ALLISTER HERCUS
JOB TITLE: Strategist
COMPANY: MEC
BASED: Australia

What is your greatest achievement to date in international media?

Winning ADMA’s ‘young marketer of the year’ was one of the most affirming moments in my career, and there are many elements that contributed to being recognised. One was my work on ‘LEGO Black Ops’ (Google it). We commissioned a LEGO animator to produce a video for the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops. The video has over 22 million YouTube views.

What creative innovations have you implemented in the last 12 months?

For the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops 3, we set out to connect with a new audience. The strategy was to put our brands into the hands of this audience, and into the zeitgeist. The solution: Black Hops. An official craft beer, brewed locally for Australians. This is innovation for Activision as we are not using an existing medium.

Provide an example of how you have helped transform brand awareness.

For the launch of Colgate’s new whitening toothpaste, Optic White, we had to reduce Australia’s perception that teeth whitening was for Hollywood. Using neuroscience, we ran a study to uncover the science behind a smile, proving that a whitened smile will make you more engaging to those around you. We used our findings to build video content with influencers, infographics and a white paper, integrating the results into our TV partnerships.