Twelve of the Best: a look back at 2017

While everyone was writing their retrospectives of 2017 we were knee-deep in client projects and mince pies. So here’s our pick instead on 12 of the biggest and best things to happen in the world of W from January 2017 – January 2018: 12 months of new awards, new clients, new investments, new faces and outstanding new work.

Adding to our firepower

1. W launched its own “northern powerhouse” in March. Adding Newcastle to its business footprint outside London alongside Amsterdam and Singapore, W North provides our clients with a different ‘non-London’ outlook and meets the growing appetite for campaign activation within other cities in the UK. Here they are, having the time of their lives at our Christmas party!

2. W formally debuted W Enterprise in July, bringing together our media, tech, corporate, B2B and BrandLab clients into a single division for the first time.

3. The year ended with a busy transfer window and two major signings to the W management team. First, Mark Perkins joined as Executive Creative Director from MHP where he developed the multi-award winning campaign Missing Type  – in a move which inadvertendly saw his dog Charlie splashed across the trade media. 

Then there was the arrival of the Mack!  In a swoop that made waves in the industry Adam Mack, formerly the Chief Strategy Officer at Weber Shandwick was unveiled as W’s first UK CEO. These creative and strategic additions add even more muscle as we roll our sleeves up for a big year in 2018.

Awards

4. It was a solid year for gongs, especially with two PR Week awards. Our campaign for Lynx, ‘Giving British Masculinity a New Voice’ secured the silverware for Best Use of Strategy, Planning & Evaluation, while W Enterprise’s mould-breaking launch of social care platform Cera was declared Best Healthcare Campaign.

Meanwhile we made our mark on a global level by picking up Consumer Consultancy of the Year at the EMEA Sabres.

The work

5. We pulled off one of the biggest stunts of the year with the launch of L’eau de Chris: a bottled water infused with a tear from Love Island star Chris Hughes. Absurd, right? The media and public certainly thought so, but that was just the tease to reveal the true purpose of our work. We staged a press conference and Facebook Live broadcast with Chris to launch #DontBottleItUp, a new initiative with Topman and mental health charity CALM which dominated news coverage and social conversation on World Mental Health Day.

6. This summer, in partnership with London City Airport, we revealed Marmite was the most confiscated food item at security. To make sure Brits took their favourite food abroad we staged a ‘Marmite amnesty’ to promote the 70g ‘travel-size’ pot resulting in a clean sweep of national titles and a slot on Sky News

7. W also got broke into the world of advertising. We created, scripted and produced Lynx‘s first cinema ad with Anthony Joshua which was screened at cinemas nationwide. The campaign drove 47% sales spike of the limited-edition AJ Lynx range.

8. That wasn’t our only ad campaign. To amplify Carabao‘s sponsorship of newly-crowned Premier League champions Chelsea we produced ‘Wins Not Wings’ London poster campaign at the expense of a certain energy drink rival. The exposure generated by the work directly led to listings for Carabao in Morrison’s and Ocado.

9. On the 4th July, the British Summer Time Festival stage in London’s Hyde Park was transformed for the city’s first Home-Run Derby – featuring Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers legends to promote Major League Baseball. The event managed and marketed by W  drew a crowd of 15,000 with coverage both sides of the Atlantic including The Guardian, Sky Sports News, Time magazine and the New York Times.

10. Capping of a year for the Live events team that included fantastic Wireless and V Festival, W launched Spotify’s first ever live UK event, Who We Be. The sold-out show brought to life one of the platform’s most popular playlists, bringing together the biggest names in urban music, including Giggs and Cardi B, under one roof at London’s Alexandra Palace.

11. Dreamland brought in W to develop a positioning programme for its re-opening after a false start in 2015. We managed to attract over 100 journalists to visit, generate 120 pieces of coverage and smash football targets at launch weekend and throughout the summer.

12. Finally, we rounded off the year with the global launch to announce London as the host city for 2018 FIDE World Chess Championship. W leveraged a key partnership with the London Evening Standard and secured editor George Osborne to be the guest speaker alongside star attraction, world champ Magnus Carlsen ‘the Bieber of Chess’ (yes, really!). The result was 100 pieces of global coverage with much, much more to come when the main event takes place in November 2018.