Mike Sands

To combat water wastage and to save money for consumers, Unilever introduced a range of products that use less water.

It's a simple proposition, brought to life in a simple, elegant but powerful way.

These short 20 second films ran on TV and online.

A really big idea for Flash.

It was cruelly cut short in its prime when P&G realigned the business into Leo Burnett (no agency really wants to run anyone else’s campaign do they).

The basic premise is very simple and exemplified in the line ‘Britain’s Cleaner’ – one of those lines where the apostrophe takes on even more importance than usual.

We devised scores of 360 ideas involving everything from doormats to street-cleaning, dirt reactive posters to sponsored monument restoring.

Time Out is there to help you make the most of your leisure time, rather than idle away your life. This short online film, that went viral, illustrates this in a charming and humorous way.

To coincide with the development of the new Midfield Terminal at Abu Dhabi Airport, there was a requirement to develop a complete overhaul of the airport's Duty Free offering.

This involved developing a brand new logo and communications platform for Abu Dhabi Duty Free.

The logo takes its inspiration from the 'footprint' of the new Terminal and evokes a sense of fun, freedom and optimism, all of which are associated with air travel.

It's this insight that we used to present Abu Dhabi Duty Free as a brand that allows you to be spontaneous, to be free.

A lovely simple idea using phonetic pronunciation disguised as French which allows us to smuggle the benefits in like a trojan horse.

A classic well crafted print campaign with beautiful typography, lovingly shot by food photographer David Loftus.

An online interactive faux French phrase app was created to expand the campaign digitally and through social media.

This was a brief to develop a big idea for Pringles following their exposure to the obesity debate. 

Essentially, a can of Pringles obviously contains too many Pringles for one person to eat by themselves, and yet some people clearly do. 

This is how obesity happens.

The thought was to encourage sharing by inviting people to ‘Pass The Pringles’, a line which not only alliterates but also cunningly alludes to the moreish nature of the extruded potato paste snack.

We wrote lots of 360 ideas on the subject of passing and sharing involving sharing online via social media and digital apps.

And because the launch of the campaign coincided with the 2006 World Cup we were able to make a film with Stevie Gerrard, Roberto Carlos, Freddie Ljungberg, Djibril Cissé, Francesco Totti and Robbie Keane. 

Great fun and I’ve never seen so many winnebagos on a commercial.

This was at a time when the electrical retail category was one where whoever shouted loudest won.  Pages and pages of offers, deals and sales, hectoring TV ads, yelling radio; it was noisy and irritating and people were getting fed up with the racket.

We wondered whether whispering rather shouting and pointing out some common sense might make people stop, listen and lean forward. 

It did.

The insight that drove the campaign was very simple – you’re more likely to listen to a friend’s recommendation than a salesman.

We took this insight and developed a quieter, more considered tone of voice, speaking gently and more conversationally, like real people, making a very simple point in every ad.

The point in essence was ‘if you don’t consider Comet you might be making a mistake’.

This thought was ‘Comet Sense’.

This idea was inspired by the cheese rolling tradition found in rural Gloucestershire, reinterpreted into an urban environment.

The nod to cheddar is a neat allusion to quality cheese.

And the simple structure lets us put extreme desire for the product into almost every frame.

Shot in Vancouver with panache by US director Bill Scarlet 

Yakult is a healthy probiotic drink that keeps your gut healthy. It's a very distinctive product and comes in a quirky-looking bottle. We played on this quirkiness and developed a very distinctive and bold look that gives the campaign massive cut-through on a very tight budget.

In this mainly online campaign we recruited friends to take a 'Bro Challenge' and conquer their greatest fears so that their bros get to live out their dream. We took 3 bros on various incredible trips and filmed the results.

Once these films went live online, we then recruited real groups of friends to film their own mini bro challenges stunts and to upload them on our site to win prizes.

These ads were written against the line 'That's another load off your mind' and were designed to launch Ariel Liquitabs to a sceptical Britain.

In their own way, these three spots directed by Andy Pearson pushed the boundaries a little by using older people and ethnic minorities.  The gentle ‘real’ humour also struck a chord as Liquitabs became Ariel’s most successful launch ever.

'Learning' was actually pulled by P&G after a week as they had a gentlemen’s arrangement with Lever Bros not to use the same insight and Levers claimed they were about to launch in South America with a similar strategy.

Sure enough, a few months after we aired this film they produced something a bit similar. 

It was called 'Dirt is good ‘.

We got there first.

Cereal ads can tend towards the cheesy, especially when the cereal brand is from a conservative company. So we just added a touch of humour and made ads that made people smile. If people like your advertising, they usually buy your product.

I still really like this one.

It has a deftness of touch, an excellently bemused dad and a joke I never get tired of.

One of the ongoing issues for FMCG brands is how to do product news and offers in an interesting and consistent way.

The ‘Taste the World’ idea was a result of the new flavour variants that Pringles kept developing and partly as a result of wanting to travel to overseas shoots in exotic locations.

These commercials were directed by Marek Losey in Bangkok, Transylvania and on the set of ‘Cold Mountain’ in Bucharest.

A campaign targeted at vets through specialist media. Cutting through the clutter of product 'fact-sheet-like' ads, these simple, striking visuals had massive cut-through and resulted in a huge up-turn in sales.

At the time, this was the fastest way to cross the English Channel. This simple, bold 48 sheet poster nails the message in just five words.

Alcohol Support and Care Agency is a not-for-profit charity offering those with drinking problems somewhere to turn to. These posters were predominantly placed in doctors waiting rooms and were designed to cut through the clutter on these message boards.

Don't let marks and stains disrupt the order of your home. This simple, intriguing visual campaign launched the new Flash Mark & Stain Erasers. This launch campaign also cleaned up at the Campaign Press awards, receiving a Silver.

Out of reach, out of mind? Flash has an easy way to dust those hard to reach places.

A very strong, simple 'Out of Home' (outdoor, to you and me) launch campaign for new Ariel Liquitabs with the product centre-stage of the communication. It also adheres to the golden rule of large scale outdoor posters; 'Thou shalt have no more words than five in the headline'.