Lloyds Banking Group

I worked at Lloyds Banking Group for three years as Editorial and Content Lead across the whole of their secure online Customer Servicing estate; three brands (Lloyds, Bank of Scotland & Halifax), multi-platform, including desktop and app; retail and commercial. Great experience working at the strategic and implementation level on 15 feature teams, overseeing copy and content.

Here's just two examples of work:

Practice Run

A way for the digitally unconfident to have a go at internet banking, doing 'real' transactions but with dummy data and no risk.

Card Controls

An app based product that enables the user to restrict how their debit cards are used.

Practice Run

A way for the digitally unconfident to have a go at internet banking, doing 'real' transactions but with dummy data and no risk.

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Card Controls

An app based product that enables the user to restrict how their debit cards are used.

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JGuillem

Task:
J Guillem is the name the Mallorcan know my good friend Jan Willem Sintnicolaas by. He designs the most beautiful Titanium bicycles on that most beautiful of Mediterranean islands; taking inspiration from his surroundings. The task was simple but difficult. Create a brand new brand from scratch using nice words and pictures – lovely brief, lovely job.

BWIN Party Poker & Casino

Task:
Find a vehicle that would work for the brand’s sponsorship of Prime Time on Dave TV Channel. The creative focuses in on interesting ‘couples’, their online names and when and where they play and is adapted for either Poker’ or ‘Casino’ players.

Three Barrels

Task:
Make the brand more relevant to today’s audience, attract and engage new customers under 45 and get a big bang for not a lot of bucks. I came up with the idea of re-positioning Three Barrels as ‘The House Brandy’ – enabling it to be ‘consumed’ in recipes and cocktails, as well as an after dinner tipple. This thinking was brought to life at thehousebrandy.com better known as Sippinghurst, the (online) family home of the Basildons: an upper crust family and their staff, with larger-than-life personalities and tastes who appeared in on and offline ads, social media and via email to the database.

IKEA

Task:
Create a loyalty programme that delivered increased visits, bigger baskets and advocacy whilst still reflecting the brand’s values. Instead of rewarding customers with points based on spend, we came up with something much more IKEAish: introducing ‘Pointless Loyalty’ – now flatteringly copied by Waitrose.

The IKEA FAMILY currency isn’t points, it’s based on store visits - ‘the more you visit, the more you get’. By combining geo-demographic, life-stage/lifestyle and transactional data, and then applying compelling creative to bring to life relevant news, products and offers, with the odd bit of ‘unconditional love’, we helped reinforce just how much customers meant to IKEA. For every £1 IKEA spent, they got £7 back – we got a few gold awards too.

Keevil and Keevil

Task:
Keevil and Keevil – Smithfield’s oldest butcher - required a new site to gain a greater share of the burgeoning online meat delivery market. I helped create a brand new brand, with a brand new name, the line - ‘Smithfield’s finest cuts from Smithfield’s oldest butcher’ – specially designed, refrigerated packaging, and wrote every word of the site including the menu tips.

Van Nicholas

Task:
Build the brand’s salience. So, instead of trying to create a bike frame for every riding style, in every available material, we convinced them to exclusively design and build on and off-road bike frames in Titanium.


We created the line: ‘The Titanium Bike Company’ and an ‘unfashionable’ long copy ad campaign that eventually ran an ad with (almost) just the words ‘Blah, blah, blah’! Our work included re-writing/designing the site and even creating decals for the frames.



When the cycling press universally referred to Van Nicholas as the ‘Dutch Titanium Specialists’ we knew we’d cracked it.

Mercedes Benz

Task:
Some oldies but goldies for a brilliant brand.

Glenfiddich
‘Oddbins’

Task:
Re-position Glenfiddich, in the eyes of Oddbins staff, as a malt to recommend.

On hearing the many truths about the brand’s provenance, connoisseurs would re-consider it (as long as their minds were open at the time). Additonally, less confident malt whisky purchasers would seek Oddbins’ staff’s views and then purchase in supermarkets where it was cheaper! We sent every Oddbins’ manager a completely unbranded, personalised hardback book in Amazon style packaging, describing the time-honoured processes involved in the making of a mystery, family-owned whisky. Underneath the clues, a section was cut out containing a sample of the mystery whisky. Recipients were given five days to guess the whisky - responding via email or landline – with a £150 whisky as a prize.

The day after the competition closed, a branded dust jacket, revealing the mystery whisky was sent. This pastiched a best-selling novel cover in absolute detail, reflecting Glenfiddich’s international appeal and including a critical quote (from the Oddbins’ Spirits Buyer) emphasising the commercial arguments for its success.

At a time when there was no other marketing support, sales across the country increased by 6.7%. Another multi-gold award winner, too.

BBC Worldwide

Task:
Meet tough sales targets for each new launch by reinforcing their position as the publisher of the most pre-eminent TV cooks. We came up with the line ‘Britain’s best cooks and their books’ and found a USP for each of Delia, Gary Rhodes and Rick Stein creating multi-media campaigns using online advertising, bus sides, mobile POS, press and posters.








Gary Rhodes’ book was reprinted four times: Delia’s ‘How To Cook Book Two’ became the fastest selling non-fiction book ever; the campaign for Book Three led to the word ‘Delia’ getting into the dictionary and we had to liaise with the Seafish Authority and fishmongers, whenever Rick was to show a recipe from his book on TV!

Barclays

Task:
Just one of over 600 campaigns for Barclays over a decade, this one featuring their Personal Loans. I also wrote tone-of-voice guidelines and acted as communications consultant for the brand over a number of years.




I’m not ashamed to say that Financial Services copywriting is an expertise of mine.

Roundup

Some TV that comes back (unlike the weeds) year after year for a lap of honour - last seen April 2018!

Thorpe Park

Some good, clean harmless fun.