Marketing and campaigns consultant with 19 years’ experience in charities, creative agencies, and on purposeful brands.
I’ll untangle your thorniest strategy and messaging challenges in hours or days.
Jobs I could do for you:
turning audience insights into strategy
identifying gaps in insights, commissioning and analysing new research
messaging /positioning analysis and evolution
creative strategy development
creative brief development
commissioning and overseeing creative development.
I work as fractionally as you need - for a few hours’ consultation, 1/2 or whole days.
Email me about a free initial 30-min consultation here: harriet.bailiss@gmail.com.
Areas of expertise:
attitude and behaviour change campaigns
social impact campaigns
DEI (particularly gender and ageing)
sustainability
brand / company / organisational purpose, mission and values
brand or campaign creative strategy.
Who am I?
A seasoned agency-leader (ex adam&eveDDB, Revolt, Head of Client Services / Third-Sector clients), I am well-schooled in getting to the heart of new problems and audiences quickly and thoroughly, distilling thoughts into action, and bringing people - the crucial part in all of this - along on the journey.
I run charity Centre for Ageing Better’s anti-ageism attitude and behaviour change campaign, Age Without Limits, part-time, and balance the rest of my week between family life and consulting. I love meeting a variety of clients and getting my head quickly into a range of subjects, so this work suits me - I will run headlong at your marketing or campaign challenge and get to answers quickly.
I believe in working quickly and imaginatively - I have zero interest in billing for more time than is necessary!
Kind words from people I’ve loved working with:
Alex Lewis, Founder, Revolt London:
“Harriet’s gifts are manifold. She is a true client partner, and has stewarded many of our standout client relationships - producing what remains our best piece of communications work to date. She can quickly identity what needs to happen to make progress, and brings this unique skill to every project. And throughout all of this she inspires those who work into her onto greater heights.
Beyond our commercial clients, Harriet delivered some of our most impactful work in the social sector, for iconic charities such as Stonewall and the Social Mobility Foundation. Her commitment to action, impact and measurement were clear and meant the work was able to go over and beyond the initial brief time and again.”
Ian Spooner, Brand Director, One Water:
“Harriet was instrumental in helping us develop a crucial rebrand for One Water, and putting the right process in place to get there.
From consumer research, creative strategy and creative agency selection, through to the new look and brand messaging, Harriet was an invaluable partner throughout, providing thoughtful insight and creative instinct.”
My projects:
One Water - rebrand
I worked as a consultant for One Water from May - October 2024 on a rebrand project. One is a bottled water brand that was founded with a clear vision - to ensure that everyone has access to clean, safe water, forever. A founder-led business, One has changed over 5 million lives since it was founded in 2005, and the business is constantly working to be best-in-class on sustainability, with all materials 100% recycled, and offering refillable aluminium bottles, cans and cartons alongside recyclable plastic bottles.
But One’s proposition was not cutting through on-shelf to consumers. I joined Ian, Brand Director, to help identify next steps to help One reach its potential and raise more funds for clean water projects. Having delved into the brand’s history, I helped commission new quant and qual research to truly understand how our audience felt about ‘ethical’ brands, in particular given sustainability has become so commoditised. This led to my developing a creative strategy and brief, and running a process to find the right design partner. Alongside a reinvigorated pack design and copy, I was able to provide Ian with strategy docs summarising our research findings and prepare a brief for tone of voice and purpose development for a future piece of work.
Age Without Limits - behaviour and attitude change campaign
I currently work part-time as Head of Campaigns for charity The Centre for Ageing Better. Ageism is a pernicious form of discrimination - the most commonly experienced in the UK - but it is rarely talked about. I head up Age Without Limits, Ageing Better’s first mass-reach marketing campaign, to raise awareness and understanding of the issue, and shift attitudes away from the negative way many of us currently see ageing and older people - which will benefit us all as we age.
The campaign consists of a mass-reach paid advertising national campaign, an Action Day, social media, ongoing PR moments and commentary, and working with storytellers with lived experience and has had brilliant results so far, seeing shifts in both public opinion and with stakeholders across the media and creative industries, regulatory bodies, policymakers and employers.
End Laptop Poverty - raising awareness of the digital divide for the Social Mobility Foundation
As head of Revolt’s charity and nonprofit arm, I developed strategy and creative for a campaign to raise awareness of the fact 1m kids had no device to join remote learning in lockdown - and increase donations of laptops. The work was for our client the Social Mobility Foundation, who identified the digital divide as a key but overlooked barrier to young people being able to reach their full potential, both at school and in gaining crucial work experience - exacerbated by lockdown.
Life Unseen - a platform calling for fair representation in the arts for LifeWtr (PepsiCo US)
I led the team to deliver strategy and creative on this new programme for PepsiCo’s LifeWtr brand in the US, with a goal of improving representation in the arts. The programme included commissions for underrepresented artists, a search for next gen talent, and mentorship from actor, writer and director Issa Rae. We also developed an ATL campaign including film (online and TV - debuted on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah), paid social, PR and on-peck to raise awareness of the issue and promote new artists.
The campaign exceeded all KPIs, but most importantly put at least $260k additional income into the hands of underrepresented creators during the campaign.