Category: Client Work

This year I’ve continued to work with BEINGHUNTED on numerous bits and pieces for adidas – far too many to separate out here. They’re always nice to work on, and given that they generally focus on upcoming special releases and collaborations they afford me the chance to indulge the lingering, geeky interest I have in sneakers and outdoors/sportswear.

To pluck some specific things out of the air that I’ve leant my words to:

• the string of ZX/Torsion anniversary releases
• recent collaborations with Hender Scheme
• various releases/content relating to adidas Consortium’s new ‘Communitas’ output

adidas Runners is the global network of adidas-affiliated running clubs. Earlier this year, I worked with act3 on a number of small projects, helping to elevate various pieces of content about adidas Runners around the world.

From ‘trash running’ in China to conquering the gruelling Los Angeles-Las Vegas speed project, all were super-interesting (particularly as someone who is increasingly obsessive about his own running).

I spent a good month or two recently working on a(n ongoing) project for The HEINEKEN Company. I probably shouldn’t (/can’t) probably say too much about it at this point, but it involved heading over to their heatwave-drenched head office in Amsterdam for a week of great workshops, and following up with a deep-dive into various content, brand and communications-related matters, many of which – there was no getting around it – forced me to work repeatedly out of my comfort zone. By which I mean: within Excel documents.

Earlier this year I started working with the great branding agency Evolve on various rebranding briefs for luxury hotels around the world. Mount Juliet is one such client: a beautiful five-star Irish estate with ambitions to offer something beyond the luxury golfing holidays that have become its bread and butter.

As with all the briefs I get from Evolve, I was given the freedom to push things in a more creative direction than I normally do in this type of work.

At the risk of sounding immodest (though as a self-employed millennial living in the shadow of neoliberalism and all the intense pressures to be ‘entrepreneurial’ that brings, I feel like I get a free pass), the feedback I received included the following:

“the work you did on Mt Juliet, once again it’s taken it to the next level – think there was a few teary eyes once we had finished reading it – not easy to get under the skin of board level directors in that way so really credit to you for helping us elicit that emotional response.”

I’ve been working quite a lot this year on various projects with Ocado, helping them on the digital side of things as they pivot from being the world’s biggest online grocery retailer to being a tech-driven solutions company.

The first thing to see the light of day from this, earlier this year, was a new careers site – aimed at recruiting exactly the people they need to achieve their ambitious new goals. I was involved a little in the content strategy while also writing the vast majority of the copy for the new site.

Loved creating this book/film/exhibition series for Gore-Tex with (lots of people but mainly) two people whose work I’ve long  admired: Stephen Mann and Jörg Haas. It all launched during Paris Fashion Week and was such a great  final project to see out 2018.

Great to work on the all-new adidas Y-3 website with the Being Hunted folk, which you can take a look here.

(Yohji Yamamoto is an enduring idol of mine so this was a particularly nice thing to be involved with to such an extent)