Concept, art direction and campaign delivery for a data intelligence brand with a genuinely great story to tell
The challenge
Acxiom helps large companies use data to understand their customers and deliver more targeted, personalised marketing at scale. Their Real Identity solution offered something genuinely powerful: a way to get to real human truths using first-party data, rather than relying on the third-party cookies that the industry was rapidly moving away from. In a category saturated with technical messaging about the cookieless future, every competitor was telling the same story. The challenge was to make Acxiom's version of that story feel completely different, and to speak directly to the marketers in the audience who wanted to do standout creative work themselves.
My role
Head of Design
Contributed to campaign concept development working closely with the ECD and Head of Copy
Led art direction across the full visual identity and campaign system
Collaborated with the Head of Development to deliver a horizontal scrolling campaign landing page
Managed a team of designers through full campaign asset rollout
Ensured visual consistency and quality across all touchpoints and formats
Led art direction across the full visual identity and campaign system
Collaborated with the Head of Development to deliver a horizontal scrolling campaign landing page
Managed a team of designers through full campaign asset rollout
Ensured visual consistency and quality across all touchpoints and formats
The Work
The campaign was built around the creative idea of "The Difference is Real." Rather than leading with data or technology, the approach used wit, visual contrast and warm-smile headlines to make the distinction between real and fake feel immediate and human. Bright, hyper-real macro photography was paired with tiny mismatched 3D rendered objects sitting incongruously within each image, creating a visual tension that was unlike anything else in the market. The two-word headlines, "Still. Life." "Sickly. Sweet." "Gold-ish. Goldfish." "Loud. Clear." extended the idea systematically, each one playing on the difference between surface appearance and underlying reality.
The approach worked because it spoke the language of the audience. These were marketers who cared about creativity as much as data, and a campaign that demonstrated genuine creative wit signalled that Acxiom truly understood them. The visual system was built to extend across paid social, display advertising, content and a bespoke horizontal scrolling landing page that brought the campaign idea to life in an interactive digital format.
OUTCOME
The Real Identity campaign delivered strong results across every metric. Over 1.7 million impressions generated. Time on site increased by more than 50%. 12,000 accounts reached with a cost per acquisition well below industry benchmarks. The campaign stood out in a crowded category precisely because it refused to look or sound like everything else in it, and the results reflected that.
