Marketing strategy and storytelling for B2B technology companies.

Tealium’s new CMO arrived with a challenge: an integrated lead generation campaign targeting retailers across five European markets, conceived, designed, and delivered within six weeks. The central insight was simple but timely: consumers were waking up to the value of their personal data. We built a campaign around a question that retailers would soon need to answer: would customers prefer to pay with cash, card, or data? Quick multi-market research, punchy copy, and attention-grabbing design later, the campaign was live across owned and paid channels. The new CMO had a win under her fashionable belt in double-quick time. The start of a beautiful relationship.

Think of Malta and you probably don’t think of semiconductors. You should. Quietly, the Maltese government had incentivised some of the world’s leading chip companies to establish facilities on the island. Malta Enterprise engaged us to name and brand the island’s first semiconductor conference, and to support it strategically with marketing and communications. The Global Semiconductor Conference Malta launched to a full house and has since become a stand-out event on the chip sector calendar.

Axis Communications had an owned content programme. What it needed was an editorial approach, genuinely responsive to the external news agenda and internal data analytics. We brought newsroom discipline to the brief: weekly editorial meetings that balanced the corporate content calendar against what was actually happening in the world, with the agility to turn pieces around in hours when needed. The result was content that found its way to the top of search rankings and into the conversations Axis wanted to be part of. The industry agreed. We picked up gongs for it.

The brief was straightforward: tell students that Microsoft Office 365 was available to them for nothing. Social media and alphabetti spaghetti seemed the obvious answer. We created a series of arresting images — spaghetti, baked beans, chips, biscuits, and more — and ultimately 111 variations across image, copy, audience segmentation, and channel. By monitoring performance in real time we shifted budget to what was working. More than 7,000 students entered the registration process at an average cost of $2.94 per registration. Enough said.

As the world emerged from pandemic-induced stasis, Tealium and its customers needed to understand whether the appetite for travel had survived, and present the findings in a way that would grab attention. We conducted consumer research across five markets, then worked with Sane & Able to create a report styled after the 1970s travel brochures that some of us are just about old enough to remember. We had to swerve the brand police. It was worth it. It remains a genuine thing of beauty.

Before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, British semiconductor start-up Graphcore was designing chips for artificial intelligence, taking on the mighty NVIDIA. The key was finding powerful allies. Graphcore’s chip design used TSMC’s most advanced manufacturing process, and we were already supporting TSMC’s annual Technology Symposium. Introductions were made. Conversations were had. Shortly after, Handelsblatt ran the splash: Europe’s most valuable chip start-up takes on market leader Nvidia with TSMC. David had landed a blow.

Exasol wanted to reach Chief Data Officers, and we built a campaign on a premise that would make any CDO stop scrolling: if data was becoming a business’s most valuable asset, wasn’t the person running the data strategy an obvious candidate for the big office? The integrated campaign — a research-based ebook, owned, earned, and paid media, and a live event — set out to prove the hypothesis. As it turned out, the idea of plotting a path to the top was a message CDOs were very happy to engage with. A roaring success.

Getting Oracle in front of senior retail banking executives was hard. We needed a different angle. That angle was Gen Z — the generation bank execs knew least about, but needed to understand most. Working with youth insights consultancy Ruby Pseudo, we put a panel of 16–20 year olds in front of a room of senior banking professionals for an unfiltered conversation about money, banking, and the future. 52 senior retail bankers attended, 49% above target. 626 leads through the gated report and 32,018 social video views. Kerching, as they say in banking.

Not every B2B campaign needs to look like a B2B campaign. For RedEye’s presence at MAD//Fest — a marketing, advertising, and disruption event in London — we took inspiration from the edgy British comic Modern Toss and designed a series of cartoons riffing on the everyday frustrations of digital marketing. A little different from RedEye’s usual register, yes. But different was the point. In a room full of people competing for attention, sometimes the best strategy is to make people laugh.

Not every idea finds a home. That’s the nature of being creative. Occasionally something arrives that doesn’t fit into a client-shaped hole, however good it is. This one was close. Very close. It would have been brilliant. I’m not over it. The full story is on my Substack. Some stories are better told at length.