and for awarding the final winners of The Greatest Race each season.

Between 2011 and 2014 in my role as Creative Director and Content Production Director at PRISM, I was responsible for leading an agency team of 12 production, graphic design and social media specialists. Our objective each season was to develop a content strategy and creative story telling to maximise premium car brand Infiniti’s credentials as a car marque of the highest engineering and design quality. This meant exploiting its partnership with Infiniti Red Bull F1 Racing and a separate brand ambassador campaign for F1 Word Champion Sebastian Vettel. I led production crews in film shoots across all five continents. The style and impact of the content, the stories we told and their distribution were calculated to have achieved a media value of $2 billion. Awareness of Infiniti as a premium car brand was elevated beyond all expectations and objectives. Furthermore it established PRISM and its content production department, formally created by me in 2009, as a pioneering ‘go to’ unit for global brands who need engaging content from high pressure and time challenging situations.

As a final partnership case study I have included the ground breaking and high profile ambassador role David Beckham played for iconic hair brand ‘Brylcreem’. I was a young PR Account Manager at Shilland’s, based in the heart of Soho. Through connections I had with Beckham via sportwear brand Umbro, kit suppliers to Manchester United, I saw Beckham as a rising talent. I pitched the ‘Beckham Brylcreem’ partnership to the Sara Lee Household and Body Care company, owners of the Brylcreem brand. Our agency won the assignment and I succesfully led and executed a three year PR campaign full of photo shoots, media interviews, print magazine features, competitions, meet and greets as well as an eventual TV commercial. I even got to appear alongside David in the recent Netflix documentary at the Brylcreem press launch. As an investment for Sara Lee the brand association meant literally hundreds of millions in sales revenue over the subsequent years.