As Wieden+Kennedy London chief executive officer Neil Christie bows out after almost 40 years in the ad business, we catch up with him to talk about his career, the place of advertising in pop culture and how the industry needs to change to attract young talent.
Anyone can be an England player with Bud Light’s Boxheads
Wieden + Kennedy has designed a new range of ‘wearable’ beer boxes adorned with gigantic versions of England players’ heads 17/05/2021 8:14 am
The Boxheads campaign marks the announcement of Bud Light as the official beer of the England men’s team, and is a playful take on the tradition of brands putting ambassadors on their packaging.
W+K has taken this to a new extreme, by wrapping Bud Light boxes in blown-up images of players’ faces, including Jordan Pickford, Keiran Trippier and Kyle Walker. The idea is that once the beer is gone, fans can don the boxes.
Neil Christie Neil Christie, director of growth markets at Wieden & Kennedy, is departing the creative network after 17 years. After a period of self-reflection during the Covid pandemic, Christie is leaving the advertising industry to study literature. Managing director of Wieden & Kennedy London from 2004 to 2017, Christie established the agency – alongside long-time, and also departing, executive creative director Tony Davidson – as one of the most respected creative shops in the UK, producing work for brands like Arla Cravendale, Honda and Nike. Christie, who will leave the agency in June, said: “I feel extraordinarily lucky and grateful to have found a home at a place where I’ve been able to work with brilliant people, to make good friends and to be myself. And now looking forward to something completely different, studying literature at King s College London.”
After many years in advertising and 17 years at W+K, I just felt like it was time for a change, Christie tells Ad Age. I was thinking about life post-Covid and what I wanted to do. I love Wieden, I feel like my time here has been very successful, and I had no interest in working at another agency. I ve always loved literature but never had the opportunity to study it. Now seems like a good time to swap studying Byron Sharp and Peter Field for studying Chaucer and Shakespeare.
“Neil Christie is the original Wieden+Kennedy optimist, said W+K President Colleen DeCourcy in a statement. Seventeen years ago, when we needed help in the London market, he took us on and built a world-renowned agency. Neil was the smart one who made it possible for everyone else to walk in stupid every day, and our dependence on him has been deep and genuine. Thank you, Neil. You’ll be missed by us all.”