The Social Mindset of Leo Burnett

Trending on X, healing the nation’s hearts, bike-riders drawing phalluses - all milestones in the world of social media; and Leo Burnett is only just scratching the surface. 

Its social division is thriving; under the leadership of Mark Elwood, chief creative officer, and Beth Manning, creative director, social, its roll-out of work has been going from strength to strength.  

“Over the last 18 months we’ve gone from the area of it being just social media to a social mindset,” begins Elwood, who was promoted from executive creative director to CCO in November 2023. “That’s something that usually comes last within thinking about platform ideas, whereas we actually bake that right into the front end of the brief.” 

For Elwood, establishing an environment that holds collaboration at its heart has been essential, and having a social-focussed division has allowed that to grow. 

“Every team within creative is looking at social, but that might be more campaign social and that's a very different thing. Whereas now we have a completely different hired specialist department that includes content creators, content designers, community managers, editorial directors. We've got some really great specialism that's merged beautifully into the creative department. It's not a bolt-on or an add-on - it's something that we see as very much at the heart of every brief.” 

The belief is that the more collaboration becomes a natural part of the creative process across creative departments, the more great work the agency can make. 

“When you look at the media plan of any decent campaign it's too big for one creative team to be doing. For the last 18 months, since I took over as CCO, my biggest thing has been collaboration,” he continues. “The more brains you can get around a problem, the better it's going to be. Every team, every kind of creative director in the building, is really enjoying that. The canvas now needs that specialism.” 

Manning joined Leo Burnett in December 2023 from We Are Social where she was creative lead on brands including Coca-Cola and McCain Foods. She believes that Leo Burnett is an agency unboxing the impacts and potential from leading clients that hasn’t been seen before. 

“What’s exciting and great since joining is when you look at the client roster - it’s quite incredible from the perspective of what opportunities and what kind of impact and reach that you have the potential to do,” she explains.

“We've got such an amazing list of really ambitious clients that are so excited to buy the social offering that we're able to be pulling together now, and with the combination of those clients, the specialists, the agency's ambition... we've started to see some of that success," she adds.

The importance of channel planning

Across the last 18 months Leo Burnett’s social work has shown its ambition to create work that stands out from the crowd. For Elwood, much of this is down to considering the insights of consumers as opposed to relying on the reactions received once a campaign goes live, as traditionally done. 

The agency's work with McDonald’s, he says, provides prime examples of how tapping into customer insights can snowball into something much bigger. 

“We play a lot of the time with [McDonald’s] customer truths, fan truths - whether that's fry-pinching, if you take the gherkins out of your burger or not. We bake those ideas that when you get to customer truths, you might put something in social that's actually just one little thing that starts a fire that then creates something bigger.” 

Elwood and Manning, both emphasise the importance of channel planning in order for their work to be successful - knowing who a brand’s audience is and what they want is paramount. 

“There’s no point in having these enormous platforms that we deliver, whether that’s ‘The Nation’s Network’ for Vodafone or ‘More Reasons To Shop at Morrisons’ - these big platform ideas - without actually knowing where the customers are, how sharp that insight is going to land, what channel it’s going to land on best.” 

Elwood continues: “When we launched McRib this year, that’s genuinely the first time that we've been number one trending on X. That's a fantastic achievement for us. I'm so proud of that as a CCO, when your work is working and people are talking about it in the right places.” 

The brand’s 50th anniversary in theh UK last year saw the limited edition return of its purple cuddly brand mascot, Grimace, in the form of a blueberry shake to the UK and Ireland for just one week. This followed its viral return in the US which saw ‘#grimaceshake’ amass over 251.3 million posts on TikTok. 

Leo’s led the campaign, which featured both out of home ads and a takeover of McDonald’s social media. On launch day McDonald's UK’s Instagram hosted a Live tasting party hosted by Grimace himself, and the messaging clearly worked for its audience: the shake sold out within just three days.

Its work for Škoda UK provides more example of understanding the wants of its audience through social innovation. With the brand sponsoring the Tour De France Femmes, its ‘Ride With Me’ campaign collaborated with Olympic medallist Elinor Barker to encourage women to get out and about on their bike.

Alongside, the campaign featured a ‘#RideWithMe’ Strava Challenge, encouraging female cyclists to share their journeys on the app, which saw over 24,000 entries and 1,500 images posted. 

“It’s an incredible case study on a piece of what is technically social media,” explains Elwood. “It’s not traditional social media but we’re approaching it again from a social mindset.

“Where are people playing? That audience is playing Strava,” he continues. “That’s getting thousands of people involved which is fantastic, especially when you start to think about the fact they actually got on their bikes.”

Both aren’t shy to point out the fun side that social campaigns can bring out in people. 

“We saw quite a few drawings of cocks,” they joke. “When you ask people to draw things, you’re inevitably going to see a penis.”

The team's Valentine’s Day work for Morrisons earlier this year with ‘Get Personal This Valentine’s Day’ saw Leo’s taking another innovative social step by asking the general public to contribute. Customers were asked to share their most memorable Valentine’s gifting mishaps, with the best contributions being used to inspire three original love songs for the campaign. 

This marks another success; with 12 million views and counting, the work hit the right note.

For Manning, these are favourite projects to have worked on in Leo’s growing roster of acclaimed social work. 

“What’s particularly interesting about this for Morrisons is that we came into Valentine’s Day thinking ‘how do we stand apart from the rest of the supermarket category?’,” she explains. “We put a post out in January asking people what their worst Valentine's Day gift was and we had over 5,000 responses. One simple post had so many random answers, but we soon realised it had some really interesting stories.”

She continues: “With a body of work like that where we were able to generate this, where we tapped into a really lovely human insight. It’s a really lovely social first manifestation of the sort of work that we're trying to do. It’s felt particularly fun and special and I think what's lovely about that as well is that it kind of pushed the boat out for us a little bit.”

The future ambitions of social

Brands’ appetites are growing stronger for alternative platforms to share their messaging; Leo Burnett is certainly an agency looking to cash in on its successes, having shown the possibilities that tapping into untraditional social platforms like Strava can achieve. 

For clients, according to Elwood, the desire for creators and influencers to enter the social realm is a request that they are seeing more of. But how can brands go about choosing who to work with as the future trend expands?

“They’re almost that voice that adds credibility and authenticity,” he explains. “Having a social mindset and something that’s at the heart of the offering means we’re seeing various influencers and creators coming from lots of different parts and voices within the business. 

“At Leo Burnett bringing in those specialists that literally live and breathe influencer and have their own creative perspective on who is best to partner with is something moving forward at the moment.” 

In reflecting over the work produced over the last 18 months, both Elwood and Manning are firm in pointing out this is only just the beginning for the agency. 

“I really do think we’re just scratching the surface,” enthuses Manning. “To be in a building like this, at a time like this, with such ambition is the key thing that makes Leo Burnett stand out.

“It’s an ever-growing part of the business,” she continues. “It’s going from strength to strength and that’s a testament to the team that we’ve brought in. You've genuinely got everyone in the agency rallying behind these things. We’re just getting started on something that genuinely has the potential to make a really big impact.”