Stories give things meaning
We met working on men’s style magazines in the late 90s, creating stories about luxury goods, cars, actors and musicians. It was a question of knowing your audience, then telling them a story in words and pictures in a way that added as much value to the thing/person as possible.
Fast forward 20 years, and advertising agencies realised that these skills were exactly what brands needed too. AMV BBDO hired Bill as editorial director and Ash became a freelance art director.
We formed Thinking & Doing to harness all this experience – a small agency that offers all the creativity of big agencies but gives our clients the ability to talk directly to the people are crafting the content. No unnecessary big PowerPoint presentations, just us, them and the work.
We still believe that storytelling is the most effective way of giving brands meaning, getting people to engage with them, and ultimately adding to their value.
Bill Dunn
Editorial director. Bill began career as style director of British GQ while writing TV comedy scripts for Smack the Pony in the evenings. He moved to customer magazines, working with brands like Volvo and Land Rover. He joined AMV BBDO as its first (and longest-serving) editorial director, where he crafted social campaigns, websites and TVCs for Mercedes-Benz, BBC Earth, Sainsbury’s Bank and SCA (a Cannes Lion winner). He moved to Droga5, creating editorial content for Peroni. Recent freelance work has included Tone of Voice guides for Cannes Lions and Trouva and an international campaign for Nescafé.
See more of Bill’s creative content and tone of voice work here.
Ash Gibson
Creative director. Ash has a background in typography, graphic design and award-winning editorial. He pioneered visual journalism Condé Nast’s legendary art department of the early 2000s, treating pictures with respect and making them work with words to tell the stories, winning two PPA Awards in the process. He wrapped up a stint in New York with a coveted SPD award, directing photographers like Gavin Bond, Julian Broad and Rick Guest. He’s applied these principles to recent work with Ferrari and YouTube and to a social and video campaign for the successful launch of The Week Junior in the US for Dennis.
“Less like a creative duo,
more like a small agency.”
— Juliet Warkentin, CMO, Trouva
“They have a natural aptitude for understanding audiences and their motivations for engaging with a brand.”
— Lucy Davis, Marketing Director, Dennis