In a special slightly-longer-than-usual Studios Spotlight this week we spoke with Jay Thom, Strategy Director at adam&eveStudios. He chatted to us about his role and how he got started in the industry, as well as some of his favourite past projects and the story behind our most recent campaign for Laithwaites.

“My role essentially boils down to helping clients connect business problems with creative solutions, identifying and planning how advertising and communications can help achieve marketing goals. At least, that’s how I explain it to my Mum.

It’s a fun role and it means I get to wear different hats all the time. Sometimes I’m donning my client hat; really taking the time to understand a business, taking into account their market conditions, internal politics and motivations of different stakeholders, in order to identify how best our skillsets can help them. Other times, I’m translating this knowledge for creative people, helping them understand the brief and unlock the opportunities for creativity. It’s shuffling in-between hats and conversations; different languages but talking about the same thing.

The creative aspect is a really enjoyable part of the role. You can start working on a challenge and you see it one way, and then properly good creative people make things better in ways you couldn’t imagine – this is the most exciting part of the job for me.

Similarly, getting really close to our clients’ business and being part of the progress they make to unpick challenges and create solutions is a fascinating part of what we do.

Part of my role is then connecting these two worlds. It’s challenging but fulfilling and means there’s always a healthy variety of things coming my way.

I started my career in advertising in South Africa. After a short-lived ambition to train as a pilot, I went to advertising school and started learning about brand and comms planning. Despite an initial flirtation with creative, I quickly discovered I wanted to be a planner; I was always more interested in strategy and what the ‘the problem’ was. Out of ad school I then started a role at Publicis and was there for six years, working on some great clients alongside some very high-level strategists I could learn from.

After I got married, my wife convinced me to move to the UK. I got a role at Proximity to work on the VW account, which was a lot of fun, and I got a real market induction into the way that agencies all work together. After a merger at Proximity, which became RAPP, I then moved accounts to lead the work on pitching a new loyalty approach to KFC. That was actually one of the best projects I’ve ever worked on. It was a really great brief, a really engaged client team, and we actually got to implement what we’d proposed (often a rarity). To build something from scratch, take a theory and see it come to fruition, working the way it was planned, was extremely satisfying.

Now at adam&eveStudios it’s been really fun to be shaping what’s happening here. Working with great clients, and a wide variety of amazing people and skillsets, I’ve almost gone full circle and I’m now back to a channel-agonistic role. What I love here is the absolute weapons-grade talent in the building. It’s awesome to be able to work with people smarter than you every day.

One of these brilliant clients has been Laithwaites and it’s been fantastic to work closely with them on their latest campaign, ‘We Stop At Nothing To Bring You Great Wine’.

When they came to us, Laithwaites were in a really interesting place. Having seen crazy growth during the pandemic, they now were looking to improve their performance marketing. However, after a bit of a discovery phase, we worked out that they didn’t really have a performance marketing problem; the piece of the jigsaw that was missing was their brand story. They hadn’t really told it to anyone before, and so now our task in terms of brand strategy was to craft and define what their brand story was. No easy feat for a brand that has been around for decades.

We ended up with an authentic, warm and familiar brand campaign that really helped audiences understand who Laithwaites are as a brand, and most importantly, what makes them so special. And what’s really cool is that it hasn’t been just a traditional brand campaign, it’s been built through every offering that they have. The first place I saw our new creative platform was in their monthly catalogue. It’s a business that’s fully embraced the direction we’ve been pushing.

That’s what makes a difference – working with lovely clients. Laithwaites are a family business with genuinely nice people who care about every stakeholder in their business. It’s been an absolute pleasure helping them get that brand out there to more people and (I have to throw in a wine pun) to uncork a new chapter of growth for their business.

When I’m not thinking about strategy, I love mountain biking (the only real me-time I get) and I watch nearly every sport on TV, which frustrates my wife endlessly. But in reality, I’m a dad first and foremost. I’ve got two young children and I try my best to grow up with them. That’s what I spend most of my time and energy on. Really, I think I just have the privilege to be a planner in my “non-dad time”.