Transforming OLIVER
The most significant creative achievement of my career is the creative transformation I led at OLIVER UK. There’s no one killer picture that can capture it, so here are 1,000 words instead…
TL;DR
Most ECDs can make good advertising.
Fewer can build the agencies and teams to make it happen. And fewer still understand how GenAI reshapes everything. I've spent eight years doing all three at OLIVER UK – from delivering the first gold awards to the first AI category winners; from pitching Boots to pioneering an AI acceleration that turned creative sceptics into specialists. The frontier I'm chasing now is AI creativity that goes beyond advertising comms and takes brands into entirely new products, services, and experiences.
If that's the conversation you're ready to have, I'm here for it. ** add here about orchestration of end to end platforms like Pencil, Adobe, and any others like node-based as the principles are the same*
From the home of in-house –
to the new model for AI creativity at scale.
You may not be overly familiar with my name. But, if you know OLIVER’s in-house story, you’ve already seen the impact of my work. I’ve been instrumental in helping transform OLIVER UK from production-led to creative-first, and now AI-enhanced.
It’s been a formative experience for me, too.
When OLIVER hired me as Executive Creative Director in 2017, their model was scaling fast – but the creative reputation was still catching up. If you knew OLIVER at this point, you probably thought “efficient in-house studio builders”, not “award-winning creative partner”.
We had over 50 clients, and almost as many on-site agencies throughout the UK. The creative teams were embedded with clients, doing solid creative work, but with little connective tissue.
I’d spent twenty years inside WPP and Omnicom networks. In all that time, I can remember just a handful of genuine, cross-network cooperations. At OLIVER, I saw the opportunity to build the opposite. A collaborative creative community, immersed with clients, connected across markets, with a unified aspiration for creating great creative work.
Creative growth, and scale.
My mandate wasn’t just to make better ads. It was to build a creative culture capable of thriving alongside the complex, political, high-speed reality of modern business.
As UK ECD I had a simple but demanding brief.
Raise our creative quality and establish a creative reputation.
Help bring in new clients and build out new agencies for major brands.
Turn a production-led model into a truly orchestrated creative network, with teeth.
Over the following years I helped set up dozens of bespoke embedded agencies, each tailored to the brand’s exacting needs. We won brands that included Boots, Reckitt, Apple, Ford, e-On, Haleon, RHS, Tesco, World Remit, McDonalds, MindGym, Morgan Stanley, Pets at Home, Danone, Beyond Meat, and Barclays.
Barclaycard is a key brand in the story. With financial services being one of the most regulated, risk-averse categories, if you can make ambitious, effective work in FS, you can do it anywhere. Barclaycard became both a pressure test for ideas about transforming our model with clients – and a gratifying creative outlet.
A Creative Contender
Within 12 just months at the helm, OLIVER had delivered its first major statement of creative intent.
Our first Gold awards – bona fide approval from peers that in-house could bring home award-winning ideas at scale.
An award-winning film spot – Barclaycard “Gorillas” would become our first prime time TVC. An unassuming fraud-prevention brief that proved our teams could deliver big, broadcast-level storytelling as well as always-on content.
First huge win–/ Another example here
A first amongst equals – every brand in the UK had the exact same brief for GDPR. Before we put pen to paper, I set an explicit ambition to win awards with our work for The Guardian. We did. And we drove stunning results against all the other digital landfill during that period.
Over the following years there would be many more firsts, too.
Campaign Agency of the Year finalist in 2020 – the first of 5 years in a row in the final.
D&AD Pencil – The Guardian’s 200th anniversary – work by Sam Jacobs, Rae Stones & Liam Smith – picked up OLIVER’s first D&AD pencil. A proper creative milestone for our business.
Add another first here.
And most recently, our first AI category award shortlisting.
OLIVER’s first ever shortlist for an AI award, for a financial services brand, in one of the most tightly regulated sectors.
Of course, the creative growth was key to agency growth in other areas too – our client list expanded to 100, our revenue trebled to £110m, and my creative department expanded to c400 creators.
“It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
— Squarespace