Simon Haslehurst

Global Brand Communications

Business challenge
Quick commerce is a commodity play, with multiple brands promising to deliver whatever you need in minutes. Gopuff wanted to establish market share rapidly in major cities across the globe, with a broader range of products and better placed delivery hubs than competitors.

Insight
People want products delivered quickly to enhance a moment or solve a problem.

Idea
Position Gopuff as the trusted brand to solve everyday problems or enhance everyday pleasures. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, Gopuff will be right there.

Brand identity and communications

Business challenge

Detroit Electric is one of the first ever car brands. Henry Ford’s wife preferred her Detroit Electric over her husband’s cars. The brand was bought and reborn by entrepreneur Albert Lam. The SP:01 was their first production car in nearly 100 years.

Insight

The SP:01 was ahead if its time with technology now commonplace on contemporary vehicles.

Idea

Recharged. Rebooted. Reborn. Position Detroit Electric as a tech company that makes advanced electric vehicles.

Naming. Positioning. Visual & verbal identity.

Context

London. A city that requires quality transport partners that meet the most demanding needs of customers. Post pandemic, expectations of service standards, quality and safety are higher than ever. Addison Lee has provided a high quality transport service to London since launching in 1975. Since then, the need for safe and stylish transport at a fair price has only grown.

Insight

Ride hailers like Uber, Bolt and Gett, have made travelling by private car hire a commodity play. Londoners deserve the best. Addison Lee are the modern brand that understand the pressures and pleasures of life in London.

The idea

A journey with Addison Lee elevates any occasion with impeccable service, a modern fleet and drivers that care. Customers arrive at their destination relaxed, recharged and revitalised. Ready to put their best foot forward and get the most out of London life.

They give London life a lift.

Global brand communications

Business challenge

Millions of adventurous and ambitious people are being let down with the support and solutions they need to grow and expand their operations internationally. They don’t have access to the people, experience and insight needed to help them thrive. Although hundreds of companies claim to be able to support them, most offer a general range of financial services. They are not specialists in international trade which means their products and services often fall short. This is holding people back and slowing the rate at which their businesses can grow.

Insight

Worldfirst are a leader in international digital banking, focussed on helping SME’s access international markets for the first time, quickly and easily.

Idea

Make the brand famous for the digital banking world firsts that help SME’s grow their businesses internationally.

Naming. Positioning. Visual & verbal identity.

Business challenge

A rapid digital banking revolution is underway fuelled by the need to replace antiquated banking platforms and the growing adoption of cloud services. Enterprises are looking to increase every day relevance, nurture customer loyalty and build trust.

Omnio needed to position themselves as a fintech leader building future-proofed, flexible digital banking platforms for a new era of financial services.

Insight

Omnio’s digital banking platform supercharges their clients’ businesses and, in turn, helps their clients’ customers do more with their money. This means communities that were once overlooked by banks can now lead the financial life they want and flourish.

Idea

Position Omnio as the tech catalyst: transforming banking from the inside. Not only transforming traditional banks but opening up huge commercial opportunities for enterprise customers too. The net effect: bringing what customers want, and what banks and enterprises can achieve, closer together each day.

Positioning. Visual & verbal identity. Marketing.

Business challenge

Belgian waffles have been enjoyed in central Europe for hundreds of years. But in the UK, marketing waffle has confused customers. Potato waffles, toasting waffles, American waffles. None of them are real waffles.

Insight

Not all waffles are created equal.

Wafflemeister is the authentic Belgian waffle. Meisters skilfully prepare dough (not batter or potato!), made with the finest ingredients from a secret family recipe. The baking creates a delicious aroma of warm dough and caramelising pearls of sugar.

Idea

Position Wafflemeister as THE authority on authentic waffles.

Results

Over 1,105% (yes, 1,105%!) revenue growth in 4 years.

Brand Communications

Business challenge

The London rental market is at best hit and miss. Unscrupulous landlords, weird flatmates, hidden charges, messy shared spaces.

Insight

The Collective offers a new way to live and a better way to rent. They let rooms in state-of-the-art buildings in the heart of London, designed to help residents enjoy life to the full alongside likeminded young professionals.

Idea

Live like you’ve never lived before.

Positioning. Brand narrative. Brand book.

Business challenge
Choosing spectacles is often associated with visiting uninspiring stores on depressing high streets and trying on unfairly priced frames.

Insight
Cubitts sweats every detail to create the best possible customer experience, from beautifully crafted stores, to curated frames at fair prices and unparalleled customer service.

Idea
The modern spectacle makers.

Global positioning. Customer experience.
Advertising. Content. Digital. Social.

Business challenge
The leisure airline market is commoditised and driven by price with the customer experience suffering. With little to no point of difference, they are hooked on buying low margin customers from price comparison aggregators in a race to the bottom.

Insight
Flying with a leisure airline should be fun. After all, it’s the very start of your holiday.

The idea
Create a powerful new positioning and enhance the customer experience.

Our positioning focussed on putting the fun back into flying by maximising lift and minimising drag.

We called the uplifting experiences ‘little lifts’.

They were already pretty good at them, but we created many more throughout the customer journey and helped develop an internal culture where they were celebrated and rewarded.

From uplifting airport environments, to entertaining families whilst queuing to re-imagining food on-board, we created a more uplifting customer experience building in new revenue opportunities along the way.

TVCs - Europe

Business challenge

Hertz is a globally trusted brand that keeps its fleet in tip top condition. Cars are meticulously maintained and serviced regularly. When a rental is retired it can be bought as an approved-used car at a very competitive price.

Insight

Hertz sell good quality approved-used cars to the public, but it’s one of the automotive industry’s best kept secrets.

Idea

We’ll tell you our big secret. What’s yours?

Brand visual and verbal identity. Packaging. Digital marketing.

Business challenge

Mallow & Marsh were a startup, selling sophisticated and delicious flavours of marshmallow. With encouraging initial success, they needed to lay foundations for rapid expansion, and correct the misconception that marshmallows are just for kids.

Insight

People associate marshmallows with the synthetic ‘pink and whites’ of childhood. Mallow & Marsh make theirs with natural ingredients and delicious flavours – you really haven’t tasted marshmallow until you’ve tasted Mallow & Marsh.

Idea

Develop a brand platform to accelerate growth by challenging ‘grown ups’ to reappraise their preconceptions of marshmallow. We created a new identity and redesigned the packaging to create stand-out on the shelf with a clear colour system, appetising photography and ‘The Dude’ – our playful marshmallow character.

Positioning. Brand marketing.

Business challenge

The commercial property industry is commoditised and focuses primarily on location and square footage. High-growth disruptive businesses in London demand much more from their place of work.

Insight

The workplace can have a huge impact on the performance of a business.

Idea

The Workspace Advantage: bringing to life the business benefits of a superior, inspiring, and more connected social space.

Global advertising.

Business challenge
HTC needed to achieve high levels of brand awareness and stature to fuel aggressive sales targets.

Insight
Early majority of smartphone buyers were not interested in technology for technology’s sake.

The idea
‘Here’s an idea’ – a simple campaign construct to highlight the HTC innovations that improve everyday life.

The effect
From 22% awareness to 54% across Europe in the first year.
We broke sales target in Europe with 9.5m handsets sold in one quarter.

Brand narrative. Brand book.

Business challenge

Fix8 make kombucha the authentic way, preserving all the gut friendly goodness of the fermented drink. Other brands pasteurise their kombucha, which kills all the good bacteria.

Insight

Customers are confused as to what makes a real kombucha.

Idea

Fix8 is obsessed with the benefits of the real suff and driving awareness that not all kombuchas are what they claim to be.

Advertising. Digital.

Business challenge
DC Thomson’s kids’ magazine portfolio was not front of mind with parents and kids.

Insight
Young kids tend to belong to tribes. They are either a Beano kid, a Thunderbirds kid, an Animals and You kid, and so on.

The idea
We dramatised what the particular tribes of kids crammed into their fun packed days and made a virtue of the limited timescale of the idents. This high profile 12 month sponsorship for CiTV put the brands front-of-mind and revived sales.

Advertising. Content. Digital.
Experiential. Retail. Social.

Business challenge
Organic Plum Baby needed to regain market share in an increasingly competitive baby food category. Our work covered a broad range of disciplines from brand repositioning to new product proposition development.

Insight
Foodie mums and dads rarely tasted their own baby’s food for themselves.

The idea
‘Ban the bland’
A blind taste challenge for parents to highlight the superior taste of Plum Baby organic products against the bland tasting market leaders.

Naming. Positioning. Brand identity. Marketing communications.

Business challenge
The world’s energy resources are finite. Making the most of the energy we have is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. A challenge taken on by a team of top of experts from technology, science, energy and finance; applying innovative thinking and technology to coal waste and create a new high-performing energy that will transform the market.

Insight
Coal is a dirty word with much negative baggage. To create a powerful new brand for this highly ambitious energy company the opportunity needed reframing, fusing the worlds of energy and technology to create something more powerful.

The idea
We created Arq. An ‘entech’ brand shaking up the established energy market for the good of everyone: consumers, providers, investors and the planet.

Before Arq, coal waste was a major environmental problem. Now it’s a massively abundant new source of energy. A high performing 99% pure hydrocarbon.

From positioning, to visual & verbal identity and communications strategy we helped successfully launch to investors and strategic partners.

Brand marketing.

Business challenge

PCCW are a world leader in cyber security. They needed to assert themselves in a crowded market.

Insight

With cyber threats increasing year-on-year, employees responsible for cyber security are constantly busy behind-the-scenes protecting data.

Idea

Champion the unsung heroes of the 21st century - The cyber security experts.

Naming. Visual & Verbal identity.

Business challenge
The pandemic has changed the way we work. Employers are struggling to bring back teams to the workplace. The food industry has created confusion as to what constitutes a nutritious meal. Processed foods are cheap, easily accessible and marketed as a healthy option, but have been proven to be unhealthy. People are busy and often don’t have the time or knowledge to eat more healthily and stick to healthy habits.

Insight
To encourage people back to the workplace with nourishing food and energising service.

Studies have proven that food enjoyed with friends and colleagues in a positive, caring work environment is now recognised as key to health and happiness, resulting in less absenteeism & higher productivity.

Opportunity
The food service industry needs new thinking to have a more positive impact on people’s lives. Eat Social believe a meal is so much more than fuel. Done right, it lifts a mood, improves well-being and creates opportunities for meaningful connections with people. It is life affirming.

The Eat Social approach to hospitality creates an energising environment where employees can connect and bond over nourishing food. The benefits can be enormous. Employees that form friendships in the workplace are simply better workers. They are happier, earn more money for the business and are less likely to leave their job for a better offer; they have someone to show up to work for. This is the basis for a powerful, invaluable work culture that boosts productivity to new levels.

Global brand positioning. Advertising.
Digital. Social. Partnerships. Retail.

Business challenge
How to compete in a crowded market as a relatively new manufacturer, with considerably less heritage and brand awareness?

Insight
Modern views of success are built around achievement of goals, not materialistic status symbols as commonly employed in the luxury market sector.

The idea
Developed a new brand positioning and communications platform that celebrated those individuals who follow their convictions regardless of convention and circumstance, appealing to a growing audience of discerning  luxury buyers.

The impact
‘Follow your Convictions’ became the brand platform for both internal and external communications, helping to break into the Asian market, where sales quadrupled.

Brand identity, naming, UX

Business challenge
In the fast growing fitness training market (worth £4.7 billion in the UK), technology can help dramatically improve the way both personal trainers and individuals connect.

Insight
If you’re a trainer it can be hard to meet new clients. If you’re trying to get fit, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and not try new things.

The idea
Go:Do – a new fitness marketplace that encourages users to discover new ways to get fit in their local community. We developed the business proposition, brand identity, naming and app design ready for UK launch to trainers and customers in early 2018.

Global brand refresh. Positioning.
Advertising. Thought leadership. Digital.

Business challenge
In a crowded and commoditised market, Investec Asset Management needed to articulate how their point of difference gives them an investment edge. Their story is an interesting one – they come from an emerging market so they approach asset management differently. But their positioning lacked a clear customer benefit. We developed a powerful idea that helps the business to sell more easily to customers.

Insight
Institutional investors and intermediaries are looking for an asset manager that they can believe in to deliver solid returns. One that listens more and challenges the market to deliver solid ethical returns not losing sight of whose money it is that they are investing.

The idea

Question Ordinary – a communications platform to demonstrate the way they approach and do business and the reason they deliver consistently superior performance for customers. We question the ordinary and challenge the status quo when we’re looking for investment opportunities. We have a different way of seeing things, as we came from an emerging market.

The idea
Our work created a consistent global communications idea that brought much needed consistency to the markets and most importantly talked directly to the needs of customers.

European outdoor campaign

Business challenge
With summer fast approaching, 7up wanted to reinforce their credentials as the refreshing drink for long hot days.

Insight
Hot? Thirsty? 7up is a great choice.

The idea
SImple, eye-catching outdoor advertising at the peak of summer across Europe's major cities. 

Experiential. Advertising. Social. Digital.

The Challenge

Lord's needed to sell tickets for Bangladesh v England. England fans weren't buying tickets because they believed it would be a walk-over for their team. So we needed to drum up numbers from the cricket-mad Bangladeshi community in east London.

The Insight
Many in the Bangladeshi community like to pay in cash and see Lord's as an elitist, stuffy organisation - so are unlikely to travel to Lord's to buy tickets. 

The solution
Take Lord's to the Bangladeshi community. WIth the battle cry from their much revered team, The Tigers, ask the community to come to the ground and give their support. The Roar Booth invited the community to record their 'Roars' for the team - the best and most voted for on YouTube winning tickets. The booth also sold tickets - taking cash as well as cards. 

A selection of work from my time as creative head for The Guardian.

Battersea dogs' & cats' home has numerous ongoing challenges.

Rehoming breeds of dogs that have an undeserved bad reputation is perhaps one of the biggest. With the dog coat creative we used the dogs themselves to change people's perceptions of them as they were exercised in the nearby Battersea Park. 

Another challenge was shifting perception from the home just rehoming dogs to include cats. Through research we discovered that when the public lose a cat they don't know who to turn to to help the find it. Our solution was to create a website - The Lost Cats Kit -  this walked owners through the process of what to do to find their cat again - even helping them create a Lost Cat. Through the promotion of this new site we drove awareness of the home for helping cats too. A giant ball of wool was one of the stunts we orchestrated to create some buzz. 

Summer is, perhaps surprisingly, peak time for lost dogs arriving at Battersea. This is due to some owners not making proper provisions for their dog to be looked after while they are away on their summer holiday. In some cases the dogs are simply turned onto the streets for the duration of the owners holiday. We created a campaign to make people question if they had considered their pets welfare before taking their break.  

Strategy, digital, press, outdoor

A selection of work for Haymarket titles. 

A selection of work from The Telegraph

Mortgages are big and scary, right? Not so with Egg's mortgages. They are created to be flexible and to help you get the things you need in life. 

A selection of award winning work from the loft. 

A selection of D&AD award winning work for Callaway Golf