Proving Populist Creativity: Leo UK's Leadership Talk Ads With Impact

While the world has changed dramatically in the year since Leo Burnett London adopted its new moniker, Leo UK, the agency has been busy adapting too. Geopolitical instability, economic pressure and a more fragmented media landscape have reshaped the context in which the entire advertising industry now operates. But Leo UK has continued to double down on its central creative philosophy: ‘populist creativity’.

That, says chief executive Carly Avener, has meant sharpening the agency’s focus on the kind of work that helps brands connect with modern audiences. The agency, which moved into its new home on London’s Chancery Lane late last year, has been thinking hard about what great work looks like now — and how to make sure it travels further.

“The media landscape is more blocked, fragmented, and expensive. It’s harder to reach people at scale, so our work has to do more than fill ad spaces. That alone won’t have the impact it once did,” Avener says.

She defines Leo’s focus on populist creativity as being about “ideas that get people talking and drive conversation”, while bringing a social-first mindset at scale to campaigns across a client base that includes Morrisons, Confused.com, Premier Inn, McDonald’s, B&Q, Vodafone, and Škoda. In the first five months of this year alone, the agency has been behind 21 campaigns across 11 clients.

“That’s huge, and few agencies operate at that scale. We obviously can’t do it alone. We need everyone — our people and our clients — aligned not just on the philosophy but on how to deliver it. So we’ve been looking at everything: our processes, our training, the skills we have in the building, how we tap into the wider Publicis Group and its technology, and how we use AI to deliver this proposition day in, day out — and measure it and prove it works. All of that has been a major focus,” Avener adds.

Guiding clients through uncertainty

The role of Leo’s leadership team has been to bring clients and internal teams closer to that creative philosophy, showing not just the thinking behind the work, but the work itself and, crucially, the results it delivers.

“It's gone down brilliantly, and it's playing back in the briefs that we're getting, and it's like a self-fulfilling thing,” Avener believes.

That approach has helped build trust with clients who have become increasingly nervous, explains chief creative officer Mark Elwood. He points to the agency’s long-standing relationships, not least with McDonald’s, which has worked with Leo for decades. Those relationships, he says, have been strengthened by work that has proved its commercial value — something marketers are particularly hungry for during periods of turbulence.

Elwood believes his direct, day-to-day interaction with clients has only intensified over the past year, as marketers look for a clearer point of view to support their decision-making.

“It's healthy for creative people to be speaking to clients too, because they understand where they're coming from that bit more,” he adds over why marketers no longer want to go through account managers.

Chief strategy officer Lilli English agrees, adding that the agency’s ability to combine empathy with creative insight — and to offer solutions for both short- and long-term needs — is part of what has made it so valuable to clients. Increasingly, Leo is also helping marketers build the internal case for work, as the pressure to justify marketing spend continues to grow.

“That requires a degree of closeness that potentially in the past was less — there was more stability, longer timelines, more of a ‘just follow the program’, and now we're having to react with them,” she adds.

Proving populism

Leo UK may still be best known for its work with the world’s biggest quick service restaurant brand, producing work for McDonald’s on an almost monthly basis. And McDonald’s has become something of a test bed for the power of populist creativity, with campaigns such as ‘Double Filet O Fish’ and ‘World Menu Heist’.

But those same principles are now being applied across the agency’s wider client base. Leo UK has also shown it can deliver major campaigns for national retailers such as Morrisons and B&Q, building award-winning platforms that are increasingly attracting new clients looking for the same kind of commercial impact.

“If you don't truly understand that audience, the culture, and the role that the brand authentically plays… those are the building blocks of really populist work, so that's definitely the hallmark. All of the work we make, is truly insightful. We understand culture, particularly social and the conversation driving spaces, but never at the expense of what the role of the brand is. That's where you can easily slide into what's cool on the internet,” outlines Avener.

The result, adds English, is work that people notice, talk about and share. She describes it as “a really unpretentious approach to creativity” — one that can influence people in an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment.

But this is not about chasing social media trends, Elwood stresses. The skill lies in balancing fast, reactive social content with deeper, more culturally rooted campaign ideas. He cites a Twix poster produced ahead of the Champion’s League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal as an example of the agency’s reactive work for Mars, but contrasts it with the McDonald’s trends campaign, which centred on long-standing customer debates around gherkins.

“Every marketer knows that you're in the game of influencing more people, and that's what populist creativity is about recognising. To grow you need to reach more people. Then, if you're able to reach them in a way that is building trust which for a brand which drives that point of distinctiveness, then you’re onto a real winner,” adds English.

Applying AI with taste

The ever-present topic of AI adoption is one the agency has long been engaging with — and one Elwood is particularly enthusiastic about. He sees AI as having moved well beyond its infancy inside Leo UK, with the design department now sending him work in days that would previously have taken weeks to produce.

It is the designer’s eye, and the designer’s taste, applied to the technology that is taking the work to “a different place”, he says.

AI is also being used by creative teams to simulate ideas. For a Confused.com campaign, for example, AI was initially used to demonstrate the potential realisation of the idea to the client. But Elwood, who has a design background himself, remains conscious of the risks the technology poses around IP and audience trust.

He adds: “The beauty is the little things that you used to not be able to prove you can prove - whether you end up using that in something is down to you, and it's down to your client's taste. I won't do humans in it… there's something about that where inherently trust goes. But it's a brilliant tool... the more we can learn about it, the better our ideas have become, and we're all working at speed.”

As part of Publicis Groupe, Leo UK already has access to powerful AI tools. But internally, says Avener, the real challenge has been shifting behaviour, process and culture so that everyone uses those tools confidently and consistently. Some people have become natural evangelists, while others have been more hesitant or intimidated. The focus now is on embedding AI in a way that feels safe, exciting and shared.

That has meant spotlighting early adopters and creating spaces for people to exchange learnings, with the aim of building a more collaborative culture in which AI use is surfaced, spread and scaled across the whole agency.

The creator side of the business has been another game changer. Leo UK has rapidly evolved to fully integrate social, influencer, creator and design expertise into the core of the agency. Those skills now sit across strategy, creative and production rather than in a silo, making them a natural part of every brief. Avener says influencer and creator work has become central.

Design, meanwhile, has emerged as a major competitive advantage too, proving essential for maintaining a consistent visual language across fragmented channels and creator-led content.

This is Leo UK being built for a new era of advertising.