LONDON — Team Lewis has launched a new global reputation and impact practice, Vivid, in response to a growing number of clients looking for creative, digital-first reputation and sustainability campaigns.

Vivid is headed by Helen Ellis (pictured), the agency’s global sustainability lead and reputation expert, leading a core team of 25 from across the agency and putting together bespoke teams of additional specialists from across 24 offices and 600 staff, depending on client need.

Ellis told PRovoke Media: “Over the past few years we’ve been winning and developing more work that takes us beyond our B2B tech heritage into reputation management and corporate communications, and that’s been accelerated by Sarah Ogden coming in to lead the UK, and a huge investment in our creative capabilities globally – we now have around 80 people in our digital and creative team.

“The world of corporate comms and reputation is changing, with the global ‘permacrisis’ meaning businesses need to respond to issues and conversations they wouldn’t have a few years ago, and in completely different spaces with much younger audiences, from TikTok, BeReal and YouTube to the metaverse. It’s exciting to move into these spaces – our digital teams do a great job of showing us and clients what’s possible.”

Ellis said Vivid has already delivered work for clients including Schneider Electric, SkyScanner and cryptocurrency exchange OKX, and her particular “passion point” was building creativity and innovation into ESG communications: “Schneider is a pioneer in sustainability – we’ve been working with them for years and we do a lot of work telling their story around challenges like energy efficiency and climate change. Through our Vivid team, we’ve been using timelapse videos on light and waste, injecting real creativity into potentially dry stories.

“And for SkyScanner we built an immersive metaverse experience, initially to launch a trends report, and this has taken them into exploring AR filters, fusing technical and creative capability with storytelling.”

The Vivid practice team includes new hires Nicola Parton, who joined Lewis as a director towards the end of last year after more than 11 years at Edelman, and Louise Greeves, previously European marketing director of digital transformation business Ensono, as well as Sebastian During, MD and corporate lead for Team Lewis in Düsseldorf, and Thomas Skelton, the agency’s director of corporate strategy in Asia Pacific.

The agency's EVP for Europe and APAC, Yvonne van Bokhoven, said: “Experiential, gaming and visual engagement platforms are globalising especially in younger demographics. This demands a different approach to how and where issues emerge and stories need to land.

“Vivid brings together brand consultancy with creative engineering and real-time reputation management. This will change the traditional reputation management theatre of operations. This will lead into the metaverse, creating immersive augmented reality brand experiences and emotional video-based storytelling. Crafting powerful, emotionally moving stories will be important. Doing this at speed will become essential.”