As Creative Director of a Social Media Agency, not everything I do is part of a campaign or ‘big idea’, or fits neatly into a single portfolio section. Sometimes it’s just about getting out there and being messy, reactive and part of the conversation.
It’s my job to shape the way a brand looks, talks, and acts on all social platforms, and a large part of the work I do is overseeing the day to day output of a brands social media channels. Tone of Voice, Visual Identity, Community Management are all essential building blocks to an effective social media presence and I am responsible for them all.
Here is a selection of just some of the work and accounts I have been responsible for in my 5 years at That Lot.
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Robotics, GKN Aerospace, Affinity Water, IKEA, Livat, Mattel, Spotify, Have I Got News For You, Twitter, eBay, Microsoft, HSBC UK, Sanofi, Roche
Agency: That Lot
Role: Creative Director
The Challenge:
The number of fraud victims is growing year on year, but people think it will never happen to them. HSBC needed to educate people of the dangers of fraud, without patronising or alienating customers.
The Idea:
We realised that fraudsters share a lot of the same techniques as illusionists and magicians: misdirection, spectacle, mentalism and more. So we partnered with popular influencer Troy The Magician to bring the dangers of Fraud to life, and teach customers to spot the signs.
The content went live as Instagram Reels, YouTube (Content & Pre-roll) as well as paid ads across Meta platforms, with a TikTok launch underway for 2023.
It worked, too, reaching over 2 million people and with HSBC UK reporting a 17.4% reduction in Fraud YOY - and the content itself had a VTR 196% over benchmark.
Agency: Drum OMD
Client: Channel 4 // Warner Bros
Role: Copywriter
Expectations for The Lego Batman Movie were sky high. We knew it was funny, which helped, but how were we going to convince a wide variety of people from kids to teenagers to twenty-something superhero buffs that it was going to be even funnier than the first Lego Movie and worth their effort?
By letting Lego Batman be Lego Batman and barge his way through popular culture, that’s how. In a unique partnership with Channel 4 we gave him a job as its continuity announcer for a weekend, making 18 short films that got Batman talking about some of the most popular shows on TV while showcasing his hilarious need to always be the centre of attention.
Agency: That Lot
Role: Creative Director
You know what these are. Last year, we did some.
“Spotify Wrapped, but for Gen-Z” was the brief. As Spotify’s social media agency of record, we were perfectly placed to oblige.
To support Adobe’s ‘Everyone Can. Photoshop’ campaign, we were tasked with demonstrating to a new generation of creators that whilst Photoshop can seem intimidating, the tools are actually more intuitive than you might think.
Thus ‘Photoshop IRL’ was born, a YouTube and Instagram Reels content series showing popular influencers that Photoshop tools like the lasso, layers, and paint bucket tools are actually as straightforward (and often simpler) to use as their In Real Life (IRL) counterparts.
We supported the hero content with a diverse suite of paid assets across the Meta suite.
Agency: Sky Creative Agency
Client: Sky Atlantic
Role: Senior Creative / Social Lead
Benedict Cumberbatch in the role he was born to play. Across TV, social, digital and outdoor, we portrayed an aristocrat tormented by his past as he spirals into addiction and depression and then, hopefully, emerges a better man.
Sophisticated, adult, and surprisingly funny, Patrick is a man seemingly in control, but unable to prevent himself falling into absurd circumstances. Whilst the show had comedic elements, at it’s heart was a dark tragedy. We revealed two sides to him – ostensibly a suave playboy, but underneath lies a broken, out-of-control man haunted by his father’s memory.
Agency: That Lot
Role: Creative Director
Results:
3.8bn brand views
12.02% engagement rate
+6% brand lift
+19% Brand Lift - Ad Recall
The Ask:
Utilise HSBC UK’s varied range of sporting partnerships to create a programme of Financial Education for kids and young people, ranging from social and digital content to physical handouts for schools. In the middle of a raging pandemic.
The Result:
‘Level Up’, a campaign fronted by comedy influencer Ania Magliano and featuring Olympic BMX Rider Kye White, Tim Henman, the Spurs Women’s Team, Brian O’Driscoll and His Royal Thighness Sir Chris Hoy.
We utilised each sporting personality to highlight a different area of Financial Wellbeing in a hero video, over 60 pieces of accompanying social content, as well as producing detailed one-page .pdf’s to distributed to over 50 thousand schools in partnership with Children in Need.
Agency: That Lot
Role: Creative Director
When our network cousins McCann came to us with a platform as great as ‘Small Business Power’ and a desire to activate on social media, we knew we had to jump on it. With a brief asking us to highlight the wonderful and varied young people using eBay to build a business, the result was ‘Bedroom CEOs’, a YouTube deep-dive into the personalities behind the businesses, with short-form, atomised, highly-engaging ad-content going out as paid.
Agency: Sky Creative Agency
Client: Sky Original Productions
Senior Creative / Social & Radio Lead
A challenging brief to promote a brand new show about an abducted child without mentioning upsetting themes such as, er, child abduction.
Featuring a wildly talented ensemble cast, we quickly realised that Save Me’s characters are disparate, diverse and many of them never meet, but one thing links them – Jody, the missing girl. Therefore our campaign set-out to show that Jody is gone, but always with you.
Agency: The Red Brick Road
Client: Up & Go
Role: Experiential Director
When Australia’s biggest and most beloved breakfast drink brand announced their UK launch, we knew we had to create very special, and very Australian. So we created an inflatable, 80 metre long, two story assault course shaped like the Sydney Harbour Bridge and took it on tour around the country. Obviously.
The structure wasn’t for a bit of bouncy fun, though. Working with Pan Studio, we created a bespoke login and timing system to not electronically record the fastest times in each city we visited, but to capture the moment participants leapt from the top of the structure into the waiting foam pit. All 12000 competitors were then emailed their time, position on the global leaderboard, and a photo of them looking terrified, ready for immediate sharing.
Kicking off on London’s Southbank and then touring 5 UK Universities, the campaign was a huge success, generating over £3 million in earned media as well as enabling a sampling campaign that shifted over 100k units up and down the country.
Agency: Sky Creative Agency
Client: Fox Channels
Role: Creative Lead / Copywriter
Capitalising on the media buzz surrounding the epic Joshua V. Klitschko fight airing on Sky last April, we ‘borrowed’ talent from from the sporting world to get the hype going for the real fight of the century – Walking Dead Hero Rick Grimes vs Season 8 baddie Negan.
Roping in news anchors, sports stars and pundits from across the Sky business (yes, even the darts), we cut an epic promo featuring stars such as Kirsty Gallagher and Chris Kamara, even grabbing the big man himself, Anthony Joshua, to get his opinion on who’ll be the last man standing.
The resulting social clip was viewed over 8 million times on Facebook alone with over 20k shares, and the Season 8 debut was Fox Network’s best performing series-return ever.
The campaign was also supplemented by two social videos promoting The Walking Dead’s imminent release as a Sky Box Set – featuring a rapper, a zombie and some extremely old people, earning a combined organic view count of 3 million.