Wolff Olins Appoints Alex Bradley as New Executive Strategy Director

Global branding consultancy Wolff Olins has hired former Publicis Sapient principal Alex Bradley as executive strategy director for experience, where he will focus on growing the offer across its global client base.

Alex’s appointment is part of Wolff Olins’ deeper expansion into brand experience, and follows a string of experience and environment hires in the past year. Prior to Publicis Sapient, he spent three years at Eight Inc and before that Fahrenheit 212.

Across his career, Alex has partnered with some of the world's boldest brands, such as TikTok, Virgin Atlantic, McLaren, IKEA, Barclays, Jumeirah, AXA and Samsung. It has led to piloting of a wellbeing business platform, reimagining digital customer engagement for a retailer to save people's lives, and supercharging a supercar brand experience.

A stint client-side at Travelex also heightened his appreciation of what it takes to drive change in a corporate environment.

Working closely with head of design Neil Cooper and global principal for design Wayne Deakin, who leads on the experience offering, Alex will help shape brand experience opportunities for local and global clients, collaborating across strategy, design, new business and client engagement teams.

“As brand is Wolff Olin’s provenance and expertise, approaching experience at this strategic altitude allows us and our clients to make more of a difference in people’s lives and the world,” explained Alex. “There’s never been a more exciting and necessary time for brands to innovate. The next decade will see unprecedented shifts in people’s beliefs, technology and the opportunities this presents for brands and businesses.

"I’ve admired WO from afar for a while, especially the Conscious Brands perspective which piqued my interest back in 2020. The people, the calibre of clients and ambition for the future makes it an extremely exciting opportunity,” he said.

Global CEO Sairah Ashman said, "Experience is central to brand building and a core part of our offer - and with Alex as our latest senior hire, we're building up the breadth and depth to create meaningful digital and physical experiences for our clients. While agencies have become fragmented and siloed, we have an integrated, holistic approach to branding, which means we design transformative experiences that make powerful brand ideas real.”

"Alex will play a key role in our growth strategy, and we're delighted he's joining at such an important moment in our story," Sairah said.

Alex added, “I’m particularly excited by the notion of ‘Brand-as-a-guide’, the opportunity for brands to reimagine their relationship with people, to guide them and create new forms of value. For example, a digital programme I worked on for a global retailer transformed their brand-customer relationship from transactional into one that guided parents to prevent fatalities and injuries in the home. Brand-as-a-guide can cultivate greater brand-customer connection, brand cachet, and commercial upsides, while making a brand and its purpose real for people.”

Also strengthening Wolff Olins’ experience capabilities is Thomas Collier, who joins as associate engagement director from digital agency AKQA, where he worked on Rolls Royce, Bacardi and Bulgari. He also spent 10 years at Toyota in marketing and sales.