Michael Walker Copywriter

Grant’s is the world’s 3rd-largest Scotch whisky brand, and this was its biggest campaign to date. In many of the 180 countries in which Grant’s is drunk, it’s in clubs and bars, where a bottle is put on the table and shared amongst friends.

We therefore developed the IOU campaign, a celebration of what we all owe the friends who get us where we are. We wanted it to get the attention of the new generation of whisky drinkers, so it needed to stand out, it couldn’t be sentimental and it had to feel like it was from a brand that understood its audience.

The resulting online film has racked up over 5.5 million worldwide views (with the UK version getting over 1.2 million), and was Campaign’s ‘Pick of the week’.

The IOU campaign was also fed into all Grant’s communications, including their website and online ads that teased the content of the film. The IOU idea also gave Grant’s a way to talk and behave on Facebook, encouraging ‘IOU Toasts’ and engaging people in a way the brand never has before.

The London Dungeon is a unique, gore-filled, history-themed fright-fest, and it's been one of London's top attractions for over 40 years.

When it moved to a new location, it was the perfect time for a rebrand and a relaunch. So we took the key murderous characters and brought them screaming into the 21st century.

This was done with a large outdoor campaign, and a TV ad that showed, in bullet time, what exactly happens across one paused moment in The Dungeon, and the range of emotions experienced by its thousands of daily visitors.

The brand had a new look, a new voice, and for the first time it felt like a premium attraction that wouldn’t just leave you with messy pants, it would do it in style.

BMW regularly updates its range, and I’ve been responsible for writing the copy associated with many of their new models. This includes website copy, customer retention emails, and their monthly round-up communications with customers.

This requires being able to succinctly describing the wealth of details that makes each car unique, without drowning the reader in automotive details.

I’ve also written longer-form articles for their e-magazine ‘Inside Edge’, highlighting innovations that are set to impact the car industry and the wider world.

Britain leaving the EU meant that all EU citizens living in the UK had to apply to stay in the country.

This campaign was designed to create awareness, rolling out across TV, radio and print, encouraging people to apply before the deadline.

The campaign visuals were created by legendary illustrator Noma Bar, while I wrote the scripts, headlines and associated materials.

Soccer Aid for Unicef is the world’s biggest celebrity football match, raising millions to help children across the globe. The philosophy of ‘Every child has the right to play’ dictates how the money is spent, creating safe places for children to enjoy their childhood through play.

I worked with Unicef to write the content for the schools packs, ensuring it was engaging for teachers and children alike. The Playground Challenge got children involved by encouraging them to create their own assault courses and compete with other schools to raise as much as possible.

The Money Advice Service is a government-funded organisation that exists to offer free, impartial advice to the public on a huge range of financial issues.

We created these short animations (voiced by Tom Hollander) to provide guidance on traps that many people fall into, and show (through their tone) that the service is non-judgemental and accessible to all. 

A recruitment drive over the past ten years led to a huge resurgence in the popularity of teaching. But many top graduates still saw it as a career that offered little reward.

We were tasked with changing this perception, and created the Your Future/Their Future campaign which talked about the unexpected financial benefits as well as the less tangible rewards that teachers experience on a daily basis.

I’ve worked with Valspar to write for various areas of their website, including blog posts focussing on new colour trends, and a selection of articles focussed on the psychological effects of various colours.

I also worked on a campaign to promote their Life-Kind range, an odourless Premium paint that’s child, pet and allergy-friendly.

Every year, Kiss FM runs ‘All I want for Kissmas’, a competition that encourages listeners to tell them their dream present. Then, every hour in the run-up to the 25th Dec, Kiss makes it happen. They wanted a campaign to help get the word out there and increase listener numbers over the festive period.

So we created Father Kissmas, a confident anti-Claus with a sack full of backchat. He appeared on outdoor sites and taxis throughout London, he was all over Kiss FM by day and he was hanging out with celebs by night. He created a buzz that was impossible to ignore, and has dramatically increased listener numbers every year since arriving on the scene.

Brits are currently in love with Prosecco, largely due to the louche Italian charm it brings with it. Brits are also largely unaware that Cava is enjoyed in the same continental, laid-back, anything-goes kind of way, and is debatably a superior drink. We therefore felt it was necessary to educate the UK on what it is that Cava stands for, how it is drunk and the lifestyle it embodies.

We created a series of ads to communicate these charms, as well as the idea of the ‘Cava Trail’, an experience that would take place across several UK cities, with various surprising venues advocating the drinking of Cava; for example selected cinemas would stock Freixinet and serve it with popcorn (a Catalonian combination), and pop-up Cava bars would give you a taste of how’s it’s done in Barcelona, with hams and shouting.

Overall, you’d be left with a sense that Cava is not to be only drunk on special occasions, that it’s a versatile, informal treat, and that Freixinet is the brand leading the charge.

Recue Remedy has been around for years, calming people down before exams, public speaking events, driving tests and X-factor performances. But they wanted to refresh their brand and encourage existing customers to use Rescue Remedy for more day-to-day dramas.

We created the 'Live on the Upside' campaign to show how any problem can be reframed as something more positive.  

Asset management companies don’t have an illustrious history in advertising, and Jupiter was no exception. They had relied on industry in-joke headlines that sat on a headache-inducing orange background for over 20 years, and unsurprisingly they wanted a change.

It was immediately obvious that they had a very interesting and unique point of view. They looked at the markets from a human perspective, not relying too much on figures and data to predict future trends. Unlike many competitors, they had the freedom to go out and do their own thing, talk to companies they may invest in and follow their instinct rather than the crowds.

So we transformed their tone and look, setting them apart from anything else in the sector and defining them as the people who understand that the markets are controlled by humans, not numbers.