About
The most consequential part of my work happens before anything is made. It is the business of deciding what a brand should mean in people's lives, the part it plays in their story, and the feeling it should leave behind every time. Once that is settled, I direct the work that gives it form: the brand book, identity and packaging, the platforms and campaigns, and the guidelines that keep everything honest.
Sociology is what first drew me into advertising, and it has shaped how I see brands ever since. Across more than two decades I have founded three independent creative agencies and spent my career inside brands and agencies, the greater part of it in fashion, beauty and premium lifestyle. I have served as CMO of Chandelier Creative, President of Wednesday and Managing Director of Alldayeveryday, and co-founded Technology, Humans and Taste in New York, which exited successfully in 2018. Before that came ten years within Publicis Groupe, working on global Fortune 500 brands.
Along the way I have led strategy and creative for Amex, Nike, Calvin Klein, Estée Lauder, Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg, Samsung, Apple Music and Google, and learned what it takes to bring demanding work to the standard such brands expect. Work I have led has won Cannes Lions, Clio and Webby Awards.
where it comes from
People attach meaning to everything a brand does, whether the brand intends it or not. We decide how we feel about something long before we have reasoned out whether it is any good for us, and once that feeling has settled, it is remarkably hard to dislodge. That feeling is what a brand means to people. The only question is whether the brand has chosen it.
The brands that endure are those that distil that meaning and own it, evoking it anywhere and always. They arrive at it by understanding the tension their products or services resolve in people's lives. The customer has something to overcome; the brand takes a part in reconciling it; the way that feels becomes the emotion people attach to it; and the reward is what brings them back. Branding gives the meaning a recognisable identity, marketing carries it through every encounter, and creative makes it tangible and worth wanting.
Name the emotion and you have an anchor for every expression that follows. Emotion is the most human of languages: it needs no translation and recognises no borders. Know the one feeling your brand is built to create, and the whole company, within and without, has something true to steer by.
I call the whole of it Emotional Architecture: the decisions, made upstream of any expression, that govern what a brand may say and how people will feel whenever they meet it. Short-term pressure, siloed teams, one-off campaigns and changes of leadership all conspire to pull a brand apart. The task is to give everyone the same centre to build from, so that budgets stop competing with one another and equity compounds rather than resets.
Nothing original has ever come from a single discipline. I draw on sociology, philosophy and science, and on serendipity: those moments no one can plan, only learn to recognise. Creativity is what turns all of it into something people can see and feel, and all of it must answer to what the business is setting out to achieve.
I have always been more interested in why people want things than in how to sell them. Time and again, it has proved the most commercial position in the room.
how i
think
You engage me to bring your brand into alignment: on the role it plays in your customers' lives, the emotion it evokes, and the meaning only it can own.
I lead with the brand and the emotion, developing the concept alongside executive art directors, designers and writers, who in turn lead the craft. I remain with the work until it carries the feeling, and I credit those who made it by name.
When the work comes to be made, it may run through your own team, with me advising or directing; through specialists we bring in around me; or through Sui Generis Cartel, a network of designers, art directors, writers, producers, and packaging and retail specialists I have worked with for years and choose afresh for each assignment. Whichever the route, I lead, I set the standard, and I remain the person you hold to account. SG Cartel exists so that finding, contracting and coordinating the right people never falls to you, and so that the people are the ones I would choose myself.
how the work gets made
Brit, Dane, American, Dad. I live in Los Angeles with my family, write regularly on brand, culture and creative strategy, and sit on the board of the Boxser Diversity Initiative.