Financial services

Many years as a Creative Director in financial Services, including in my own financial agency for 15 years working with clients including LV, AIG, Ageas, Hymans Robertson, AXA…you can see the full list here and some work below. More recently as Executive Creative Director of financial Agency 2112 delivering digital campaigns for Asset Management companies globally. Clients included HSBC, Gresham House, Premier Miton, Charles Stanley and BNY. See a short reel opposite, and a few details below.

It all started with my time launching Goldfish at DP&A when I was CD there, see below, and then contracting as CD with a marketing consultancy on RBS and GE Money and GE Life and also at data driven financial agency, Presky Maves, where I was for three years on AXA Sunlife, Post Office Loans and various European financial companies. That all led to me setting up my own financial agency, DaisyDM.

Federated Hermes ESG campaign

2112: The world will change when the financial markets change. This was a European wide campaign promoting ESG investment funds. I delivered a full range of executions for optimisation in digital channels.

BNY Fixed Income campaign

2112: The first 6 months of 2025 was a period of huge volatility globally. The markets were reeling with new tariff wars, protectionism, inflation, debt, conflict…Fixed Income was the safe harbour, and the expertise of BNY and their partner INSIGHT in this field was the cool head investors needed. This was a European digital marketing campaign. A favourite execution I wrote was the invitation to ‘Rise above Inflation.’

Gresham House COP26 campaign

2112: The COP26 summit brought governments, pressure groups and industry partners together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Convention on Climate Change. The prevailing narrative was focused on the real danger of failing to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5˚ and the real concern of reaching the tipping point of 2˚. Investment managers have a role to play in achieving climate objectives and Gresham House put themselves firmly in the discussion with this digital and print campaign I developed.

LV Pension Drawdown

Daisy: The challenge was to motivate advisers to recommend LV to pension customers. Many didn’t know about drawdown features so we needed to create a story that had impact, and felt relevant. The narrative was that more people were crossing over to LV drawdown and to explain why. The record plays with a message from the fund manager, while the digital element – an online quiz – tested the IFAs knowledge of the product they were currently recommending and comparing it to LV.

The integrated campaign achieved 23.7% response with 63% going on to fill in the questionnaire. 3,500 IFAs told us who their current preferred provider was and whether they offer the same benefits that LV do.

We also asked them how important the 5 LV benefits were to them (usually very important) and then whether their current provider offers them (no other provider did). This, of course, was gold for the sales team.

Finalist at the Money Marketing Awards

AXA connected Insurance

Daisy: For cutting edge products you need cutting edge solutions. I created a 360 virtual house so that key contacts invited to AXA’s stand at BIBA could ‘virtually’ walk around and explore connected insurance in situ.

I had the house built by a team of architectural illustrators, and made it work on google cardboard which was sent out as an invite. Pop ups on targets stimulated by dwell times explain products and short videos play to explain connected home and car offerings. In the house ‘easter eggs’ led to prizes. The campaign included the stand with an inspirational video to draw people to it, social media, email and the google cardboard used as an invite, sent as direct mail to top prospects. Every one it was sent to visited the stand, its not often you get a 100% response rate!

AXA home emergency insurance app

Daisy: A ‘smart’ way to explain cover of AXA home emergency insurance. AXA asked me to find a way to bring their home cover to life so that customers – and partners – would be able to explore product. I came back with the idea of a simple App. There was a partner version and a customer version. It’s simple, intuitive and shareable – everything you’d want, and went down a storm (yes, storm damage is covered!) with partners in AXA pitches. Delivered with my own dev. team.

AIG Direct affinity marketing

Daisy: This is going back to the start of my own Financial Agency (Daisy). AIG Direct were a major client. We were their retained agency for 4 years (until the financial crash scuppered our plans). We delivered all affinity work across Health, PA, HCP, Travel with affinity partners including HSBC, NASUWT, Barclays, More Than, ScrewFix, Leeds Building Society…the list goes on. We also led on their own brand and with their flagship product, WellWoman Cancer cover, we managed all the affinity work on this and led on all the copy tests that honed the proposition. This led to WellWoman becoming a brand in its own right, decoupled from AIG after the crash, with ‘I Love Me’ as a proposition and my agency were trusted to bring it to life in press, direct mail and online.

Canada Life vision and values

Daisy: Ahead of the merger, Canada Life needed to make sure everyone was on board with the organisations vision and values. This campaign rolled out across all UK offices to make the brand values meaningful to every team, demonstrating how they align with each team’s objectives, laddering up to the overall brand direction of ‘better futures.’ Every team has a vital role to play in success and this campaign was the result of in-depth interviews with heads of departments and team members.

Ageas affinity and own brand marketing

Daisy: Ageas were a client of my own agency for 12 years. We managed all their affinity customer comms and collateral with partners including John Lewis, Amex, Aon, Lexus, Tesco Bank and Manchester United. We also launched Ageas branded products including Home Insurance (with Connell’s estate agents) and Ageas own brand Car Insurance.

NewDay website templates for Marbles and Aqua Credit Cards

Daisy: Working with NewDay to develop MVP product templates for a new website that could be reskinned for Marbles and Aqua credit building Credit Card. The Client had been our client at Vanquis Bank following on from the work my agency did on Vanquis loans in the sub-prime sector.

AXA European Breakdown website

Daisy: AXA’s European Breakdown quote and buy which website I designed, wire-framed and populated with content. I worked with the AXA team in the UK using the dev. team in Paris to deliver it. Work also covered internal promotion.

AXA Home Manager launch film

Daisy: The B2B video was a promotional film (2 versions) used with partners and home emergency contractors (plumbers, electricians, roofers etc) launching a new job system. I also delivered the email campaign and internal comms that promoted the new system.

Smart Install website

Daisy: A website for customers to book the installation of smart devices that support their new boiler cover. I planned, wire-framed and designed working with the AXA dev. team. This is a sophisticated data capture tool guiding customers. Safe guarding vulnerable customers was paramount. The simplicity of the design and data capture I delivered and CMS I spec’d belies the sophistication of the back end system and integrations.

AXA Quote and buy website

Daisy: B2C website to purchase Boiler and Home Emergency cover. Working within AXA’s tight design guidelines I planned the website build, delivered all design, wireframes, UI and UX working closely with the AXA dev. team and my own team. I provided all assets and content for the website.

The Pensions Advisory Service Website

Daisy: The Pensions Advisory Service was a government funded advisory service. It has since been amalgamated with the Money Advice Service. This was a massive project redesigning the entire website, all content was reviewed (1,000s of articles which we edited, rationalised and many given a new more friendly tone of voice) and migrating to a new system. I designed the site, all wireframes, UX working with a specialist Dev. team who were a partner company of my agency (Daisy). The original site was confused, unclear and had grown organically. I added structure, clear areas of service and navigation through the huge amounts of content and more friendly tone of voice.

AXA SunLife – vision and change

Dragonfish: AXA Sunlife, were entering into a period of change and they needed staff to ‘get onboard.’ Things were going to be tough and the road ahead was going to be difficult but change would pay dividends.

The approach was to work with heads of all departments to design a new vision and values and then to launch these and embed them using brand ambassadors and an all company event, with guest speakers and workshops. The theme of the campaign was ‘Adventurers Wanted’ – following the famous Shackleton ad which promised hardship and reward. A strong creative idea to throw down the gauntlet got people excited, clearly explained the problem and gave them something to get behind and to take on the challenge.

As Creative Director of the culture Agency Dragonfish, I delivered the creative strategy and creative concept to help them build a values-driven, high-performance culture to get their organisation and people ready to deliver their new strategy.

Canada Life vision

Daisy: A vision film for the IT department at Canada Life ahead of the merger. It’s a bit hypnotic but went down a storm for it. It was presented at a large company gathering where there were lots of other films being shown that had the usual people, places type montage, so we wanted to make something that would stand out and, importantly ahead of the merger, raise the profile of the IT Team and set them apart.

Ryanair Credit Card

Contracting CD: Going back to my time contracting as Creative Director for financial Marketing consultancy, Bespoke communications and the design agency Macinnes. Ryanair (with GE Money) wanted to launch a credit card as a loyalty scheme (similar to Goldfish below). My role was in naming it – ‘the buy with it fly with it card’, designing the card and all the promotional materials that went with it. It was all highly promotional, cheap and cheerful, no frills. Just right for the brand.

Goldfish

DP&A/FCB: This is going back a bit to my time as Creative Director of DP&A. In that time the agency was voted the UK’s top independent shop and became an FCB Group agency (subsequently becoming FCBi and then inferno).

Before Goldfish, the credit card market was dominated by Barclaycard, and it was pretty dry. Goldfish redefined the sector. It brought humour, style and attitude. It was the UK’s most successful Credit Card launch ever with an unheard of £29CPA and 1 million card holders recruited in year 1. Goldfish became an IDM case study on launching brands. It was so successful the brand became a bank and in my 6 years on the account I launched loans, insurance and other products.

I was the Creative Group Head launching the brand below the line, then became Creative Director writing the brand book, all customer communications in all channels including TV and online, new product launches both on and off line, getting myself voted in Campaign Magazine’s top 10 DM creatives. I was the Brand Guardian partnering with the Brand Guardian at the client side and I inducted new client recruits to the brand. I won 16 Gold DMA/FEDMA awards for my work on Goldfish alone while at DP&A plus a design awards for card design and ECHO, Caples and the IDM’s inaugural business performance award.

Goldfish did things differently. Here’s how I approached the humble statement insert – it has to be said, these were fabulously successful, and prove that treating customers with intelligence pays off.