On Strategy Showcase – Live from the 2025 UK Effie Awards

Host: Fergus O’Carroll
Date: November 25, 2025

Episode Overview

Broadcasting from the iconic Christchurch Spitalfields in London, Fergus O’Carroll hosts quick interviews with several of the night’s big winners at the 2025 UK Effie Awards. The episode dives into the strategies behind some of the year’s most effective marketing campaigns, offering first-hand perspectives from the winning strategists and brand leaders.

Main Theme:
Unpacking the insights and creative strategies that led to award-winning effectiveness in a challenging UK marketing landscape.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Opening Remarks & Setting the Scene (00:00–02:51)

• Fergus describes the vibrant atmosphere at the Effies, emphasizing the event’s celebration of marketing effectiveness in a tough year for the industry.
• Shout-outs to organizers, collaborators, and especially McCann London for a stellar night.
• Format: Seven short, punchy backstage interviews with category winners.

1. Uber – Overcoming Regional Resistance (02:51–05:21)

Interviewees: Omar El Ghamel (Head of Cultural Insight), Lucy Allen (Senior Strategist), Mother London
Awards: Gold & Bronze Effie Winner

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Grow Uber’s business outside London, particularly in under-penetrated towns and cities where locals are resistant to using ride-hailing.
• Insight: The “stubborn” avoidance of Ubers is less about hard-headedness and more about ingrained association of Uber with big-city life.
• Execution: Ads showed the relatable dynamic of friends cajoling the one outlier who resists using Uber, using peer-to-peer influence rather than a top-down brand voice.

“I think one of the things... is that most people assume that an Uber is something you take in the city and in the big city areas. So everything...has been, how do you get people in smaller towns and other cities to realize there are drivers always in your area?” — Omar El Ghamel, 03:02

• Emphasized humor and "bloody-mindedness" in creative, making the message feel local and authentic, not prescriptive.
• Avoided the global-brand-telling-you-what-to-do pitfall by letting friends deliver the message.

“We didn't want to come across as, you know, a global brand telling people what to think. We really needed to think community first.” — Lucy Allen, 04:32

Memorable Moment (05:15)

• Recap of a spot poking fun at southern “softness”: “Can’t believe these two are wanting an Uber. They’ve gone soft... Next thing, they’ll be wanting a coat.”

2. Smarty – Emotional Simplicity & Challenger Mindset (06:18–08:53)

Interviewees: Kit Allen (Chief Strategy Officer, The Gate London), Syed Haja Maddine (Head of Brand and Marketing, Smarty Mobile UK)
Award: Bronze Effie Winner

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Differentiate in an increasingly crowded, price-driven SIM card market.
• Insight: Reframed budget customers as frustration-fueled contrarians, not just value seekers.
• Positioning: Smarty became a challenger to “over-complication,” focusing on emotional resonance with a straightforward message—“Less malarkey, more smarty.”

“Rather than just see our customers through the lens of value, we saw them through their attitudes... taking on over complication... and connecting through that shared attitude.” — Kit Allen, 06:18

• Importance of single-minded narrative and clear messaging across every touchpoint.
• Encourages looking beyond traditional audience definitions for richer emotional platforms.

“Don’t be hidebound by the traditional way of seeing your audience. Look much broader... find a way to connect with them in a much more emotional platform.” — Kit Allen, 07:55

Memorable Moment (08:53)

• Humorous creative featuring paint colors: “No, just white paint... poached smoke, snowman’s bone.”
• “What a load of malarkey. We keep things simple. Less malarkey, more smarty.”

3. Walkers – Owning Sandwich Culture with “Crisp In or Crisp Out?” (09:59–12:59)

Interviewee: Percy Fagent (Senior Planner, VCCP)
Award: Silver Effie (Sustained Success)

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Reclaim dominance in the competitive lunchtime snack moment.
• Insight: Tapped into the beloved British debate: Should crisps (chips) go inside or next to a sandwich?
• Strategy: Positioned the brand as the owner of this “category behavior” with a creative platform that generated national debate.

“It was kind of a beautifully simple moment of realizing that everyone naturally self identifies with either being a crisp in person or a crisp out person. And by tapping into that... we could continue this discussion and drive it into culture.” — Percy Fagent, 10:38

• Created “real division” and media moments, bringing new energy to the brand.
• Encourages brands to embrace and own cultural behaviors broadly, even if they’re category-wide.

“If you’re afraid to touch those common category factors, you can own these things, right? You can take them and own them as a brand.” — Fergus O’Carroll, 11:41

Notable Quotes (11:04, 11:21)

• “Softness and crunch for a delicious lunch. Don’t you deserve softness and crunch? Leave crisps out of sandwiches. End of story.” — Francis Outer Gordon Ramsay (Celebrity endorsement spoof)

4. Tourism Ireland – Halloween with Celtic Roots (13:55–17:28)

Interviewee: Adam McGlasson (Strategy Director, Publicis London)
Award: Bronze Effie Winner

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Increase off-peak (shoulder season) travel outside Dublin and Belfast.
• Insight: “Enrichment explorers” seek enchantment and authentic local experiences—not just headline attractions.
• Creative Discovery: Halloween originated in Ireland, yet little-known.
• Campaign: Positioned Ireland as the home of Halloween, leveraging its world-famous celebration and unique, Instagrammable events in Derry, Pooka, and beyond.

“We actually found that Halloween originated in Ireland... It hit all the notes that we needed it to. It was enchanting. It had Instagrammable uniqueness.” — Adam McGlasson, 15:30

• Hijacked global cultural moment (Halloween) to drive visitation and local cultural discovery.

Memorable Segment (16:33)

• Atmospheric spot: “Thousands of years ago on the island of Ireland, as the harvest met the winter, the boundary between worlds became blurred... Visit Ireland, the home of Halloween.”

5. CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) – Missed Birthdays (18:38–22:32)

Interviewees: Jack Gilbert (Adam&Eve DDB), Simon Gunning (CEO, CALM)
Awards: Gold & 3x Silver Effies, Brand of the Year

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Prompt more life-saving conversations between UK adults and young people about suicide—the #1 cause of death under 24.
• Insight: Parents memorialized not just who their child was, but the lost potential.
• Campaign Evolution: Project 84 (2018), The Last Photo, now Missed Birthdays. Focused on what’s lost—future milestones, not only lives.
• Used real stories and voices of parents, grounding the campaign in personal truth versus abstraction.
• Blended emotion with practical engagement, creating tangible tools (Care Kits) for prevention.

“How do we reveal not just a generation of young people who’ve taken their own life, but a generation of lost potential?” — Jack Gilbert, 18:38

• Solution-oriented: Avoids “impotent terror” by granting hope and action—250,000 users of the care kits.
• Sophisticated yet emotionally resonant marketing, inspiring action.

“We use the most sophisticated marketing techniques... we bring people in and we give them the solution straight away. You can’t leave people at a point of impotent terror.” — Simon Gunning, 21:07

Notable Quote (21:49)

• “It’s one thing to speak about it and put it on a billboard, but it’s another thing entirely to hear it from a mother who’s lost their 14-year-old daughter.”

6. Xbox – The Everyday Tactician (Football Manager) (22:32–28:39)

Interviewees: Aaron Harridge (Head of Strategy), Alex Passingham (Strategy Director), both McCann London
Awards: 2x Gold, 1x Silver Effie, Brand of the Year

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Make Xbox relevant to football manager gamers, a PC-dominated audience, and sell Game Pass subscriptions.
• Insight: Football Manager players are “true believers”—they play not for fun but to test their real-life tactical abilities.
• Execution: Gave players a shot at a real job managing Bromley FC, chronicled via documentary-style content, not merely ads.

“Football manager gamers don’t play for a laugh... it’s them actually trialing it. All of them talking... Could we do this for real? So we thought, why not give someone a chance to do that?” — Aaron Harridge, 23:43

• Process involved in-game achievements, interviews, and a real football club partnership—giving respect and real-world stakes.
• Campaign expanded into a docu-series that became entertainment in its own right and lived on TNT Sports.

“If you are working in a cultural space, you should always be considerate if you are giving more than you’re taking... we were genuinely giving something to fans...” — Alex Passingham, 27:53

• Highlighted the importance of client trust and cultural contribution over extracting value from fandom.

7. Neurofen – Challenging the Gender Pain Gap (Grand Effie Winner) (28:46–35:49)

Interviewees: José (Major Strategy Partner), Mel Arrow (CEO, McCann London)
Awards: Grand Effie, Gold/Silver/Bronze, Brand & Agency of the Year

Strategy & Insights

• Challenge: Regain pain relief category leadership, moving away from feature-driven “fastest pain relief” messaging.
• Game-changing Insight: Research uncovered a pervasive “pain gap”—women’s pain is dismissed and gaslit in society and medicine.
• Strategic Pivot: Neurofen moved from product claims to advocacy—educating and campaigning around the “pain gap.”
• Measurable Impact: Proof that purpose-led strategy could drive five times the short-term sales impact versus traditional product-led messaging.

“We discovered that through researching what it means to really understand pain, that actually there are women across the country whose pain is being dismissed and ignored and gaslit... and there is this huge systemic medical issue that nobody is confronting.” — José, 31:07

• Implementation: Ethnographic research, launched gender pain gap report, and built an econometric model tested in select UK regions before rolling out nationally.
• Lessons:
  1. Immerse deeply in the real lives and experiences of your audience.
  2. Truth well told—identify unsurfaced truths and commit to telling them at scale.
  3. Rigorous measurement and stepwise risk taking to gain client confidence.

“It cuts to the core of not just what good advertising is, but good storytelling... a brand with the reach of Neurofen... to tell a truth like this as loud as it has... is so brave.” — Mel Arrow, 34:50

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “We really needed to think community first, and that was why local insight was so relevant.” — Lucy Allen (Uber), 04:32
• “Less malarkey, more smarty.” — Kit Allen (Smarty), 06:49 & campaign slogan, 08:53
• “Putting it back to the people and finding the core ways that people were interacting with our product...” — Percy Fagent (Walkers), 09:59
• “Halloween actually originated in Ireland. And it hit all the notes that we needed it to.” — Adam McGlasson (Tourism Ireland), 15:30
• “We use the most sophisticated marketing techniques... we bring people in and we give them the solution straight away. You can’t leave people at a point of impotent terror.” — Simon Gunning (CALM), 21:07
• “This game audience just wants to really do it for real, which is why they play the game in the first place... So let’s give someone a shot.” — Aaron Harridge (Xbox), 23:43
• “It took a lot of bravery, both from the agency side, but also from the client side to say, we want a real step change. We’re going to stop focusing on fast fixes.” — José (Neurofen), 30:11
• “Telling the truth, identifying a truth and telling it well is the fundamental principle of what makes for great advertising and great branding.” — Mel Arrow (Neurofen), 34:50

Lessons for Marketers & Strategists

• Get granular with audience understanding: Don’t accept surface-level assumptions—dig for emotional or behavioral truths.
• Community authenticity matters: Let genuine, peer-to-peer voices lead (Uber).
• Don’t fear emotion in functional categories: Functional brands can win hearts (Smarty, Neurofen).
• Own category behaviors: Even longstanding cultural behaviors are up for grabs (Walkers).
• Purpose can drive results IF it’s authentic and measured: Purpose work must be rigorous and linked to sales (Neurofen, CALM).
• Trust and close partnership matter: To take bold leaps, brands and agencies must trust each other (Xbox, McCann).

For More

See case films and campaign details at onstrategyshowcase.com.