About Me
I'm a highly experienced Creative Director with a background in eCommerce and SaaS. I've worked both in-house and agency-side, with clients such as Samsung, Siemens, Roche, Tabasco, and Doodle. I'm skilled in leading cross-functional teams and projects to deliver proven results on time and under budget, be they B2B mobile applications, multimedia marketing campaigns, or comprehensive, research-led rebrands.
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More than 15 years’ experience in branding and design.
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Worked with brands like Samsung, Siemens and Roche.
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Creative Director at startups like Doodle.
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Multiple awards for product & print design.
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Presented sales spots on live national UK television.
My three rules of design & branding
01
People don’t buy features.
My first boss, Master of Malt’s Sales Director, Ben Ellefsen, once told me, “People don’t buy features, they buy benefits.” It was a simple lesson, but it’s one I kept in mind over eight years working under Ben as an Online Editor and Creative Lead. I tailored my approach to everything from our core messaging to the packaging of our products to ensure the customer could easily understand what we were offering, and why it would benefit them, rather than just list features or functions.
You see, people don’t buy a product or service because it does X. They buy it because it does X, which benefits them with Y. Finding a way to communicate the “Y” is at the very heart of design and branding.
02
Good design is function-first.
Years later, as a senior ad exec on accounts like Siemens, Samsung, and Roche, I learnt how to convey a compelling, emotive message within the confines of strict corporate guidelines. During this time I learnt another crucial lesson: it’s easy to make something beautiful when it has no purpose. Most design school graduate portfolios are full of lovely-looking examples of exactly that. However, it’s when you have real-world constraints to work within that things start to get a little tricky.
Take a tech startup with a website which neatly conveys what they do, why they're unique, and how they benefit the end user. Now imagine that website is truly hideous (I’m talking Comic Sans, falling snowflakes... even sound effects), but has a 100% conversion rate because it shows the customer exactly what they need to know. Is that good design, or bad?
03
Know thy customer, know thyself.
As Creative Director at eMobility firm, reev, and the scheduling startup, Doodle, I built and managed teams of designers and writers, and developed brand and design strategies to effectively communicate and sell software products. Again and again, I found the only way to communicate those features and benefits was to understand a. what the product actually does, and b. whom it benefits and how.
This led to research projects creating buyer personas with actionable insights, building brand audits with competitor and marketplace analysis, and combining these to create a roadmap for branding success. Deep research is a must, as is knowing the company you are, and the audience you're targeting.
