Monzo asked us to produce a plethora of images in line with their new ATL branding.

An art directors dream brief and a producers nightmare when we said we wanted a motorbike on set (sorry Ben).

So after a few weeks concepting and a 4 day studio shoot we had over 50 images for the Monzo team to use online, in app and across social.

Even better, they want to make some of them into OOH posters very soon.

Only 17% of ECDs in advertising are women.*

We created a recruitment campaign to help change that shocking fact and possibly even find our new Head of Creative at AFG.

As we were leafing through some old D&AD annuals. Seeing the work of some of our favourite creative leaders got us thinking... what do they all have in common? They're all men. 

What would their stories have been like if they were women? Would they have risen to the same heights?

Thus, our provocative GenAI recruitment campaign was born.

*D&AD Festival 2024

Every October, it's relentless. The leaves fall, and it's suddenly Pumpkin Spice Latte season.

We wanted to give the nation some respite from this frankly basic drink, by inviting people to break up with it and get cuffed up with the new Maple Hazel range from Costa.

Just like the Paul Simon song, there are fifty ways to leave your latte.

So we worked with a huge team of up-and-coming illustrators to flood the nation's social feeds, and even created a OOH campaign and a retro themed Google Chrome plugin to match.

For International Women’s Day, we decided to do something instead of saying something.

In collaboration with our HR department (you don’t get to say that much), we created an open source period policy that any company can easily borrow and adopt for their own workplace.

Then, of course, we made some nice posters to spread the word.

[Transcript of an actual conversation between Dani and Alex]

’You know how Spike Lee does that cool double dolly effect?’

’I think so’

’Well what if we put real small business owners on a dolly, and then had a load of customers dancing about, to show how personalised ads connect them with their customers?’

’Yeah okay, that could work’

The first of many Meta ads we’ve done this year that brings a more human story and touch to using their ad platform.

Brand relaunch for the Royal Opera House.

We wanted to capture the world of ballet and opera in a way that hadn’t been seen before.

Then give people who had never been a reason to go.

From TV, cinema, OOH, to the walls of the House itself.

You can even buy limited prints of the works from the gift shop (don’t worry, we don’t get a penny from them).

D&AD Graphite Pencil - Photography
D&AD Shortlist - Press and Outdoor

We found that the kids were dying their crisp white Nikes in coffee, then posting the results to social media.

Once we got over the sacrilege, we thought to ourselves, what could Costa do with this trend?

Introducing the Drip 1 - a handmade Italian sneaker from the indie brand Artisan Lab, dipped in Costa’s very own Mocha Italia blend and used grounds from the stores.

Hand-dyed by yours truly, we’ve made 20 pairs to give away to lucky coffee/sneaker headz.

An integrated campaign where you could send a mixtape to someone, just like back in school.

But this is the twenty-first century, so we sent people a box of cookies that looked like a walkman and a tape, with a specially themed OREO playlist.

You could also scan a pack of cookies in-store to win a whole host of musical prizes.

AKFC is part of Alive + Kicking. A charity that uses football as a force for good. They make ethically produced footballs in Africa. Paying a fair wage to help communities and providing vital health education.

We fell in love with their mission and wanted to share it with the world, driving subscriptions and donations in the process.

So we had an idea (and a world first). What if we created an incredibly desirable shirt - and launched it simultaneously in FIFA 21 and in real life?

Working with Hummel and shirt designer HeyBigMan, in our spare time we tinkered away for months - creating not just the physical shirt but also a competitive squad builder challenge for gamers to complete to unlock the digital version. Creating desirability and exclusivity - we wanted it to become a badge of honour.

When you build a team of all-African legends - you unlock the shirt, balls and TIFOs so you can rep us in game. And if you really want to join the team, you can become a regular donor and wear the shirt IRL.

We created a full-fledged influencer campaign with footballer Alex Iwobi, launched the shirt on Twitch and spread the news far and wide online.

Tens of thousands of gamers unlocked the shirt, and all shirts from the first batch are sold. We’ve smashed our targets for subscriptions and donations, and are planning to be back in FIFA 22!

Corbyn poster - Campaign Press ad of the Year 2018

If you want to sell a newspaper, it pays to be quick off the mark.

So we made these posters for the 2017 election campaign, then again the following year for the Tory party conference.

We’d put good money on the the word ‘Vaudevillian’ never appearing in an ad again.

The i is the only newspaper that’s growing in circulation in the UK. The people who buy it love it, but because they are a sparky and relatively young paper, brand recognition is still quite low.

We changed that with our set of idents on Dave - bringing the ‘i’ logo to life in a series of topical and witty short films.

Directed by the legendary Mark Denton and puppeteered by some of the best in the biz.

They say that 1 in 10 Europeans were conceived in an IKEA bed. 

We have no idea how many were conceived after given these pastel pun-tastic cards, but we bet it was loads. 

We made our Luvkards available at the checkout in IKEA stores, as shareable posts on social media, and for the super negligent/tight, we also made them as printable PDFs hosted on the IKEA website. 

You're welcome, Europe. 

Phew. We were in the midst of Lockdown 3.0 when we heard rumours that the government would be allowing people to meet up with friends in the park for a coffee.

That second part made our ears prick up, and we got on the phone straight away to Union Coffee with an idea.

‘Let’s celebrate this milestone and release new editions of the coffee blends, twinned with parks in London!’

They loved it, and gave us a week to make it happen before the rules were relaxed.

A few cafétieres, pour overs, and espressos later, we had a whole new range of products and packaging, matched exquisitely to the parks in London we love.

Union saw a record boost in sales, and customers bought thousands of packs to share with their friends.

A reboot of the little meaty maniac everyone remembers from their childhood.

We partnered with Merlin to give away free tickets to scary rides, and even gave away over 20,000 pairs of Peperami branded ‘Under-Crackers’ if all that frightening activity left you needing a new pair.

Back in his uni days, Alex once got a very bemused look from his professor when he admitted he couldn’t speak a single word of latin.

He definitely still can’t, so these idents are dedicated to Dr Shrimpton.

The new Vauxhall Corsa was launching with a TV ad that took you on a nostalgic ride through the ‘A-Z’ of Britain’s favourite supermini.

To support this activity, we created a brand website where you could enter any letter on your keyboard and it’d unlock information about the car. You could then type a message, which would create a unique advert for you - your very own A-Z that you could share with the world.

An integrated TV campaign to launch Nick Grimshaw's new show.

#TeamGrimmy - a host of celebs trying to make sure Nick doesn't muck up his first day. 

Teenagers (his new target audience) all over the world loved it - some even made money by printing a load of the #TeamGrimmy t-shirts. Wish we had the idea for that.

Gifs were made, tears were shed and panic ensued that Harry Styles had forever changed his hair-do. 

To this day, Grimshaw still uses the brand identity we developed for him. 

Interactive, surreal pieces of content that pit the ultimate Pringles fan against four new and improved flavours.

Shown on YouTube and Facebook, this campaign was one of the first branded examples of using YouTube annotations to allow the audience to choose who would win: Fan or Flavour.

The videos notched up 3.1 million views in just 6 weeks.

Winner of IAB Creative Showcase. 

Music: Performed by TAKESHI-TERAUCHI & BLUE JEANS.