Saatchi & Saatchi / British Airways

I was tasked with procuring, commissioning, and managing the most expensive ‘poster’ in the UK at the main vehicle entrance to London Heathrow.

Working with planners, civil and mechanical engineers, and model makers, we built a half-scale model of Concorde and positioned in at ‘full rotate’ (moment of take-off), an imposing sight to the super-high traffic flow either side.

Initially commissioned for a 3-year contract, it stayed in place for almost 15 before being retired to the Brooklands Air Museum where it’s still on display today.

I was the project lead from the client brief through to the unveiling by the BA Chairman, Lord King.

Grey Advertising / Allied Dunbar

Allied Dunbar were known as the pushy insurance company when others were seen as warm and fuzzy. We decided to lean into this reputation, not pulling our punches about the need for life insurance products to protect you from the ‘Life You Don’t Yet Know’.

We produced what is seen as some of the best ads of the early 1990s, a time of great creativity and my role as client director was to sell and then PM the copy, working with a client who could have easily lost their nerve.

Allied Dunbar’s reputation numbers leapt over the campaign timeframe to be seen as the second-best life provider after the Prudential and led to the global brand Zurich Life buying them out.

Sports Marketing / FIFA & UEFA

I’d been running the Euro’96 sponsor recognition programme at CDP/Dentsu when my client, ISL Worldwide approached me to become the Head of Client Services for the FIFA World Cup and European Championships. Seemed rude not to.

My first brief was to ‘keep us out of court’ for France’98 after a highly litigant USA’94 and I succeeded it doing just that (even when Snickers were determined to trash the event)

I moved to become Head of FIFA Brand Marketing, including commissioning all the creative assets for 2002 Korea/Japan, working with Interbrand as well as Sony Music on the official songs and anthems (hence my reference in ‘things to know me by’ to Anastacia).

When ISL Worldwide failed, I became a lead consultant for FIFA from 2002 through to 2010 on a similar brief on event assets and presentation, including working with The Jim Henson Company on the 2006 Mascot and a range of local South African agencies and media talent on 2010.

My first UX brief!

I also had my first experience of moving from analogue to digital. France’98 was totally paper-based in terms of design systems, but for 2002 I commissioned the FIFA Digital Archive, a complex app that brought almost 1000 artworks for the event together on a platform hosted by Getty images, whereby all contracted partners, licensees and media could access their artwork, produce their own iterations and resubmit them back to FIFA for approval.

It was a significant investment by FIFA and required extensive selling in, managing and educating of the many users of the site.

I checked in with FIFA’s creative services department who run the archive only recently and they confirmed that, apart from migrating to their own platform, little has changed from the original product it is still working very well and still hugely favoured by the official partners. So that’s my first PM project, now almost 20 years ago!

CX / FIFA & Coca-Cola World Cup Trophy International Tour

In 2004 I was Senior Leadership with FIFA and Coca-Cola Company in creating the first worldwide FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour in the lead up to Germany 2006. Alongside a mid-level team assigned to me by FIFA, we produced the total travelling experience, flying the real, priceless Trophy with a fully immersive fan experience to every major market in the world before an extensive domestic tour of Germany.

The Trophy Tour is now Coke’s largest international activation of their World Cup partnership for which they pay FIFA an additional $7figure consideration.

FIFA World Cup Design System

I started working on the Trophy ‘brand’ in about 2002 and ended up commissioning Lambie-Nairn Design, specialist photographers and animators to produce new print, digital and moving images to replace the original material that hadn’t been touched since 1970!

I produced the full multimedia Trophy Design System in 2004 and it’s still being used today.