AI & Creative Transformation

CONSULTANCY | FREELANCE | FTC

If you’re a brand, in-house team, agency or AI platform, I can help you deliver better creative work, build better creative systems, and embed AI in ways that amplify your talent and bring in new capabilities.

Sometimes that means stepping in as ECD on a live project, pilot or pitch. Sometimes it means diagnosing what's really holding a team back. Sometimes it means shaping and leading a broader transformation.

But, fundamentally, it always comes back to the same thing:
make the creative work better – and make the creatives work better.

There's no shortage of AI theatre right now. I'm here to help you solve the right problem – whether that sits in your work, your team, your process, or your operating model around it – it all starts with a chat.

Here’s how I can help

These are the clearest ways to bring me in. They're structured starting points – tailored to your brief, your business and your ambition.

One-off ECD for Projects,
Pilots & Pitches

Senior creative firepower. When the moment matters.

Not every engagement needs to become a programme, or a palaver.

Sometimes you just need an experienced creative leader to step in fast, sharpen the thinking, shape the work, and get something important over the line. A campaign. A pitch. An AI pilot. A product idea that needs shaping into something real. Someone who can do and direct.

    • You need senior creative leadership without making a full-time hire

    • The brief is high-stakes or strategically important

    • The team needs an experienced pair of hands

    • You want someone who can think and make, not advise from the sidelines, and partner with your existing talent.

  • Project and campaign leadership. Creative direction on pilots and prototypes. Pitch support. Concept development. AI-enabled creative exploration. Senior oversight on work that needs to land properly.

  • Stronger thinking. Faster decisions. Better work. (And, usually, a calmer room.)

Bring me in on a project

Creative & AI Audit

A clear starting point when your answer's not yet obvious.

Most teams have AI ambitions. Most also know something needs to change. The trick is understanding if the real issue is the work, the flow of the work, the capability, the tools, the talent, or all five at once.

This is a short, focused diagnostic. It looks at the creative product, the team, the process, the AI readiness, and the organisation's appetite for change – as well as your clients'. The aim is a practical view of where the friction actually sits and where the opportunity is waiting. Then comes a prioritised roadmap for what to do about it.

    • You know there's upside to be found, but you don't know where or how to start

    • You suspect the issue runs deeper than tooling

    • You want a sharper view of what's holding progress back

    • You'd rather have an informed next step than a generic transformation deck

  • Stakeholder conversations. Creative work review. Workflow and capability assessment. AI readiness audit. Gaps, opportunities, and a prioritised roadmap.

  • A diagnosis you can act on. A starting point, built on experience and evidence.

Start with an audit

Creative Quality Transformation

From good enoughness – to greatness.

Perhaps your work has become too safe, too uneven, and all too forgettable. The team is busy, but their output isn't getting stronger. The thing is, you may even feel you have the right pieces to play with – but you need some fresh perspective. And a proven plan.

This is about raising the standard of the creative product and improving the system that produces it. Sharper standards. Better process. Better feedback loops. Better leadership. Better use of AI where it can genuinely help. Stronger foundations. And growth in talent.

The best transformation is in partnership with the existing creative leadership.

    • The creative output isn't as strong or distinctive as it used to be

    • Quality is inconsistent

    • You need to embed a process and a plan to help the work continually improve

    • The team needs clearer standards and stronger creative direction

    • You want to raise ambition as well as output

  • Creative standards and evaluation. Briefing and feedback improvement. Workflow and process redesign. Team and talent development. Creative leadership support. Reputation-building strategy. Practical AI integration where it adds value.

  • A reenergised creative culture. Renewed aspirations for creating your best work. Clearer standards. More confident teams. Bespoke systems behind the work, fresh ambition out in front of it.

    I’ve developed playbooks that have changed the game for dozens of brands.

Talk about creative quality

AI Creative Acceleration

From curiosity to co-worker.

AI pilots are easy. The real value comes from building an end-to-end creative system that uses AI to produce stronger work, faster, while respecting brand governance and compliance.

This is a tailored programme for brands, in-house teams and agencies that want AI woven through the organisation with creative leading the way. Will-set to skill-set. Workflow redesign. Playbooks. Prompting frameworks. Brand-safe sandbox environments. Leadership guidance. And, crucially, getting real briefs, campaigns and content systems live.

The goal is a creative organisation that uses AI as part of its M.O. – confidently, responsibly, and at a higher level of quality.

    • The organisation wants more from AI, but adoption is unevenly distributed

    • You're yet to have real work live on the market for the majority of your clients

    • Leadership wants progress, but the operating model hasn't caught up

    • Teams are experimenting, but the experiments aren't compounding

    • You're ready to open up new swim lanes for your work

  • Capability building. Workflow design. Sandbox creation. Prompting and orchestration frameworks. Leadership support. Bespoke methodologies for training the models on your brands, and ways of working. Live application to real creative output at scale and on repeat.

  • Better use of AI. Better work. Better workflows. Better judgement at scale. From scepticism to specialism.

Talk about acceleration

Embedded Creative Partner

Senior creative support, over time,
at any time.

Some challenges aren't solved in a done-in-one sprint. They need continuity, judgement, and someone close enough to the organisation and the work to help shape decisions as the business evolves.

Especially when it comes to the pace of change around AI capabilities.

This is an ongoing, sleeves-rolled-up advisory role that flexes around what the organisation actually needs. Think of it as senior creative support at whatever depth makes sense – from ad hoc to fractional ECD. (No, I'm not a fan of that F-word either but, SEO and GEO likes it.)

    • You want a senior creative partner in the room, ready to go when you need it

    • You want 360 thinking and AI leadership advice, without the meter running 24/7

    • The organisation is changing and needs someone who's been there, done that, got the T-shaped skillset to help

    • You need continuity across projects, teams and decisions

    • You want support that is strategic, practical and grounded in delivery

  • Fractional ECD support. Strategic counsel. Ongoing AI guidance. Creative quality oversight. Capability building. Support across projects, programmes and transformation work. A senior sounding board with taste, perspective and operational experience.

  • Better continuity. Better choices. Better standards. Less drift. More wiring, less firefighting.

Talk about advisory

For AI Platforms & Startups

I also work with AI platforms that want to become indispensable for creative organisations and more valuable to the market.

My key contribution is helping embed a sharper sense of what good looks like into the model, the product and the workflow around it. That's where 25 years of creative experience and taste pays off.

Helping customers understand, adopt and get real value from the platform.

That might mean acting as a forward-deployed creative partner that can translate platform capabilities into something commercially meaningful for key accounts, as well as helping customers move from demo excitement to actually shipping live work.

Go-to-market support

Product-side support

Helping improve the creative usefulness of the product itself, from someone who has been hands-on with the tools while also watching hundreds of creatives adopt them in the wild.

That can mean pressure-testing outputs against real brand and agency standards, identifying where creative quality breaks down, helping shape features and workflows, and connecting technical capability to the reality of how creative teams actually work.

Talk about platform support

How we’d work together

There's no one-size-fits-all model. But the pattern is usually some version of this:

1. Start with a conversation

A straightforward chat about your problem, your ambition, and where the real opportunity sits.

2. Diagnose where needed

If the challenge isn't yet clear, a short diagnostic creates focus and defines the smartest first move.

3. Shape the right engagement

That might be a one-off ECD intervention. A pilot. A transformation programme. An ongoing advisory relationship. The format flows from your problem.

4. Deliver in the way the brief demands

Hands-on where needed. Strategic where useful. Always grounded in making the work better and the organisation stronger.

I’m also a principal with S42Labs, which means any tech solutions I propose are supported by actual builders who can ship it with us.

And, some proof points

Taste

Cannes-winning creative judgement and 25 years of building brands through integrated advertising.

I bring together three things that rarely sit in the same place:

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Tech

Digital since the dawn of it. Deep hands-on fluency with AI tools, workflows and creative systems.

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Transformation

Proven experience developing teams, changing standards, and modernising creative operations at scale.

This combination helped transform the creative reputation of OLIVER UK, led the GenAI-powered creative transformation at Barclays and Barclaycard, and built embedded creative capability in-house with dozens of major brands in the UK. More about my professional  journey here.

View case studies

Some numbers:

  • 100+ creative awards (incl. 4 Cannes Lions, 2 IPAs, D&AD Pencil...)

  • Leadership of OLIVER UK's creative department – over 350 creatives, £110m revenue

  • First GenAI-integrated advertising campaign shipped by a major UK financial services brand

Let’s start with a conversation

If you've got a live project, pilot or pitch that needs senior creative leadership, I can help with that.

If you know something needs to change but you're not yet clear where to start, a Creative AI Diagnostic is the quickest way to get clarity.

Either way, your first step is an easy chat:

Locations:
London & Virtually