The Portfolio of Rick Evans

If I had a code name, it'd be the simplifier.
My secret weapon is that I am a real life human being with empathy. I try to understand things before being understood.Agencies Worked At: R/GA, Virtue (Vice), Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, EveryFridayBrands Worked At: Airbnb, American Express, (RED), STA TravelAwards Won: PR Week 50 Most Innovative Communicator, Cannes Lions - Gold for Creative EffectivenessVisit my LinkedIn for the Specifics↗
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Show Me the Work↗
Has anyone every said anything nice about you?↗
What do you do for fun?↗

Client: Airbnb
Agency: Direct Contract
Role: Brand Marketing Strategy LeadChallenge: Airbnb is a U.S.-based business the grew by focusing on one country. To grow in Europe, leadership needed to understand the nuances of Guest audience across the diverse European markets the brand is active in.Strategy: Created one source of truth bringing together multiple sources of data to give marketing leadership real insight into the differences and similarities amongst European guests.Result: New insight brought efficiencies in advertising creation and media spend.

Client: Dove
Agency: Ogilvy
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: Dove is an iconic brand for its stance on real beauty. Does it need to shift in the age of artificial intelligence?Output: With deep research including talking with industry experts and stakeholders across WPP, I developed the first Ogilvy point of view for the brand on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on its brand strategy, marketing and advertising.Result: Deep insight and understanding of the landscape to inform future brand strategy and campaigns.

Client: Dove
Agency: Ogilvy
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: Dove's longstanding commitment to champion real beauty was challenged by a TikTok filter that made it hard to figure out what was actually real.Strategy: Counter the prevailing trend through grassroots influencers and TikTok beauty community users before bringing in celebrities.Result:The campaign saw an increase in purchase intent and brand trust in the U.S. and UK. It also picked up a Media Grand Prix and Gold in Creative Effectiveness at Cannes Lions.View the Case Study Video↗

Client: Unilever Sustainability
Agency: Ogilvy
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: Product innovation can only get global conglomerates so far to sustainability goals, how do we change public behavior?Approach: Create a brand to aggregate collective action across social media that helps people realize that the most important step happens before the first step.Strategy: Seed influencers around the world and across categories with tips for sustainable living hacks for content back by Ogilvy Behavioral Science.Result: On the path to reaching 1B people with tips and tricks to live more sustainably.View the Step Zero Website↗

Client: Visa EMEA
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: As the world's largest payment network, almost every has a Visa credit or debit card but nobody actually engages Visa directly. How can we get more people to trust Visa directly?Strategy: Recognizing that Visa is essentially a marketplace for transactions with multiple stakeholders, we built a new trust framework based on digital-first marketplace products like Airbnb.Result: Visa EMEA's CMO onboarded a new approach to trust across his brand's work.

Client: IKEA (Ingka Group)
Agency: R/GA
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: How can we reimagine the IKEA Family membership program to create more value for the many people while feeling more IKEA?Approach: Meeting with the many people inside and outside of IKEA to map the current value system and understand what opportunities existed to enhance it and bring IKEA's brand to every interaction and offer.Strategy: Pursue interactions, benefits and rewards that create relationship value for IKEA and its customers, rather than just a transactional discount.Result: Heavily influence roadmap for new sustainability and rewards programs.

Client: Andressen Horowitz
Agency: R/GA
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: How do you create a valuable first-of-its kind online/offline, invite-only community for everyone from tech founders to cultural creators?Strategy: Through stakeholder interviews and workshops with a16z partners and portfolio companies, we uncovered that importance of psychological safety. This informed the entire project from interaction design and platform to key messages and communication cadence.Result: Client made referrals for future work from its investment portfolio.

Client: Sanderson Design Group
Agency: EveryFriday
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: How can we monetize the famous William Morris design archive without cannibalizing our existing portfolio of brands?Strategy: Our insight focused on how young urban renters doesn’t value vintage because of its origin, but its ability to create something unique in a modern context. We compressed time in this fashion to join the past and the present, recognizing the timelessness of good design. There is no start, middle or end, just a cycle of imagination, interpretation and creation.Result: New brand created (foundation, naming, visual identity) in a matter of weeks that launched at Selfridges in London.

Client: Sanderson Design Group
Agency: EveryFriday
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: Sanderson owned Harlqeuin was experiencing a notable sales decline and adding a direct to consumer channel.Strategy: As one of the boldest brands in the portfolio, we revamped Harlequin's positioning to speak to fashionable people who also want a fashionable home.Result: "Over time, Harlequin lost some of its magic. This creative campaign is boldly re-building the brand." - Nigel Hunt, CMO

Client: Barclays
Agency: EveryFriday
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: How can Barclays show up with more credibility at its PRIDE sponsorship?Strategy: What we recognized is that community is an act and not just a sponsorship. Through internal and external stakeholders interviews, we found that groundwork needed to be done. We all have to make an intentional choice each day to be a supportive member of all of the communities we are part of and those communities being discriminated against.Result: We created a three-year internal strategy and campaign that generated this actual client feedback - "Groundbreaking" & "Fucking Amazing"

Client: Barclays
Agency: EveryFriday
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: How does the first ever current account with travel awards in the UK work, what is it called and how do we bring it market in the middle of a global pandemic preventing travel?Strategy: By focusing on the people and emotions of travel, rather than the transaction of points for hotels and flights - from seeing places to seeing faces - we were able to make a detailed, transactional offering as human as possible from the rewards structure to the naming and identity.Result: Opened up new streams of work across the Barclays business to support marketing with brand architecture, brand refreshes and creative communications.

Client: Bayer
Agency: Oliver
Role: Strategy DirectorChallenge: Bayer created a new functional health supplement that used natural ingredients in combinations to address real human health challenges. But it is also a brand known for its chemical creations.Strategy: We created a brand (foundation, visual identity) that looks more at home in a natural food store than a pharmacy, focused on the audiences and lifestyles where the functional solutions would be most relevant.Result: The new brand generated enough excitement to get CVS on board as a launch partner with premium shelf space.

Client: Tequila Cazadores (Barcardi)
Agency: Virtue (Vice Media)
Role: Assoc. Strategy DirectorChallenge: How do you relaunch a product in a hot tequila category full of celebrity endorsers and owners?Strategy: Shine a light on the celebrities of Los Altos de Jalisco. With editorial video and images, we made the people and the place that make Tequila Cazadores what it is our celebrities with an integrated marketing strategy and plan including social media, out of home, experiential and online video.Result: Double digit sales growth over the first two years of the campaign.Watch a Campaign Film↗

Client: Ben & Jerry's
Agency: Virtue (Vice Media)
Role: Assoc. Strategy DirectorChallenge: To relaunch The Poor People’s Campaign (founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968), Ben & Jerry's wanted to know how they help could facilitate a productive conversation about systemic racism.Approach: Our strategic framework based on social media conversation analysis and stakeholder interviews focused on a handful of topic areas that were less volatile with trusted, local leaders as our key facilitators.Result: Ben & Jerry's kindly let us present our research and recommendations despite bad behavior by agency executives cancelling the rest of the project.

Client: Michelin
Agency: Virtue (Vice Media)
Role: Assoc. Strategy DirectorChallenge: How do we talk about the value of the tires, the most often overlooked part of your car?Strategy: Rather than go into specs and product features that are usually associated with tire advertising, we used real stories of people's actual roadtrips to highlight the value of tires, immortalizing them in custom animated GIFs.Result: We launched a first-of-its kind partnership with Giphy that racked up millions of views.

Brand: (RED)
Role: Director of MarketingChallenge: (RED) was built on special edition physical products being purchased triggering a donation. How does it work with increasingly popular in-app purchases?Strategy: In partnership with Apple, we worked with 25 of the top app developers to create in-app purchases with 100% of the proceeds going to (RED). The key to marketing was to let the developers, who know their audience best, lead the marketing for their app and audience.Result: Tens of millions of dollars raised on World AIDS Day 2004.

Pro-Bono Freelance Consulting with Patagonia Action WorksSince 2020, I've completed 23 consulting calls, quick advice chats and projects with a range of environmental non-profits worth more than $30k (platform's estimate).- Created a Mission and Values for Wild Orca
- Helped Ventura Land Trust Market a New Store
- Advised Third Act on Audience Research
- Helped WildFish with Audience Engagement Strategy
- Created a Successful Fundraising Campaign to Hire a Marine Ranger to Monitor Grey Seals in CornwallUse Your Own Skills Today↗

“Rick is not only a great strategist, he is a fundamentally good human. He is able to go from helping rebrand the Grizzly Bear, so we have a greater appreciation for the animal in the wild, through to helping IKEA unpick and remap what the future of membership looks like. He is a strong team leader and collaborator. I would bring him onto any project and know my colleagues and clients are in great hands.”
- Nicole Armstrong, ex-Executive Strategy Director at R/GA, Current Head of Strategy at AKQA Australia"The simplifier - if I have to give a persona to Rick it will be it. I believe a strategist should be here to get the noise and complexity of an organisation/brand and take the essence of it all to give the brand a clear path forward. While working together, Rick has consistently done it for global retailer (IKEA), Global FMCG brand (Unilever), Global QSR (McDonald's) and Highly connected VC (A16Z). And he is bringing every discipline along with him, and for me and the brands we partner with, a strong and indispensable strategic partner."
- Bertrand Morin, Client Partner at R/GA“Endorsing Rick. He's very good, and comfortable with big brands and clutch situations.”
- Tom Morton, Ex-R/GA Global Chief Strategy Officer

"I brought Rick on to lead the brand planning and campaign strategy for one of my biggest clients and he overdelivered in every aspect of his scope. His collaboration with our agency team, the clients many different stakeholders, and the IAT from day one was beyond what we had expected from him. Rick approaches everything with well-researched strategic insights, considers industry trends, and has expertise in culture that you can't find elsewhere."
- Matt Scapelliti, ex-Group Account Director at OLIVER, Current Freelance Executive Producer"Rick is an experienced strategist whose insights often draw from a deep understanding of nature, inspiring how he approaches challenges for some of the world’s biggest brands. He also excels in creating comprehensive strategies that are rooted in research and aligned with the ambition of the brand. Rick is not only a brilliant strategist but also a dedicated mentor and team player. His encouragement and support fostered a collaborative, healthy challenger-mentality environment. Rick's blend of systems thinking, nature-inspired thinking, and mentorship made a significant impact on our work at R/GA."
- Yuliana Safari, Principal at Ipsos Strategy3, ex-Associate Director at R/GA

I believe that to change the tide of the climate crisis, we must reconcile our relationship with the Earth and all of its inhabitants.In this spirit, I created the Ecosystem Member podcast to explore the relationships a range of people have with the more-than-human world and how they bring that to their life and work.Past guests include Vincent Stanley, the legendary director of philosophy at Patagonia, Ersin Han Ersin, of the art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, and Lylianna Allala, Climate Justice Director at the City of Seattle.Listen On:
Apple Podcasts↗
Spotify↗
YouTube↗
Substack↗

Cannes Lions Live 2020At the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, one of my mentors introduced me to the idea of biomimicry.While I came across many resources that applied biomimicry to design and materials, there was nothing about more general business and cultural strategy - so I created something.Along with an amazing group including a creative director, artist and a leader in the design future space, we created a panel for Cannes Lions Live and shared the wonders of nature and how it can inform our creative practices.Watch on LoveTheWork.com↗