Showcasing creativity in Birmingham and the Midlands

Abel & Cole: Mediaplus Connect UK

The challenge:

Abel & Cole had built genuine momentum through audio. Radio had been the engine of their above-the-line strategy, driving awareness, efficient conversions, and a loyal customer base. With an ambitious five-year growth plan ahead, the question became how to build on those foundations and take the brand to the next level. Audio had made Abel & Cole heard. The opportunity now was to make them seen.

The brief was to expand into sustained brand building adding visual impact and cultural presence to a media mix that had served the brand well, but which could now be amplified by the reach and immediacy that only Out of Home can deliver.

The thinking:

The wider cultural moment was perfectly aligned. National debate around ultra-processed foods was intensifying, and Abel & Cole had a clear, compelling answer. The opportunity was to step into that conversation boldly with conviction and visibility.

OOH offered broad reach, efficient cost-per-thousand, and high-attention environments. Crucially, it could do what audio alone could not: make the brand visible. For a brand rooted in provenance, colour, and natural beauty, that visual dimension unlocked something new.

Geography was central. With London and Meridian as priority regions, OOH provided unmatched access to affluent, health-conscious commuters. Underground cross-track 16-sheets and major termini backlights delivered extended dwell time; LU and National Rail 4-sheets added reach and frequency. Static formats were chosen deliberately to maximise over-show and optimise budget efficiency.

Placement was equally precise. Herdify's social influence data was used to prioritise word-of-mouth hotspots. And in an act of deliberate disruptive brand positioning, sites were placed directly alongside fast-food giants, backlights next to McDonald's and Burger King, roadside sites adjacent to global chains. Proximity became protest. The contrast was the message.

The execution:

Partnering with Hearts & Minds, Abel & Cole launched 'Unprocess Your Food' stark, vibrant creative built around a single, powerful call to action. Behave Consultancy's Neurovision eye-tracking technology was used to optimise every format, ensuring messages landed instantly in fast-paced commuter environments.

A centrepiece moment came through dominating the Premiere screens in Leicester Square surrounded by global fast-food brands. The placement generated significant social buzz and earned industry press attention, demonstrating OOH's power to shape cultural conversation well beyond the poster sites themselves.

OOH worked in synergy with the full channel mix. Radio continued to provide audio reach, while Paid Social and a Door Drop programme benefited directly from the brand-building activity happening in the physical world, evidencing how OOH made every channel work harder.

The impact:

• Unprompted awareness was +8pp YoY, and +4pp Season 2 (Sep-Dec) vs Season 1 (May-Aug)
• Prompted awareness was +5pp YoY and for Season 2 (Sep-Dec) vs Season 1 (May-Aug)
• Record customer growth of +15% vs 2024, a year also supported by radio evidencing the incremental contribution of OOH surpassing targeting by 12.4%
• Independent analysis confirmed true sales uplift of +17.1% in London and +12.1% in Meridian

Abel & Cole are looking to continue with their OOH investment in 2026, the clearest signal that a strategic pivot has become a long term commitment.

CrossCountry Trains | UK Rail: McCann Central

 

The challenge:

CrossCountry operates one of the UK’s most complex rail networks, without the advantage of station ownership or high-frequency commuter routes. Competing on long-distance journeys with lower budgets and share of voice, the brand faced declining differentiation, compounded by industrial action and negative sentiment.

The task was to rebuild trust, drive relevance and ultimately, revenue growth. All while creating a scalable, consistent brand system across channels.

The idea:

McCann evolved CrossCountry’s positioning from functional messaging to a more human, emotionally-led platform: “Take Us On Your Journey.”
This reframed the brand around real people and lived experiences, shifting the narrative from operations to the role CrossCountry plays in meaningful, everyday moments. The platform was designed to build warmth and trust, while providing a simple, unifying idea that could flex across every touchpoint. And it did.

Creatively, the work moved away from category clichés. By using authentic storytelling and a consistent tone of voice, we created a more distinctive and relatable brand.

The activation:

The platform was rolled out through a fully integrated approach across TV, video, social, OOH, CRM and PR.

Activity balanced national scale with local relevance, supported by targeted media planning and optimisation. Internally, the platform was embedded across the organisation through a dedicated engagement programme, ensuring consistency in both communications and customer experience.
Clear governance, toolkits and a “single team” approach between client and agency ensured efficiency and cohesion across all outputs.

The impact:

The campaign delivered measurable improvements in both perception and performance:

• +4% spontaneous awareness

• +10% “warm”, +9% “human”, +6% “brand I trust”

• 1:11.86 ROMI

• Consistent year-on-year growth in ticket sales and direct revenue

FlixBus: One Black Bear

 

The challenge:

Officially launching in the UK in 2021, FlixBus landed in a landscape dominated by long-established competitor brands. By 2024, they had expanded their routes and ran a brand campaign that boosted the nation’s awareness of the Green fleet but wasn’t aligning with their brand personality or growth ambitions. They needed a campaign that would supercharge their growth, capture the Flix essence of 'up-ending' the establishment and deliver ambitious market share.

The brief:

How can we shatter the UK’s coach travel ‘shame’, a stigma that’s lingered for a long time and increase usage. This task was beyond just drilling the proof points, it needed a challenging concept to target the brand’s various rivals in every respect – and if done right, it should prove that coach travel is, in fact, pretty cool. They wanted a campaign that made them look like the confident tech brand they are and reflected their rebellious brand positioning.

The thinking:

Something we knew to be absolutely essential was moving away from the standard category norms. Becoming the go-to travel brand of choice required something the FlixBus team already had a huge amount of to start with – bold confidence and genuine brand pride.

To build trust and authority as a market newcomer, the campaign needed to work on high-impact, big brand channels to signal reliability and give us a lot more creative flexibility to accurately represent this brand.
Our strategy was to shift the focus from the head to the heart, because deeming something as ‘cool’ isn’t necessarily always rational, but more of an emotive response. Tapping into people’s reasons for travel and the joy it can bring led us to encouraging people to get out there and live more, calling out the habits holding people back and putting FlixBus forward as the better option.

The work:

‘Switch to FlixBus.’ launched at the end of April 2026 as the brand’s biggest UK campaign to date. We leaned into a clean aesthetic, paired with instantly recognisable brand assets and driven by clever headlines to bring that much-needed dose of cheekiness to the UK coach sector.

This isn’t our first rodeo in the travel space. We’ve poured every ounce of our previous experience working with National Express into the thinking behind the campaign. The result is a playful concept that positions FlixBus as the smart, bold and straightforward antidote to overcomplicated and overpriced ways of getting around.

Running across OOH, TV, audio, social and display in major cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and more, the creative and media pairing packs a real punch. This isn’t just a campaign, it’s an open invitation to join the FlixBus revolution.

Shamil Maindiratta, Managing Director of FlixBus UK said: "The 'Switch to FlixBus' campaign brings the fun, modern and energetic brand we have built to life! With its tongue-in-cheek copy and clean look, One Black Bear have really nailed our tone of voice to represent the revolution we're bringing to the coach market."

SIFA Fireside: Leopard Co

Background:

In 2024, Leopard Co partnered pro-bono with Birmingham homelessness charity SIFA Fireside to tackle one of the UK’s most urgent social issues: rising homelessness during the winter months. Our challenge was to create a campaign that would cut through festive noise, spark public conversation, and drive donations at a critical time of year.

‘Inequality Street’:

We developed ‘Inequality Street’ — a provocative reimagining of a traditional festive chocolate box that highlighted the harsh realities of homelessness. Each satirical chocolate concept, from “The Last Penny” to “The Debt Triangle”, represented the systemic issues trapping people in cycles of poverty and insecure housing. By juxtaposing festive indulgence with uncomfortable truths, the campaign challenged audiences to rethink homelessness during a season associated with warmth and excess.

Leopard Co led the integrated campaign entirely in-house, delivering strategy, branding, PR, social media, design, and live event management. We created a full suite of campaign assets, including packaging design, infographics, posters, flyers, and social content, alongside a detailed social media rollout plan. To bring the campaign directly to the public, we staged a Birmingham fundraising pop-up where passersby could donate what they could afford in exchange for limited-edition ‘Inequality Street’ chocolates.

Impact:

The campaign delivered significant impact. Donations increased by 37.54% year-on-year, while SIFA Fireside achieved a 2,300% increase in social reach, totalling 117,000 people. Media coverage included BBC Radio West Midlands, PR Week, PR Moment, and national consumer outlets — demonstrating how bold creativity and culturally resonant storytelling can drive both awareness and measurable results for a vital community cause.

Transport for West Midlands: BBJ&K

 

The challenge:

You’re Bussing It was a pioneering campaign by Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) unifying all regional operators under the West Midlands Bus brand to improve perceptions and increase bus patronage. For years, bus travel across the region had been the responsibility of individual operators. This fragmented approach resulted in operators competing with one another for attention and SOV, rather than promoting a unified vision.

The brief:

TfWM recognised the need to radically shift perceptions, behaviour, and ultimately, outcomes. Their brief to BBJ&K was ambitious: unify operators under a single campaign, improve public sentiment, and generate one million additional bus journeys year-on-year. However, the challenge wasn’t just numerical, it was cultural. We weren’t simply selling a ticket; we were asking people to re-evaluate how they moved throughout their lives.

The thinking:

Our approach was performance focused, based on an audience first methodology. We leveraged operators’ historical data enhanced by Emodo, Mastercard and Neilsen insights. We identified three high impact audience segments: Inspired Bus Overlookers, Nuanced Bus Considerers and students, none of which were regular bus users. By integrating behavioural insights with granular location and travel data, we deployed a fully integrated omni-channel ATL strategy across OOH, TV, VOD and audio.

Digital and social played a vital role in delivering both precision and conversion, platforms like TikTok and Snapchat allowed us to speak directly to students in their native media environments, while Meta’s precision targeting helped segment messaging across the broader audience set.

Execution:

Execution was highly collaborative, with BBJ&K leading the media planning and strategy alongside TfWM, the operators and creative agency Impero. From briefing to deployment, the campaign was shaped through close cross-agency collaboration, sharing insights and aligning on goals. A key creative activation fused local culture with public messaging, through a partnership with I Choose Birmingham and artist, Milan, creating digital content and a physical exhibition. Multilingual radio and local influencers further extended the campaign’s reach across diverse communities with authenticity and relevance.

Impact:

The results went far beyond the expected performance. Against the target of one million additional journeys, we delivered 6.13 million, an over delivery of 513%. Of these, over 2.5 million were paid, ticketed passengers, with the remainder driven by concessionary and incentive-led initiatives. Priority routes saw a 17.7% uplift in usage, directly aligning with the targeted areas. Our special build ticket giveaway alone generated over 16,000 journeys, with a 48% redemption rate, clearly indicating conversion efficiency. PPC activity drove over 80,000 on-site conversions, while broadcast TV delivered 905 TVRs and over 64 million adult impacts. Influencers engagement added further impact with an 84% positive sentiment score.

WD-40: WAA Chosen

The business challenge

WD-40 is a heritage brand established over 70 years ago. A widely used, versatile spray designed to lubricate, penetrate, protect, and clean. People knew the product, they trusted it, but their mental picture of when to reach for it was surprisingly narrow. The brief was about growing that. Not awareness, but breadth of consideration to drive sales and growth in the category.

Creative solution

We talked to the people who actually used it. Homeowners, Tradespeople, DIYers, WD-40 employees. The pattern was consistent. Even loyal, regular users consistently recalled a narrow set of scenarios where they'd reach for it. The squeaky door, stubborn hinge, the rusty bolt. That was about as far as it went for most of them.

The interesting thing was what happened when we explored the range of what it can do. The picture of the product shifted and it stopped being a solution they only remembered for simple fixes, and became something more human, more relatable. The relationship with the brand changed.

As we focused on making the uses feel more human and real, it shifted our strategy. Less about communicating product utility, more about communicating practical confidence. We repositioned Smart Straw as the ultimate product that allowed you to Do More, not because there were new ways to use it, but because there was more scenarios where it was relevant.

Our activation

The creative platform, Do More with WD-40 Smart Straw, was built around that. Bold, product-first, rooted in real tasks and real moments, with a strong visual identity that carried consistently across POS in retail, digital, eCommerce and social. The brief was to first and foremost address a commercial problem but we saw it as an opportunity to build something that had longevity beyond one campaign cycle.

The results

The campaign delivered 8.1 million social impressions and 84.5% new-to-brand eCommerce sales. But the more meaningful indicator of effectiveness is that the campaign is running again in 2026, built on a learning agenda developed from the first phase of activity. The creative platform has earned buy-in from the business, retailers and consumers, and is starting to build the kind of consistent memory structure that makes a brand more instinctive over time. For a brand that already has genuine distinctiveness, that's exactly the right place to be building from.

Find out more about how the IPA supports its members across the country, and meet our UK Chairs and City Heads