Havas London 2025: A Year of Brand Bedrock and Leadership Renewal

Havas London’s 2025 carried the feel of an agency rediscovering its breadth. The year blended big-brand storytelling with cultural texture, from expansive food platforms to global beer reframings and punchier, attitude-led FMCG work - all delivered with a level of confidence that suggested a step-change in creative ambition. Nothing overblown, but enough to signal that Havas was once again thinking — and operating — at full scale.

Behind the work, a refreshed leadership spine helped set the agency’s future direction. New senior arrivals, sharpened integration across the Havas Village and a reinforced client roster gave the shop a steadier footing and a clearer sense of momentum. 2025 felt less like a reset and more like a re-acceleration - the groundwork for an agency preparing to make a louder creative statement in the year ahead. We asked CEO Holly Ripper to tell us about the year.

Holly Ripper, CEO of Havas London, discusses the agency's 2025:

What three words would you use to describe 2025?

2025 was about transition, resilience and creativity.

Talk us through some of your agency’s highlights this year?

In 2025, we created work that was impossible to ignore – from punchy global brand platforms for Asahi Super Dry and Birds Eye, to driving behavioural change for Sweaty Betty and a star studded out-of-home campaign for Disney Cruise Lines.

Our relentless creativity and the people behind it continued to be recognised by the industry in 2025. We were shortlisted for Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award for the fourth year in a row, picked up a bronze and silver in Ocean Outdoor’s digital creative competition, alongside wins at the Creative Circle awards and D&AD – to name a few. Our ECD, Dan Cole, was also recognised at Campaign’s 40 over 40 for his use of creativity for good.

2025 also saw us grow our client portfolio further, winning the nation’s much loved butter brand, Anchor Butter; Sunday dinner staple, Aunt Bessie’s; Japan’s No.1 beer brand, Asahi Super Dry; England’s tourism board, VisitEngland; and a few other exciting accounts I’ll be able to share very soon.

What one thing are you proudest of this year?

Resilient creativity. Despite the tough global economic and political challenges this year, we have remained committed to supporting our clients and their ambitions, stretching brands across a bigger creative playing field to drive positive impact for them and their audiences.

And what’s been your biggest challenge?

2025 has been a year of upheaval and change for many businesses, brands, and agencies. At Havas London, we’ve also experienced this challenge. But, by being adaptable and entrepreneurial, we have set ourselves up for greater success in 2026.

What are you most looking forward to in 2026?

Creating more impossible to ignore work for businesses and brands around the world.

And what one change would you most like to see in our industry next year?

Even more adventurous in our creativity. In times of uncertainty, it’s human nature to become creatures of habit and go back to what we know. In the industry, I’d like to see more adventurous creativity - brands and agencies moving away from safe and expected work and places, and toward ideas that challenge, inspire, and make a real cultural impact.

Creative Salon on Havas London's 2025

Havas London’s 2025 was defined by a confident blend of big-brand storytelling, social-impact craft and meaningful commercial change, underpinned by a refreshed leadership team. Let's start with the former.

The agency’s most resonant creative statement came via Birds Eye with 'That’s a Recipe for a Life Well Fed', the first major outing since Nomad Foods appointed Havas as its pan-European creative partner. The cinematic, human-centred platform signalled a unified direction for Birds Eye and its sister brands, reinforcing the shop’s ability to deliver broad, emotive food-brand storytelling at scale.

Momentum continued with another heavyweight: for Asahi Super Dry, Havas London crafted a global brand platform titled 'Seek What Is Unique', marking the beer’s first international campaign under one unified idea.

The campaign fuses Japan’s neon-lit cityscapes with a sense of discovery, merging CGI and AI effects in a 90-second film to position the brand as “anything but a normal beer”. It underscores Havas London’s ability to think globally yet land locally, building on heritage while driving modern relevance.

In the cereal aisle, Havas London also re-energised the heritage cereal brand Jordans with 'Bursting with Bite', a punk-inspired 20-second spot set in a hyper-energetic factory that re-positions the brand as the rebellious under-dog of the category. The film - laden with techno beats, punk-attitude factory workers and a cow crashing through cereal boxes - brought bold attitude to cereal.

Commercially, Havas London added ballast with the win of Anchor Butter (Arla Foods), shifting the account from House 337 and strengthening the agency’s FMCG credentials. Meanwhile, the foundations laid by the Nomad Foods appointment in late 2024 came fully to life across 2025, with Birds Eye acting as the spearhead for a larger European brand-roll-out. The agency also won VisitEngland.

Awards recognition was strongest in audio, where the campaign for Refugee and Migrant Forum (via 'The Unsafest Journey') collected multiple Golds at the Creative Circle Awards and earned a short-list berth at the Campaign Big Awards.

The work - a compelling demonstration of the emotional power of radio - showcased Havas London’s finely-honed charity craft. At a network level, the Havas collective also enjoyed a buoyant Cannes, with Havas Paris taking a coveted Grand Prix - adding a wider creative glow around the brand.

If the work defined the agency’s voice this year, its leadership changes set its future direction. Early 2025 saw Holly Ripper step in as CEO, bringing a forward-looking client-and-culture agenda, working alongside Lorenzo Fruzza, chief design officer.

Meanwhile, Mark Whelan's role as chairman of Havas Village London strengthened integration across creative, media, CX and PR. On the creative front, long-serving talent Elliot Harris departed - marking a notable shift in the senior bench.

Havas London ended 2025 looking steady and well-positioned: creatively credible, commercially assured and organisationally refocused.

Creative Salon says... Havas London enters 2026 with the sense of an agency that is now poised for a louder phase. The fundamentals look healthier than they have in some time: a steadied leadership spine in Holly Ripper; a roster anchored by big, behaviour-shaping brands; and a growing fluency in integrated delivery across the wider Havas Village.

The work in 2025 showed control and maturity. Birds Eye proved the agency could land emotional brand platforms at scale; on the obverse Asahi demonstrated cosmopolitan range. The strategic foundations are there. As the new leadership beds in, the signs are promising. If Havas London can channel its integrated promise further, 2026 could be a decisive step forward.