Role: Concept / Strategy / Copy / Project management
The brief:
SheSays, the only global creative network for women, wanted to make some noise around Mother’s Day.
The insight:
Statistics show that, depressingly, working mothers are 18% more stressed than everyone else. If you have more than one child, that figure shoots up to 40%. Well, duh. Raising a human (or humans) while trying to find that mythical work life balance can be exhausting, especially in a male-dominated industry that runs on last minute deadlines and manic energy.
The idea:
Mother’s Day is a chance for everyone to celebrate the wonderful job women do in parenting. We forget that so many of those women also have a paying job and somehow manage to juggle both brilliantly. So on a day where mums are being lauded for their child-rearing skills, we wanted to shout about to our ad mums for their skills in the boardroom and on the creative floor, so they could felt seen and supported by their peers.
We commissioned a collection of completely different, brilliantly creative female illustrators to each create a Mother’s Day card, acknowledging a different skill and life stage with insightful and quirky copy. The cards were then printed and available to buy through social media and the SheSays website. To launch the campaign, we selected key figures in the advertising world, who also happen to be mums, and sent them a handwritten card with the details of the campaign, along with an emailer that we sent around various agencies, urging them to show their staff of mums a bit of love.
example copy:
You’re one in a million for smiling politely at clients when your morning sickness makes everything smell like bin.
You’re brilliant for finding that excellent insight while drowning in messages from the NCT whatsapp group.
Thanks for reviewing our copy even though your toddler has forgotten how to sleep.
You’re the best for leading that conference call while your whole house has the lurgy.
Well done for presenting that pitch so brilliantly with baby food in your hair. (Only you knew, we thought you looked great.)
Well done for nailing that big idea even though you were up all night pouring pureed vegetables into stupidly tiny weaning pots.
Role: Concept / Copy
Be Future Positive is Drax’s first brand campaign designed to help business leaders on their mandatory journey to net zero by 2050. Following research among their target audience, we crafted an inspiring brand idea that cut through the doom fatigue, aided by beautiful illustrations and an animation by world-renowned Noma Bar. The campaign drew 2 million views to the website and a 141% increase on click-through rates. Better yet: 70% of those who saw the campaign said they would now consider Drax when renegotiating their energy contracts - exactly what we were tasked with doing.
Role: Concept / Copy
Brief:
Our client, Unite Students, tasked us with four creative campaigns for 2022/23. However, they didn’t want four disconnected campaigns, so asked us to come up with a connecting thread between them all, to ensure they felt part of the same family, while still speaking to a wide range of audiences and campaign stages.
Our insight:
Niche interests and subcultures are on the rise as Gen Z look to like-minded communities to express their true selves.
Our idea:
As hackneyed as it might sound, University is where people can find themselves. It’s a place where anything goes. Where everyone is accepted. Where you have space to become whoever you are, and experiment with who that might be again and again. At Unite Students, there are homes to cater to every need and whim, with social spaces for both the quietly bookish and the life and souls. So whether you’re into extreme couponing, looking for a soap carving club or fancy yourself as the next cryptocurrency queen - join our diverse, eclectic community and come and find your crowd at Unite Students, and get access to a plethora of experiences, connections and memories for life.
How ‘You do You’ rolled out as a strategic thread across the campaigns:
Retention - Where else can you do you?
Acquisition - You do you in our fabulous community.
Summer - You do summer, however you choose.
Clearing - You can still do you, just the way you’d planned.
Role: Concept / Copy
The brief:
To encourage young, sun-loving South Africans to remember their suncream over summer holidays.
The insight:
Most sun cream advertisements tell us the same thing, over and over: too much exposure to the sun is bad for our skin. Instead of chastising people we wanted to try a different angle. Humour. Because let's be real, sunburn makes you look stupid.
The idea:
We decided to use beach stereotypes to star in our posters; the leather faced, mahogany skinned old woman, the Mediterranean mafioso with the hairy chest and giant belly and the pasty nerd on holiday who wears socks with his sandals. To a ‘beach body ready’ audience they all look undeniably stupid, but with sunburn, you look even more stupid.
Role: Copy / Creative Direction
The brief:
To make waves on International Women’s Day.
The insight:
With the average creative department being 70% male, young female creatives lack role models to look up to and emulate, and are leaving the industry, or switching over to other departments, in their droves.
The idea:
To mark International Women’s Day 2019, as bandstand’s personal contribution to the female creative community and in our quest for balance, we created a set of PDF downloadable guidelines, written and designed in familiar ‘agency speak’, full of empowering advice and tips for young female creatives to not just survive, but thrive, in the male-dominated advertising industry. We shared the PDF on our website, on social media, with other creative communities and agencies and with advertising schools and universities.
Role: Concept / Art Direction
The brief:
To launch the new Samsung Galaxy TabPro S - a portable and powerful 2 in 1.
The insight:
The Galaxy TabPro S is the ultimate tool for the modern slash generation - light and neat enough to be shoved in a backpack and carried with them wherever they go; empowering them to juggle work and life.
The idea:
We created a series that shone a light on these progressive, real life, slash entrepreneurs, whose days all revolve around technology. Jack Monroe, an activist, YouTube presenter, food writer and cook (amongst many other things) launched our series with a day-in-the-life-of TVC, complemented with a series of additional shorts for social media. These showcased Jack in their home, cooking up a storm, discussing technology as a platform for what they do everyday and their relationship with their audience as a result. (Other entrepreneurs in the series included carb-loving Londoner favourites, Pizza Pilgrims.)
Role: Concept / Copy
Evolving last year’s rental rebellion, we decided to challenge the idea of what a rebellion looks like and how it operates, rooting the rebellion firmly in the ‘real’ with sumptuous, spacious and beautifully lit photography of Tipi’s homes while the language unpacked Tipi’s USPs with its tongue firmly in its cheek.
The campaign ran across a gargantuan spread of media; from films online to tube cards, bus shelters to banners, billboards to onsite building wraps at Wembley Park.
We encouraged every Londoner to join our rental rebellion – only, from their sofa, with their feet firmly up.
Role: Concept
The brief:
To do something completely fresh and unique within the condom category.
The insight:
A condom protects the people using it. Simple as that. So let’s demonstrate that in the most visually immediate and arresting way.
The idea:
Placing an actual condom over the lens, we shot three lovely ladies in flagrante. The condom acted as a protective barrier between the intimate image and the consumer, both making a statement and simply demonstrating the function and benefit of Lovers Plus condoms.
Role: Research & Strategy / Copy
The brief:
OFM was an un-sexy radio station based in the un-sexier Free State, South Africa. They wanted to be sexy again, but scores of misconceptions surrounded them (too white, too old fashioned, too Afrikaans, too small). We were tasked with challenging these misconceptions and showing people, specifically media planners, what they were missing by ignoring this radio station.
The insight:
Our brains respond more to melody than language, so it felt fitting to use music as a vehicle for our message.
The brief:
We made a music box; a direct mail piece that could sit on the planner’s desk. The statistics, infographics and copy were beautifully designed and printed onto long sheets of music, which was fed into the music box and played by winding its handle.
When writing the copy, I decided to hero the station’s USPs through song; using song titles as headlines and indication of the USP. (For example: USP: OFM is a monopoly. Song: One and Only, Adele.) I then aligned each song to a DJ and programme from OFM, keeping it relevant and real. The copy then tackled each misconception in more detail, giving the media planner all the information they needed to change their minds. Each was finished with a call to action and a plea to: Change your tune.
Role: Concept / Copy
The brief:
To find the human element in a category dogged by the belief that trackers are just another redundant form of car insurance.
The insight:
Often animals or even small children are taken with the cars that are hijacked.
The idea:
We decided to tell an imagined story of love, legacy and ambitions, demonstrating that, “A live saved is a life lived.”
The long copy bit:
AVA
The colour of Ava’s hair,
a startled puff of copper curls,
will not be the only thing that makes her stand out.
Her favourite toy won’t be a doll but a dusty globe,
triumphantly rescued with shining eyes from a forgotten corner.
Suitcases on her travels,
bursting with brightly coloured sleeves and wispy slips of cotton,
will gradually be replaced by books heavy with information
and pockets full of hastily scribbled plans and hb pencil stubs.
She will have an ability not just to look,
but to see.
Buildings will rise in spidery charcoal lines from her sketchpad
as her ideas spill over into far-flung communities scattered around the world.
She will create rooms for people to wait,
roofs over children to learn
and walls around families to gather,
leaving foundations behind
that will long outlive her and us.
A life saved is a life lived.
*
JASPER
The most important thing in Jasper’s life
is his bunny,
Sidney.
What he doesn’t know
is that there is a living, breathing, loving Sarah in his future
who will be infinitely more precious to him.
A Sarah that he will travel with,
sharing exotic food and strange skies,
sitting underneath yellow moons discussing nothing and everything.
A Sarah who he will lie in bed with for hours,
watching the sun play with the pear shaped birthmark that hugs her collarbone.
A Sarah who he will welcome small, saucer eyed children
full of questions and determination into the world with.
A Sarah who he will share the myriad ecstatic highs and crashing lows
his colourful life has to offer,
eventually mourning for her as he discovers,
many years from now, what it is to lose the other half of you.
A life saved is a life lived.
*
VUYO
The seemingly simple way Vuyo clutches his bear
is telling of the person he will be.
It belies a determination that will set him apart.
He won’t be the brightest student, but he will work the hardest.
He will miss the shy smile of his lab partner,
desperate for him to notice her,
but he’ll have an innate ability to clear his mind
and see through the jumble of letters and numbers before him.
His flirt with science will develop into a greedy thirst
as he constantly embarks and disembarks
in waiting rooms scattered around the world.
Impossibly small fingers will curl around his
and lined faces will look up at him with quiet patience.
He will know the crushing blow of a silent body
and the joy of a child’s cry as its lungs flex and shudder noisily into the new world, his heart stumbling at each new face.
A life saved is a life lived.
Role: Concept / Copy / Direction
The brief:
To encourage sun-loving South Africans to take the very real threat of skin damage seriously.
The insight:
We decided to step away from the more traditional finger wagging approach, and toy with humour. After all, no one takes you seriously with sunburn.
The idea:
We’ve all seen people in the office, post-holiday, who have overdone it. We decided - tongues firmly in cheek - to push this a little further, by taking menacing, frightening and deeply sad situations and turning them on their heads.
Role: Concept / Copy / Project management
The brief:
Brother’s for Life, a South African NGO, wanted to create an impact on World Aids Day with only a teeny tiny budget.
The insight:
In 2012, Aids killed 1000 South Africans every single day. Those kind of numbers are so big and unimaginable (resulting in a desensitised public) that we decided to put a face on the statistic.
The idea:
We decided to tap into the relatively new, but increasingly popular Twitter, and its very politically motivated followers - creating 1000 Twitter accounts on the eve of World Aids Day. Each account tweeted hourly for 24 hours, signing off with our hashtag #HIVarmy. The messages were from one united voice, an HIV positive sufferer, speaking candidly and emotionally. At midnight, each and every account died, ending with a message from Brother’s for Life about Aids prevention.
The campaign attracted both national and international interest and trended worldwide before lunchtime, with visits to local clinics and hospitals to get tested skyrocketing afterwards.
