Most Creative Marketers: Shelley Macintyre

“The heart of creativity is empathy; without true, deep consumer understanding you don't get to astonishing creative output,” Macintyre says. “Creativity is building long-lasting positive memory structures that have the ability to move people.”

Just like Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem ‘The Hill We Climb’. “She wasn't just reading a piece of poetry. Her delivery was so on point. And she knew exactly what she was doing in terms of painting a picture of hope for a better future.”

An alumnus of the Coca-Cola Company, Macintyre calls out its flagship brand for consistently brilliant creativity. Whether 1971’s 'Hilltop' or 1969’s 'Boys on a Bench"' she admires Coke for always being present at the right culturally relevant moment. “It’s brave, timely, and timeless, so you look back on that on that work and understand what was going on.”

When Macintyre made the brave leap from big-corp Coke to start-up Sipsmith in 2016, the gin brand had its own hill to climb. At a relatively early life-stage, Sipsmith’s marketing playbook – authenticity, craft, quality – was being mimicked. Macintyre’s task, she explains, was to rewrite the rules of the game. “We needed to move the cheese. We needed to move to one-to-many communication, but to do that in a way that maintained the integrity of the brand, which is beautifully crafted and elevated, yet with British charm and warmth.”

“Go for fame”

The Sipsmith Swan, by Ogilvy UK, represented a major investment for the brand, with no guarantee that it would work. But strategically it seemed like the right moment for a bold move. The result was not only a boost in brand awareness, but an embodiment of the London craft gin itself. “The meticulousness of the craft that went into the animation and puppets was unbelievable, even to the point that Mr Swan’s three-piece suit has a pocket sewn into the inside of his blazer.”

Unlike the perfectly tailored Mr Swan, Sipsmith was wearing a suit two sizes bigger than it really was. In a textbook example of costly signalling, the very virtue of going into mainstream communications proclaimed this is a brand of stature; worthy of consideration.

“It taught us to go for fame. To be bold enough to drive your creative to be famous. It's so easy for marketers to get tied up in ‘what am I saying about my products, am I delivering their rational attributes?’ But sometimes you’ve got to give in to the pure creative beauty, because that's what will move people,” Macintyre says.

The combination of art and science

A creative marketer needs vision. In addition, they must be restlessly curious, with a clear and ruthless eye, says Macintyre. Marketing relies on creativity to drive behaviour change, as well as deliver commercial results. But an effective marketer must be as literate in understanding and articulating the commercial game as they are in the creative game.

“You can't be a good creative marketer without the ability to articulate and influence the CFO, and the CEO. You've got to be as strong in those aspects as you are in creativity, otherwise the creativity doesn't punch through,” Macintyre says. “And if you're a little bit cautious or risk averse, you're never going to make the impact that you're looking for in the market.”

The combination of art and science, the relationship between creativity and strategy, is key to an effective agency partnership, Macintyre believes. Plus, the team should be right-sized to the problem, so having the right brains in the room, and the right number of brains, and creative leaders who have strong trusting relationships with one another.

Ogilvy found a way to service Sipsmith, which doesn't have huge budgets like Unilever and British Airways. “They could service us in a traditional agency way, but that would be over-servicing and it would slow things down, so we have just the right number of people to have very constructive conversations. What frustrates me is unnecessary process and too many cooks – that’s what kills creativity.”

So far, creativity has helped Sipsmith cross the chasm between just being small and now becoming the smallest of the big players. Sipsmith hasn't yet conquered the category, but with the help of Macintyre and Mr Swan, it’s spreading its wings.