Here are some of the projects that I have delivered for brands I have worked at over the years.
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Converse Represent
The 2012 Olympics saw over 2m people swarm to London City for the games. The Olympics are heavily regulated so unless you are an official sponsor, brands are limited to how and where they can advertise during the period. As we could not legally advertise within East London, we created an experience to bring people to the 100 Club in the centre of town to Represent their musical tastes.
Over the 2 week period we hosted 10 live shows featuring 45 artists such as Blur, Nas, Toots & The Maytals, Santigold, SBTRKT and Best Coast.
The UK’s press attended every single event with coverage spanning both music and London focused publications.
The gigs were also streamed live directly to the Converse Facebook page for the thousands of global fans who couldn’t be at the club, but who wanted to join in the show. Represent won numerous awards both by Marketing publications and Music Week. Following the success of this event, we then ran Represent in both San Francisco and Sao Paulo.
Sonos ReScored at Abbey Road
Live score performed in Abbey Road Studio One Photography: Kevin MoranTo launch our new product Playbase, we set out to see how far we could push the power of sound in home theater to get the final sound the customer hears as close to what you would hear in the recording studio. I put together the best ‘ingredients’ to create the best possible sound; Oscar winning composer Stephen Price (Gravity), Grammy Award-winning producer (Giles Martin), Studio One at Abbey Road and a 58 strong orchestra. I wanted to give this power to an unknown Director starting out who had the visual talent in an existing short film. We embarked on the hunt for a short film which we could rescore .
I secured judges from the world of film; The Observer Film Editor Miranda Sawyer and Bafta Winning Director Simon Cellan-Jones. The winning film would see their new score created by this incredible team and then we would premiere it in Abbey Road’s Studio One to a live audience.
Miranda Sawyer, Luke Flannagan, Stephen Price, Simon Cellan-Jones and Giles Martin. Photography: Kevin MoranThe Guardian created a dedicated section within their website and within their Weekend magazine reaching their 1m weekend readership. We hosted the competition on Sonos.com driving all articles and mentions of the competition into our website.
The competition was promoted via the BFI (British Film Institute),The British Film Alliance, No Film School and Vimeo. After hosting the competition for 3 weeks, we gathered the judges and had a clear winner in Luke Flannagan with his film Mind The Gap. From selecting our winning film Stephen had just 2 weeks to write the new score. Working closely with Luke, they explored the direction the new score would take, ensuring Luke’s original vision would be maintained through the new edit. In Abbey Road Studio One, we brought in a 58 strong orchestra to perform and record the new score. Following this, Giles and his team then had just 2 days to produce the score before unveiling it at our live event.
The final film with its new sound was premiered online with Nowness and on Sonos.com. It was also hosted on The Guardian to close our ReScored season with them.
The Making of video https://vimeo.com/226910080
Final video: https://vimeo.com/228247501
Monsoon x London College Fashion
In an original take on sustainability, this collection was designed for customers to wear it, love it, then print off a whole new garment pattern to reinvent it into something new.
For our 50th birthday we partnered with the students at the London College of Fashion to create a capsule of a 50 year old brand, shown through the eyes of the future of today.
As part of the project, we asked students to consider the end of life of the garment. Their answer was Monsoon Reinvented. In an original take on sustainability, this cutting-edge collection is designed for customers to wear it, love it, then reinvent it into something new one day. We worked with pattern cutter Nicky Cook to turn the designs into new pieces for the future.
With every garment purchase, customers were given a link to download a PDF pattern, share with their local seamstress and get their garment turned into the new pattern and enjoy their clothes for even longer.
Sonos pop up concept store
Photography: Mel YatesSonos opened its first store in Europe in 2017; a retail exhibition, screening and listening space featuring two acoustically-tuned houses designed to emulate a real multi-room home listening space.
Celebrating music culture, past and present, we hosted a series of listening events to announce and celebrate the store opening whilst driving notable PR moments. The opening week saw us host a series of events for family, friends, new neighbours, collaborators and fans of Sonos.
For our first weekend of trading we worked NTS as our broadcast partner for the store’s opening. The digital station streamed live from the store over a period of two days with an eclectic mix of programming consisting of NTS DJ’s and higher profile talent from London and NYC. NTS was also launched as a partner service on Sonos and featured on all in-store products.
Nick Rhodes, Miranda Sawyer, Peaches and Graham Coxon. Photography: Dave BenettTo mark the release of Sonos One, our new voice smart speaker, we partnered with Paul Gorman to curate a display of rarely seen images of David Bowie’s London. To mark this exhibition we launched Song Stories to celebrate the unique voice and influence of David Bowie, demonstrating how he touched and inspired a wide range of artists. The events were hosted by Miranda Sawyer and included guest speakers Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Graham Coxon (Blur), Goldie, Carl Barat (The Libertines) and Peaches.
Converse x Futura at SXSW
Converse trainers are literally a blank canvas just waiting for experiments so I wanted to see what ideas some of the best creative brains would produce. I put a brief into the Creative Social asking them to ‘hack’ a blank Chuck Taylor Hi-Top. Some of the ideas we received were incredible in particular the All Wah – a Chuck Taylor with a Wah Wah pedal inserted within the sole. This experiment resulted in us producing the All Wah shoe as a limited edition run, which we seeded to top guitarists. You can read some of the coverage and see J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. demo the final Chuck here.
Futura at Chuck Hack at the Fader Fort, SXSW. Photography: Amplify agencyIt also led us to take Chuck Hack on the road including SXSW Austin Texas. During the music festival within the Fader Fort, I held a series of customisation workshops led by esteemed artists including OG Slick, Aaron De La Cruz , Sterling Bartlett and original graffiti artist legend, Futura. The artists worked with the audience to help them unleash their creativity and customise their own Chucks on site and drove over 800 people through our activation during the music festival.
Sonos Amnesty, Kings Cross
To support our You’re Better Than This campaign, I wanted to create an ownable moment in London that would wake people up to their absurd listening behaviours whilst growing new households. It was very important that the tone was lighthearted amongst a sea of Brexit despair in order to drive growth in our brand favourability.
We held an Amnesty, putting a call out to Londoners to bring us their old home speakers. The first 300 people to bring us their ‘listening fails’ were given a brand new PLAY:1. We had people queuing from 5am with their old speakers. As people handed over their speakers, we had local artists use them to create a live installation which was on display for 24 hours before being dismantled and recycled.
Photography: Amplify agencyOur activation was highly visible, and running over three days, it complimented the traditional ATL advertising campaign I was running at the same time through print, radio and OOH.
The event reached over 450k real-time commuters, it generated over 482k owned impressions for Sonos and over 1m earned impressions through the unique visual design of the activation.
Following the success in London, Sonos went on to run Anmesty’s in the US.
Monsoon, Back To Origin
Photography: Ben ParksI joined Monsoon in 2021 in order to get the high street brand back to a position of relevancy and desirability. Taking time with the Founder Peter Simon to understand his journey and how Monsoon came to it’s current day, and also working closely with the brilliant Design Director Caroline Jackson, we decided to take Monsoon back to it’s roots, back to it’s DNA, back to where it all began, Back to Origin.
Through premiumising the product and taking inspiration from where it all started, the year long “back to origin” campaign harked back to the roots of the business in Jaipur, India, almost 50 years ago. There was a time where the brand was so significant in people’s hearts because of the bohemian, sustainable and ethical values it stood for. It wasn’t like anything else on the High Street.and this is what we needed to get back to with confidence in who we are.
Photography: Dominika SierutaCreating beautiful product had to be first and foremost. Through our ‘back to origin’ campaign we shot in Jaipur, which is where Monsoon started its journey nearly 50 years ago. We created a lot of the product there in for our first Back To Origin collection, using woodblock techniques and embroidery, hero-ing occasionwear.
We continued throughout my first year, shooting in Ibiza where Peter lived and where the vision for Monsoon first came to him, and then continuing across the year.
Back To Origin was picked up and celebrated by the press, stylists, Fashion Editors and influencers who hadn’t talked about Monsoon for years prior. Through this brand turnaround year, revenues grew by 42% to £240m, beating all expectations we had set ourselves and putting Monsoon firmly back on track.
Photography: Ben ParksConverse x 100 Club partnership
London’s iconic music venue, the 100 Club was under threat from closure. Converse has graced more music stages than any other brand in history. As a response to our frustration at rents being raised so high our local music venue was under threat, we decided to cover the venue’s rent for 3 years in a partnership deal. We held monthly free gigs at the venue for fans of Converse, bringing a younger generation into the heritage club through established and emerging talent.
Santigold performing as part of Converse Gigs. Photography: Rachael WrightUnlike other ‘sponsorship’ deals, we did not place any Converse branding within the Club to honour the institutions aesthetic consisting of over 100 photographs showing the club’s history. Instead we generated exclusive content from the monthly gigs, shared across all our social spaces. helping to spread the word of the partnership and bring this incredible institution to a younger audience. We also worked closely with the club to understand their business and offer advice and support where we could.
This partnership won Best Music & Brand Partnership award by Music Week for two years running.
Sonos x Spotify x Selfridges
Sonos x Spotify collaboration in Selfridges Window, London. Photography: Amplify agencyWhen I weas the UK Marketing Director at Sonos , I partnered with Spotify to be the official music provider for the Selfridges WastED pop-up, a restaurant featuring menus based on potentially wasted by-product ingredients.
We tasked each of the WastED’s acclaimed chefs, such as Blue Hill’s Dan Barber and Gordon Ramsey, to curate Spotify playlists that amplify their dining experiences over the Sonos sound systems we installed for the duration of the event, pairing their menu’s to music. The window installation features black rods that symbolise sound waves emanating from a Sonos speaker, and white wax food sculptures representing wastED ingredients. Up close, the installation appears to be an enigmatic collection of ingredients. Step back, and people see a three-dimensional sonic wave. The display is an imaginary visualisation of the artistry and interconnectivity of two of life’s great pleasures: music and food.
Monsoon Vintage Store
Photography: Darcie JudsonAs part of our 50th anniversary celebrations, we decided to take Monsoon back to it’s original birth place, on Portobello Road.
Monsoon Vintage carried “quintessentially 70s Monsoon pieces”, such as quilted and embroidered skirt and top co-ords, bib-front dresses and vintage pieces from the likes of Gucci, Biba and Oscar de la Renta. Items range from £30-450, with the average price around £80.
For the original opening I collaborated with stylist Bay Garnett, known as the ‘Queen of Thrift’ and formerly a contributing fashion editor for British Vogue and editor of Cheap Date magazine. Bay pulled together her curated edit from the store, all which flew off the shelves on the opening night.
The store was designed to be a pop-up for three months however, it proved so popular with customers and long term fans of the brand, that it still going strong nearly one year later.
