How These Two ‘Prolific Doers’ Get Things Done at Leo Burnett London
Creatives Loriley Sessions and Charlotte Prince chat how their collaborative teamwork blends with their new agency home
Leo Burnett London has added several new members to its creative department, including Creatives Charlotte Prince and Loriley Sessions, who arrived at the agency after gaining experience together at agency The Corner, working on clients including Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Fuller’s and Open Table.
Sessions began her career as a journalist before making the switch to advertising through a love of blogging. She still runs a blog on gluten-free food in her spare time and loves nothing more than taking photos of her food. Prince kicked things off at Bucks New Uni (aka Buckinghamshire New University), before heading to The Corner. She has also directed festival content, surviving 13 festivals alone last summer.
“We’d like to think of ourselves as prolific doers and with a background in social, pride ourselves on knowing and understanding people,” they said soon after the agency announced their hire. They weren’t the only ones to join the creative department: Creatives Dan Fryer and Gate Lambert came in as a team from Fold7, and Senior Creative Gary Lathwell and Art Director Gary Lathwell joined after stops at several top shops in the U.K.
They will be working across the spectrum of Leo Burnett London’s clients, and so far they have gotten started with McDonald’s and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.
Prince and Sessions took a moment out of their busy schedule to answer a few questions.
What are your priorities in your new roles?
The major priority is to make work, not just talk about making it. Then to make work that actually benefits people’s lives, with campaigns that give and take equally.
We’re extremely excited by the breadth of clients Leo has for us to get our teeth stuck in to. Even within the first few months, we’ve come into contact with so many different briefs, which is always great to push yourself to think in different ways.
We want to make sure every campaign is as fully integrated as possible so that it seamlessly flows between platforms. We always consider the conversation about the campaign, not just the hard stats of how many people have seen it.
You’ve described yourselves as prolific doers with a background in social. What does that mean in and out of the office?
We don’t like to hang around. From experience in social, things move very quickly and we’re very used to getting sucked into projects from every angle. It means we’re constantly on our toes and always look for new ways of doing things. In the past, we’ve been heavily involved in all stages of the process and have been pushed for a fast turnaround, so it’s in our nature to get stuff done as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
As for outside of work, I guess we never really stop either. We run food blogs, have created magazines, covered live events, and shot everything from gluten-free donuts to main stage music festivals. We really do live and breathe what we do. It’s a lot of fun. We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.
Describe your style of collaboration with each other as well as with other colleagues.
We’re friends first, colleagues second. It’s funny how two very different people can stand each other sometimes for 16 hours straight, but somehow it works. We have different strengths, and know how to push each other but equally support each other. From working as singles previously, it was exciting to see how better it became as a team. We balance each other out.
From a background in smaller agencies, we are used to working closely with the rest of the agency, and Leo is no different. It’s so important to build relationships to make the best work, and Leo has a brilliant network of not only nice people but super-talented ones, too.
What do you do for inspiration outside of work?
We’re both always on the hunt to attend new events, talks, gigs and exhibitions in London and beyond. Ideas sometimes come from reviewing a restaurant, playing tennis or a life-drawing class. Inspiration really comes from the weirdest of places, so our WhatsApp chat never stops!
As new Burnetters, what is your favorite Leo Burnett campaign?
Seeing as the debate between us on this has raged, it only seems right to give a few examples that excited us about coming to work at Leo.
As women who don’t do anything by halves, of course “Like a Girl” really struck us, with a huge societal benefit. It’s the type of campaign that can really make a difference.
Loriley, being food obsessed, loved the insights and ideas behind “IKEA Cook This Page” from Toronto and “McCafe Madness” from London. Charlotte, on the other hand, loves the Samsung work “The Ostrich” from Chicago. She thinks an ostrich is her spirit animal.
Originally published at leoburnett.com.
