BT/RNLI Summer Appeal
With your BT talent attraction work, Ph created a cross-channel campaign united by the tagline ‘We Are the Protectors.’
With the RNLI Summer Appeal, I contributed print and web copy united by the word ‘count’ used in several ways throughout the campaign, from ‘your support counts/can our lifesavers count on your support?’ to an overall creative approach fronted by the use of compelling stats and numbers. Please see that here.
I’m sharing this as an example of my contribution to larger campaign work designed to inspire pride in a brand and call the target audience to action. It includes heavily-researched stats that show my ability to use insight, along with headlines and end lines, and – on the address carriers – the skill to turn real-world interviews into concise and persuasive content.
Magellan/Business Is Everywhere
With the Magellan brief, Ph had the insight to realise your work needed to change the perception that healthcare companies existed to make money rather than help people.
At Apple, I worked on a comms series called ‘Business is Everywhere,’ where the goal was to change the perception that B2B sales were only made by stores over the phone. Instead, we wanted Creatives and other front-of-house store members to understand how they could contribute to business transactions, and that it was all part of selling the Apple vision.
I’ve taken the unusual step of publishing the relevant piece above, trusting you won’t share the link onwards.
You’ll notice the piece also works to address the staffing problem I mentioned on our call, by telling a story of someone moving to a different store for a fresh opportunity. In that way, I answered the Business team brief, while keeping in mind the brief from the Staffing team to show Apple Store employees the vast number of opportunities open to them outside of more conventional ‘upwards’ career progression.
By sharing this, I’m hoping to convey that while the application of work might have been different to Ph’s campaigns, the thinking was similar and that I’m able to write strategic copy designed specifically to address and change perceptions in a target audience of company employees.
VF Corporation/Goodbeans
With the VF brief, Ph factored in the company’s values around sustainability and created a content-led digital magazine brand; one designed to appeal to a workforce attracted in the first place by the cool-factor and innovative nature of the company’s apparel brands.
In my work with Goodbeans, I factored in the r+r Foundation’s nature as a social enterprise to create a bottled coffee brand; one designed to appeal to a very specific, style-conscious and ethically-minded demographic. Please see it in my portfolio here.
With you already having seen my work for NATS, I wanted to share this as an altogether different example of my approach to brand creation and the thinking that went into it – bearing in mind that this was a pro bono project, that I took on at the time expressly for the purpose of trying my hand at this kind of work.
I’m aware that creating product brands and employer brands are two different things, and that Ph applies far greater weight to insights than I was able to here. However, I believe there are strong unifying threads when it comes to the thinking about consumer, brand values and overall creative approach. At Ph I see the opportunity to take that skill and work with bigger businesses, using deeper insights to create brands that move people – in the way my work on The Relay did during my time at Apple.
Finally, a creative anecdote
While at The AA I was tasked with writing tweets (and their accompanying media) to promote the brand’s partnership with British Gas for Gas Safety Week.
I knew the campaign had gotten precious little traction the previous year, which those in the AA’s creative studio put down to a few factors:
- The sheer dryness of the subject matter
- Its unsuitability for Twitter
- And the vagueness of the brand hashtag, #GSW, which had been mandated to us by British Gas.
To address this, I came up with a campaign idea designed to grab attention, get people talking (and sharing!), and help make the #GSW hashtag something memorable while solidifying its association with gas safety.
Inspired by Cadbury’s drum-playing Gorilla of yesteryear (one of my very favourite ads ever), I suggested creating a short animated video in which a cartoon goose would come home, turn on the stove and begin cooking dinner, only to catch fire. The animation would then stop, the campaign hashtag #GSW would appear, and wording (ideally with a voiceover narrating it) would say “It’s not Goose Safety Week, it’s Gas Safety Week.”
After this, the video would then segway into the dryer and more businesslike gas safety messaging, offering tips that would be represented in the same cartoon style.
The idea was to use this approach with various other subjects, from gorillas to greengrocers – practically anything that began with a G was fair game.
(In the end, the idea was vetoed by my Creative Director who deemed it too off-brand. At their direction, we took the usual conservative, conventional approach – with similar results to the previous year).
While I don’t have this creative for this idea to share, I wanted to include this anecdote as an example of my ability to come up with attention-grabbing, perhaps slightly unusual creative approaches that can add life and fun to otherwise dry subjects. In some way it reminded me of your own Human Codec video, in which the lady ends up dressed in a unicorn onesie, hopping behind a rainbow.