SIMON WILLIAM JOHNSON • CREATIVE DIRECTOR
MY STORY:
Simon William Johnson is a multi-award-winning Creative Director with 20+ years of international experience shaping fully integrated global brands across four continents. His work spans traditional storytelling, social-first campaigns, emerging platforms and AI-enhanced creative systems – bringing big ideas to life in formats people actually engage with.
A true global marketer, Si has lived, worked, pitched and won awards across Europe, APAC and at home here in the UK, building a reputation as a hands-on, strategically-minded CD with strong team-building skills and a collaborative approach. Whether working directly with clients, embedded with founders, or building cross-functional teams, he gets to the heart of a brief and delivers standout ideas that elevate brands and drive results.
His career has seen him lead creative at some of the world’s most respected agencies and networks – T&P London, RKCR London, DDB Sydney, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, Saatchi & Saatchi (Singapore, Hong Kong, London), 180, Sid Lee and BSUR Amsterdam – consistently producing award-winning work across TV, digital, social, experiential and platform-native content. Along the way, he’s chalked up multiple industry awards and multi-million-pound pitch wins for global brands and C-suites.
Today, Si is focused on where creativity, culture and technology meet:
-
Social-first creative built natively for feeds, platforms and communities
-
AI-driven content systems that scale ideas without losing craft
-
Collaborative Creative Direction working alongside clients, marketers, strategists and makers
-
Building brands from the ground up, both independently and in partnership
If you’re looking for a creative leader who can inspire teams, unlock new ways of working and deliver ideas people talk about, Si’s your man.
Here are some of the highlights:
NEWS UK: Taking charge of another huge account, Si CD’d The Sun newspaper for The&Partnership. The nations #1 national news source, reaching almost 32 million people each month across the UK and beyond, The Sun is at the heart of the nations conversation. Si stewarded campaigns across multiple platforms – social, online, on-air, in print and beyond – increasing readership and driving traffic to the stories that matter.
M&S CHRISTMAS: Writing and creating the big budget (£3 Million) 360 Christmas campaign – 10 x TVC spots including the 90 second launch film – shot in the huge experiential M&S Christmas Market. Cleverly combining the M&S signature ‘slow mo’ food porn’ with live action, hundreds of real people and few celebs… The 'This is not just food' campaign drove 0.9% like-for-like sales growth and £2.85B revenue (+1.2% YOY).
VODAFONE: Consolidating the £50M Vodafone account by winning the £10M digital pitch for RKCR Y&R. As a result
Si was promoted the position of UK CD, responsible for the output of the newly integrated account, overseeing and mentoring numerous creative teams. Plus, cementing Vodafone's position as the #1 UK network provider with almost 28 million customers.
CARLSBERG: Winning the Carlsberg UK 'Euro 2012' pitch for Fold7 against Saatchi & Saatchi (sorry guys). The final
spot 'Fan Academy' achieving 1.5 million Youtube hits in the first few days. "Thanks Diego...!"
MINI: 'Another Day. Another Adventure.' A truly integrated campaign featuring a series of global adventures driven through every social channel imaginable. The campaign and content combined had well over 7m views. The social media activity alone generated over 3m video views. Driving global mini sales to a record high of 301,526 vehicles –
a 5.8% YOY increase.
NAPCAN: This powerful social awareness campaign touched the lives of millions around the world. Over 20 countries requested the spot for use in education programmes in government departments, schools and colleges, as well as the thousands of positive national and international responses through social media channels the spot attained over 10M views on YouTube alone. Creatively, it was the Gunn Reports 17th most awarded ad in the world 2007, winning numerous creative awards and helping DDB to Agency of the year 2008.
LUCAS FILM: A great insight into the Hollywood world of post production and how the big boys play.
That said, the highlight was lunch at George Lucas’ house. Even though he wasn’t there. (Or, was he...?)