Brand Marketing · Culture · Music · Sport · Fashion · Entertainment · Partnerships · Product · PR · Earned Media · Content · Social · Digital · Experiential

Most brand marketing buys proximity to culture. A sponsorship badge. A creator post. A moment in the right room.

Proximity is not the same as belonging. And the audiences that actually matter have always known the difference.

There is a mechanism underneath the work that most brand operating models cannot see. Cultural standing that builds quietly - below the trend cycle, outside the campaign window, before the data catches up. Brands that earn it compound. Brands that do not spend the next decade paying premium prices to rent it from someone who did.

Built on the kind of work that earns it. At the point where music, sport, fashion and entertainment stopped being sectors and became the primary language brands use to reach people who have stopped listening to advertising.

AI is making it easier than ever to produce content and harder than ever to make it matter. The volume is going up. The trust is going down. The question has not changed. It is just more urgent. Brands that genuinely belong somewhere in culture will compound. Brands that do not will drown in their own output. AI platforms are now part of how people find a brand in the first place, and they reward brand knowledge that is structured well enough to be read correctly, not the biggest media spend.

Hendrick's Gin. BACARDÍ. adidas. Y-3. Hull City AFC. Wilderness Festival. MAMA Group. Warner Music. Endemol.

THE WORK

Two decades. Music, live events, fashion, luxury, sport and entertainment. Always the same problem: how does a brand get in without being shown the door.

The work starts before the brief. Reading what a culture is actually doing - triangulating the data, the signals the data has not reached yet, and the precise role a brand can credibly play inside it. That read is the hard part. Everything else is execution.

It started when festivals were becoming the most interesting branding labs in the world. Alcohol sponsorship, fashion activations, luxury hospitality, influencer culture, experiential installations. The frameworks agencies now package and sell were being built on the ground before the industry had a name for any of it. Co-founding Wilderness Festival - Best New Festival - was part of that. Not built from a template. It became one.

From there: the adidas fashion partnerships and Style division. Y-3, adidas by Raf Simons, adidas by Rick Owens - redefining what sportswear could mean culturally before luxury streetwear had fully converged in the mainstream. Building the global PR, content, creator and experiential function from scratch, and taking the division's fashion show presence from functional to culturally essential. The Y-3 x Virgin Galactic partnership: a cultural read so precise the world amplified it without being asked. €30m in earned media value on €50k in spend.

At BACARDÍ: rebuilding an event-led PR programme into two content-first cultural platforms. BACARDÍ Beginnings paired established and emerging artists to create and release original music - including the world's first 3D-printed record store and the first track-unlock digital release mechanic - and delivered a 1,090% increase in earned coverage. Not because the campaign was loud. Because the cultural positioning was so precise that the media and the audience did the work. BACARDÍ Triangle: a private island party with Calvin Harris, Kendrick Lamar and Ellie Goulding, 1,862 creators and supporters, and 6.7 billion impressions. The reach was a consequence of the credibility. In that order.

At Hendrick's Gin: owning global brand marketing, communications, digital, social, influencer and partnerships across 100+ markets. Five global campaigns. Thirteen toolkits. 111 assets. A fully integrated paid, earned and owned ecosystem with every channel assigned a defined role from awareness to advocacy. 880% growth in earned reach. £182m NSV. Category leadership. The result of treating cultural standing as an asset to build, not a moment to buy.

At Hull City AFC: walking into one of the most politically sensitive environments in communications, where every decision is made in public and heritage is non-negotiable. A supporter-led crest redesign. A content strategy reoriented around players, community and identity. A digital-first overhaul across app, OTT, website and CRM. First net-positive supporter sentiment in four years. A business handed back ready for sale. Heritage does not protect brands. Participation in what that heritage means to the people who hold it does.

Before all of that: artist and label PR at Warner Music Group. Publicity at Endemol UK. And MAMA Group - Lovebox, GlobalGathering, The Great Escape, Hammersmith Apollo, Jazz Cafe - 100+ festivals, venues and tours, before anyone was calling it a cultural portfolio.

THE NUMBERS

603:1 - adidas Y-3 × Virgin Galactic. €30m EMV on €50k spend.

6.7bn - BACARDÍ Triangle impressions. 4.63bn earned.

1,090% - YoY increase in earned coverage, BACARDÍ Beginnings. 14x reach uplift.

880% - Increase in earned reach, Hendrick’s Gin.

£182m - NSV, Hendrick’s Gin. No.1 premium gin by value.

83:1 - Vintage × Sir Peter Blake. Three front pages. BBC News at Ten.

100+ - Markets governed. Festivals, events and venues led. Campaigns delivered.

THE SHAPE OF THE ENGAGEMENT

£10,000 to £17m+ budgets and teams of two to nineteen. Or the only person in the room. In-house leader, agency partner, consultant, turnaround hire.

PR, earned media, brand strategy, paid, social, content, creator and influencer ecosystems, digital product, partnerships and experiential.

AGENCY SIDE

The in-house roles sit on a foundation of agency experience - which means knowing how to brief well, how to get the best out of partners, and how both sides of the relationship actually work.

M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment - Director level. Pernod Ricard / Ballantine’s across music and culture partnerships including Boiler Room Stay True Scotland and Ballantine’s Brasil.

Cake Group (Havas) - Brand and PR across V Festival, Sky HD, Nintendo of Europe, Ben & Jerry’s and Sainsbury’s.

SHIFT and Begin - Communications and brand strategy across start-ups, scale-ups and agencies in tech, sustainability, ecommerce and social impact.

Also consulted for an early-stage AI start-up - leading brand strategy, architecture and messaging from scratch, launching a new website, and building out B2B paid and CRM infrastructure to drive client acquisition.

WHAT PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY

“Vicky is the new breed of marketer; skilled at creating extraordinary experiences that bring brands to life and engage even the most cynical and discerning of audiences. And that’s just for starters. Where she really stands out is in understanding how to realize brand strategy in the experiential space - how to make the brand vivid and visceral, and how to turn brand experiences into compelling newsworthy content. These are not easy things, and Vicky delivered over and over again in the experiences she created for Bacardi in the U.K.” Kofi Amoo-Gottfried - Global Communications Director, BACARDÍ · Global VP Marketing, Facebook · CMO, DoorDash · Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO 50

“Vicky was a star on our marketing team. She is a well rounded marketer with a keen expertise on PR, social and digital marketing. She knows how to bring brands and programs to life in a relevant and meaningful way. She had an immediate impact on the dynamics of the team in a positive leadership role. She constantly delivers results even under the most demanding pressure. Her contribution to our Virgin Galactic partnership launch was especially impactful for our brand and set a new standard.” Kimberly Landry Wallengren - Global Marketing Director, adidas

“Vicky was a star player on my team. Filled with passion, dedication, drive, and determination - she turned an event based program into a content based platform with BACARDI Beginnings. She combines years of PR, music and event experience with her innate ability to curate projects to produce outstanding results. Vicky has a thirst for knowledge and her “finger on the pulse” In the past two years working with her she has taught me the importance of staying true to the vision, the balance between brand push and credibility, and that the impossible can become a reality. I am very proud of the work and results on BACARDI Beginnings - all thanks to Vicky’s relentless passion for the project.” Lisa Jazwinski - Global Marketing Director, BACARDÍ

“I have known Vic in a professional capacity for many years, first working alongside her at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment and then as part of her core agency team when she moved client-side. Vic is a highly-skilled and incredibly switched on Marketing and Comms professional, bringing both her wealth of experience and sophisticated expertise to every role. She combines high level strategic thinking with a hands-on, can do attitude. She is a true team player; when working as her agency partner she always made us feel that we were a trusted and valued extension of her team. With boundless energy and a true passion for what she does, Vic is an absolute pleasure to work with.” Beth Noonan - Managing Partner, M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment - M&C Fabric

“Vicky is a great partner, as well as a skilled manager and marketer. As my global partner on the Hendrick’s business, Vicky was always very collaborative, solution oriented and was able to provide clarity when dealing with complex programs, and at times, the competing priorities that inevitably arise within global and local market dynamics. Vicky always brought sound thinking and great energy to the team, and is someone who’s opinion I trust. She is a true pleasure to work with.” Michael Giardina - VP Marketing, William Grant & Sons

“Vicky worked in my publicity team at Endemol UK. She is a talented and creative publicist who I would recommend to anyone. She is also great fun to work with and we were all very sad to lose her when she went. Charlie Gardner - Chief Marketing Officer, Endemol

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