About David

Started my career fresh out of Blackpool and Fylde Art College, full of ideas… by working as a graphic designer and visualiser in regional advertising agencies, where I quickly learned to think of my work as art serving capitalism, beautifully crafted ads don’t always hit home, its a combination of triggers, that’s the secret recipe.

My journey into brand development began some 10 years later with my first professional account management role at one of the very first ‘one stop shop’ new media agencies in Preston called First Creative Group a full-service multi-media design agency, with in-house design/marketing, scripting/storyboard, video, animation and multimedia production

During this time I redefined first stage client meetings by discussing ideas directly with the client, rather than typically having to take notes and then debrief a designer later in the process, I would typically draft ideas in their presence and do a kind of ‘show and tell’ openly discussing potential ideas and media treatments.

This really sped up the process and gave them the opportunity to make clearer, better informed choices as to the direction of the brief than ever before. This change of account management style quickly helped FCG create more insightful communications for a variety of local, regional and national clients across varied industries.

Whilst working at FCG we pitched and won various projects from high street brands such as British Airways, Gillette UK, Alstom Energy, Co-operative Bank, Smile Bank.

and I made the big decision to go it alone and set up my own agency called TDA in my home town of Blackpool. We very quickly developed a number of key account wins including Gold Medal Travel, Netflights.com and Subway Sandwiches and built up billings of over 4.6 million.

As Creative Director, I was responsible for the launch of the Superbrand Subway Sandwiches in the UK and Ireland. It was all about telling the story of made to order sandwiches within the setting of the UK casual dining market.

Subway, a fast-food business firmly established in North America and around the world, wanted to establish a strong presence in the UK and then roll it out throughout Europe.

My agency TDA were appointed as Subway’s first UK agency. Tactically commissioned to take on the traditional UK sandwich market by offering deli ‘made to order’ sandwiches as a fresh alternative to standard lunchtime offerings.

This successful strategy allowed the business to self fund its advertising in order to move into mass market positioning in direct competition with the other ‘hard core’ fast food operators like McDonalds, Burger King and KFC.

I personally managed the national account for the first seven years of store growth overseeing the network to over 1,000 restaurants, this simultaneously involved developing a full franchise proposition to work in conjunction with regional growth. TDA were responsible for all external and internal marketing on a local, regional, pan regional and national level.

During this golden period TDA placed Subway onto terrestrial C4 and SKY tv for the very first time in the UK, the rest is history as they say. Other big brand customers: TDA was also responsible for developing other clients such as Gold Medal Travel, Pure Luxury Holidays, Netflights.com, NST Travel Group, Ribby Hall Village and many other national brands.

I successfully ran the company for over 11 years, before selling it, in order to spend more time with my family and reduce my workload.

I shifted career direction to work internally as Sales and Marketing Director with Blackpool based Smiths Hire a regional equipment and tool hire company with legacy but old school brand. Check out the work section of the site to see where they started and what they look like today.

My vision for Smiths Hire was to build the brand and reposition Smiths Hire as the best hire company in the country, accessible DIY, trade and corporate clients, a true audience crossover brand in the style of Screwfix.

This vision was fully realised in 2018 and 2019. With wins for Hire website of the year, we followed on as the HAE Best National Hire Company of the Year nationally for 2018/19, it was quite some achievement when you consider we we’re going up against much larger national players like Speedy, HSS, Sunbelt Rentals and Hire Base to name just a few.

Our online business has grown considerably as a result of working with the best specialist teams both inhouse via my top draw team and by working in conjunction with a number of specialist companies including Blackburn based 21 Digital.

As a result we have seen the hire and Training site explode and deliver impressive results, the envy of the independent hire industry. I cover the results in greater detail on one of my case study stories, check it out.