I was employed as Technical Director of Saatchi and Saatchi London in order to ‘bring Digital to the heart of the agency’ after the demise of Saatchi Interactive. It was my responsibility to manage all London-based Digital work, assist the Head of Operations’ in sorting process, scope and Digital project management. I was also responsible for building a recession-proof, scalable suppliers network of leading resourcing, development and production companies that Saatchi’s could utilise on any Digital project, recruiting both freelancers and permanent staff and vetting client pitches technically. The work I oversaw included:
Responsible for overseeing two large Digital campaigns that included numerous video/flash asset creations for Visa’s partner sites and a wealth of rich media banners that ran on FlashTalking. I had to attend numerous client meetings and liaise regularly with the account director, Visa’s head of marketing and their third-party suppliers about all aspects of their campaign. I was also responsible for giving guidance to the film production companies involved on how best to optimise their shoots for successful content capture for a web-based campaign, sourcing technological companies for massive brand building public events and liaising with creative Digital agencies who were providing new treatments for a campaign.
Responsible for overseeing the development of numerous campaigns including a AS3 Flash micro site for the launch of the G1 Phone from Google. This project included an outsourced Google Map game (via their API) with full database driven scoring and viral functionality. Throughout this project I had to liaise regularly with Google, their business and technical contacts and the game’s developers’ who were based in New York and LA. I also was responsible for commissioning the same company (SMERC) to build a G1 Mapping Game / Engine that utilised the new Open Source mobile Android operating system. The game could be played on the phone or downloaded as a Open Source SDK from T-Mobile to assist developers to develop new, map-based games. In addition to this, I also managed a series of multi-lingual rich-media banner campaigns including one for the launch of the new G1 Phone from Google and assisted in the procurement of suitable external companies to work on a new dance-based avatar’ campaign.
Atlantis - The Palm is a luxury hotel based at the Palm, Dubai. It was my responsibility to advise the account directors’ on the best way to implement their clients Digital offerings. Work overseen included a Paper Vision based content carousel with a full CMS for their site, a variety of flash assets for their American hosted/built site and numerous email rich-media mail campaigns for delivery via their preferred mail marketing companies. I also assisted the Account Director compile the Atlantis 2009 Digital Agenda presentation for Sol Kerzner.
Responsible for overseeing the London-based rebuilding and populating of a website initially built for Starbucks by their American-based web development agency. The overriding issue was the lack of flexibility in the existing AS3 code to implement content changes efficiently and I advocated the rewriting of the classes to cater for an xml-based content structure for easy updating and localization.
Researched and specked out a touch screen game campaign for Cadburys Cream Eggs to be used over the Christmas period in London-based bus shelters. The campaign was utilising outdoor media owners JC Decaux’s screens and technologies and, thus, I had to liaise with their technologists too.
Assisted the above the line creative’s extend their award winning campaign against cruelty to children onto the web as an interactive game. Liaised with both the animation production company and a Kiev-based development partner to get the project started and built a working flash demonstration illustrating the way the code #should be implemented.
Oversaw an above the line campaign’s conversion to online by working with the creative’s to maximise the sourced material from the existing commercial’s footage. I was also responsible for raising numerous concerns about impossible creative treatments that were about to be pitched to the client.
Attended numerous strategic meetings to discuss and implement General Mills 2009 Online strategy for their numerous food-based products including, Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Haagan-Dazs and Old El Paso.
Assisting the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) with a producing a content layer and corresponding website to work within the new Google Oceans application.
I was primarily employed to work as a Creative Developer on the Shell account but, overtime, I became more involved with other areas including JWT-specific work, driven by their Global Creative Director, Craig Davis and holding seminars on 'Digital'.
Working on both Brand and HR projects within the Shell account, I was assisted in the planning and implementation of a variety of Flash projects. My work included planning, solely-developing and supporting an award winning 3D-Flash recruitment site on shell.com, creating numerous rich-media banners for a variety of global campaigns, meeting with ad networks like Eye Blaster and Double Click and participating in Media Buying and Planning meetings with MediaCom.
I was responsible for conceptualising, specking out and developing numerous JWT-based applications during my time there. The most significant was the ‘JWT Thing’ which was a windows (desktop application compiled via Zinc) and also a Mac dash board widget that enabled users to view, add and query a variety of relevant blogs (internal and external) that were deemed of interest to the agencies’ employees, Every employee within JWT London had this application on their computer. The backend consisted of modifying the open source software, WordPress to facilitate the advanced functionality that was required. Other projects I assisted with were the CultUrl application (viewing and summiting the companies’ favourite urls) and JWT Showcase, an interactive database-driven work portfolio.
Creation of three fake investment bank websites to support an anti slavery campaign for MTV. Also used detailed tracking via both Reinvigorate and Google Analytics and streamed video.
Conceptualised and developed an idea for a campaign to launch a new keg based product in Greece. Idea was based on a virtual house party that you could invite your friends to whilst receiving a free drink from the keg on entry, The most visitors, hence the most beer, would then get their own real house party paid for by Heineken.
Editing and script tweaking on a Flash-based presentation for this leading investment bank
Bug solving on a Flash 9 (!!!) site built by a temp within the agency.
I advocated and was encouraged to hold a series of seminars for JWT employees about the internet, interactive marketing, emerging-technologies, open source and web 2:0. Each was designed to give a simple, un-technical approach to educating ‘advertising people’ on all things digital.