On Strategy Showcase

Huge fan of Doug Holt. We talk about purpose, challenger and cultural brands through the lens of Jack Daniels, Chipotle, Blue Buffalo, Dove, Starbucks, etc.

The industry columnist, advisor and professor of marketing shares his Top 10 moments of this past year.  And, as always, there are surprises for all.

La Dolce Velveeta presents the brand as an "unrestrained pleasure" by leveraging craveability and the attitudes of proud Velveeta lovers,  claiming you don't have to be rich to live golden.

Adam&Eve DDB's CSO Martin Beverley and Craig Spence, Chief Brand Officer for the IPC share the story behind the creation of Wethe15, with its focus on what we have in common, not what makes us different. Lessons in here for every marketer.

Cadbury’s belief that generosity is in everyone rebuilt its business. Sophie Kerbegian, former Head of Planning at VCCP and Benazir Barlay-Batada, Marketing Director at Mondelez  share the backstory of this Grand Prix award-winning campaign.

Pharma should treat patients like Nike treats athletes. So says John Kenny, Head of Strategic Planning at pharma agency, Intouch Group. He shares what he sees as opportunity for planners and strategists to reframe the category, worldwide.

This Gold EFFIE winning partnership with HULU drew attention to inequality by brilliantly twisting an age old adage " A woman's place is in the kitchen."

According to Ben, the essence of the Starbucks brand has always been seduction. Yet he worries it's moving away from its cultural capital codes. We talk about the brand and how its desire to connect post-lockdown led him and the team to the Funnel Cake Frappuccino.

The likelihood of getting eaten by your cat this Halloween is low, but it's not zero. Building on the success of last year's Halloween campaign, this year's "Tasty Human" takes the humor and insight to a new, hilarious level.  

In pre-covid convenience-obsessed culture, cooking at home was struggling. This led to  Lurpak's strategic pivot from celebrating "how" we cook to celebrating "why."  A 2021 APG Creative Strategy Award winner.

This independent shop with clients including Google (Chromebook, Assistant, Pixel, Photos, Pay, etc) ESPN, NBC and others, is a studio-style creative company that's delivering at speed, something that generally scares other agencies.

Three Ireland is a telecommunications brand. This B2B campaign centered around Arranmore, an isolated island off the coast of Donegal. The parallel between island life and business life was that companies, not unlike communities, need to be connected in order to effectively grow.

The story behind successfully managing through multiple challenges (chicken shortage crisis, the intro of new fries, and covid.) It's a journey of success built on the shared belief in doing the opposite of what's expected.

The story behind the brand's expansion from a niche segment to the broader market with Mark Kirkham, VP & General Manager of Sports, Energy and Juice brands at PepsiCo and Tiina Salzberg, CSO at 180 Amsterdam.

As strategists, we're reluctant to embrace the obvious. As Loz puts it "we think our role is to create an unexpected leap." But when something is obvious, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. This brilliantly simple campaign for Taylors coffee bags will inspire you to consider the obvious in everything you do.

After acquiring Droga5 and other creative shops, Brian and his team are now ready to roll out their part consultancy, part tech firm and part agency offering. Not only is it formidable, but it may, in fact, be what we've always wanted modern marketing agencies to be.

The brand that once expressed its essence - attraction - in terms of one dimensional women drawn uncontrollably to the Axe guy, is reinventing itself. From “Spray Axe, get girl” to “Spray Axe, open possibilities,” it now reflects how the playground of attraction has broadened.

This award winning campaign is a terrific example of how what we produce as an industry can be more effective when it makes us check and discover our own biases without telling us we should. Adam&EveDDB's Creative Director Selma Ahmed and Planning Director David Mortimer talk us through the thinking that led to this Channel 4 Diversity in Advertising Award winner.  

When only 10% of young people would even consider the Army,  the challenge the brand faces in its quest to appeal to a far wider target is clear.  We hear about DDB's first two campaigns... and the new brand campaign currently in development.

Tasked with achieving an additional £100 million in profit from its marketing spend, Andrew's team put brand theory into practice, at scale, and more than doubled that goal by developing Catalyst, a portfolio-wide marketing modeling system that brought analytics and creativity into the center of the business. This is the story of how it came together.

Paula has worked on the Nike brand on three continents. We first discuss what inspired Nothing Beats a Londoner and then how Nike approached planning in a year without sports. 

We hear the stories behind the strategies and creative that fueled the success of Burger King and, more recently, the chicken sandwich wars that reenergized the Popeye's brand.

Andy is Campaign Magazine’s 2020 U.K. strategist of the year. We talk Alexa, his new book “Go Luck Yourself” and why he feels luck is where opportunity meets a prepared mind.

Paul worked for 15 years at the legendary planning agency BMP in London. In his new book "Why does the Pedlar Sing" he explores what he sees as the industry's creative short-comings and how we can turn things around.

The U.K. soda brand's search for purposeful humor that would reconnect it with youth culture after a long absence, and how focus groups fueled the insight. A 2020 IPA Effectiveness Award winner.