How we could work together
Sprint (2-3 days)
Give me a brief, or handful of questions, to sprint on. Fast turnaround, high impact stuff.
Partner (PT)
(co-)Leading projects, with responsibility for strategic & creative outputs.
Typical engagements
Engagements typically fall into three types: strategy, innovation, experience design.
Strategy
Organisations often need a fresh outsider's perspective to see connections that lead to deeper insights and unexpected ideas. I bring learnings and experience from working across a huge variety of clients and projects, having been a freelancer for more than half of my career, as well as building my own brands and participating in communities. I've applied my practice to everything from brand to business to campaign to creative strategy.I typically work with leaders and teams to help answer questions like: "Where are we?", "Why are we here?", "Where could we be?", and "How could we get there?"
#1 Worked with creative agency Livity to win a pitch for Dr. Martens. My role was then to lead on strategic thinking with the Head of Strategy and support a Junior Researcher over the three-month project to define the actions that Dr. Martens will take to authentically live its brand purpose.
“Matt is a powerful storyteller both on-paper and in person. The narrative about our brand purpose that he crafted still gives me goosebumps to this day, and he had a strong impact when he presented the work to our senior leadership.” – Kate McGarrahan, strategy manager at Dr. Martens
#2 Worked with two other consultants, and Ecover’s brand, marketing, and innovation teams, to identify a movement-in-the-making that the brand could get behind. Uncovered the key insight that informed strategy and led to the creation of Experiments In Waste.
#3 co-wrote and published a litepaper for RADAR; defining a theory of change and strategy for the decentralised community. Read here: Multiplayer Futures
#4 mentored 30 students two days a week for six months as the in-house planning mentor at the most awarded advertising school in the world: The School of Communication Arts
Innovation
Times of massive change bring opportunities to innovate for those who are able to lean into the uncertainty in a networked, rapidly decentralising, and increasingly wiggly world. If we’re going to create a better future, for ourselves, our communities, and the planet, we’re going to do it in multiplayer mode — creating the conditions for the changemakers to come together, learn together, and play together.I work with collective intelligence, co-creation, and collaboration, to accelerate the prototyping of brand platforms, comms campaigns, product and service innovations, and new collaborative ventures. I love to jam on questions like "what if?" and "how might we?".
#1 Co-designed and co-produced the Futurethon: an experience over seven days for 200+ participants from around the world to co-create product and service innovations for a better future.
"I almost can’t believe what’s happening in the @Radarxyz futurethon. I’ve never in my career seen a trend report go from an inspiration moment into full concept generation and build within 7 days. This is the future and it’s in sync." – @VictoriaFutures
#2 Worked with Swarm and Girl Effect to accelerate the prototyping of local media brands with potential to spread globally. Collaborated with creative networks in London, Lagos, Mumbai, and Jakarta, to pop-up an innovation sprint in each city with local creatives and innovators.
#3 Co-developed a decentralised network model for Protein Agency, working directly with the founder of Protein. Co-created Protein Agency's web3 community strategy offering for brands. Co-designed and co-facilitated strategy workshops for clients like Selfridges, Jägermeister, and Drinks Alliance.
Experience design
What if we saw people as citizens, rather than consumers, and treated them as such? How might we equip people for the challenges of the 21st century? How can we meet people where they're at and invite them on a journey? How might we create the conditions for a community to grow?These are some of the questions that have informed my work creating meaningful experiences both online and offline. From my own event where the audience are the speakers, to a four-week learning journey for futurists, to programmes for students.
#1 Founded an event and community in London, called Special Guest that has been running for five years. Before the pandemic, I was running four sold out shows a month in London.
"Wow wow wow. Last night was so so magical. @SpecialGuestLDN has literally changed my view on community and our generation. If you stop to listen to people you can be so inspired.” – @afrocreative
#2 Designed the experience and wrote the curriculum for Bite Back's first ever School Food Champions programme, in which 1,000 young people from 100 schools participated.
#3 Led the strategy and design of a new experiential offering for RADAR, called Into The Future. The experience, priced at $400 a ticket, attracted participants from a range of organisations including Lego, Nike, Power to Change, Jägermeister, agencies, consultancies, and more.