RAJ SAMUEL
BRAND & EXPERIENCE STRATEGY DIRECTOR
I. I spent twenty years getting cautious brands to do braver things.
II. Then I started building worlds people could literally enter.
III. Now I bring both to the same table.
Cadbury · BT · Aviva · Mercedes · AMV/BBDO · Ogilvy · Fallon · BBH · Landor & Fitch · Zerodha · Malice Arts
ACT I
I spent twenty years getting cautious brands to do braver things.
Giving heritage brands permission to break expected behaviour.
Cadbury — Gorilla. Ran the internal workshops that convinced Cadbury it was a content brand. That shift is what gave them the courage to release it. Fallon.
BT — Adam & Jane. Built working directly with the show’s own fan communities, shaping the family’s future alongside them. 2M votes.
Mercedes — #YouDrive. People were second-screening, so we ran a choose-your-adventure on Twitter that changed the direction of the ads themselves. 15M reached. 100K tweets in two nights.
Aviva — You Are The Big Picture. Post-merger rebuild. 2M visits, 87 countries, +14pts consideration.
AMV/BBDO. Came in freelance to win the BT Digital pitch. Stayed five years and helped move a 450-person agency from 90% TV to 60% integrated.
ACT II
Then I started building worlds people could literally enter.
Underground London venues turned into other realities. Music, story, performance — and a crowd that stopped watching and started taking part.
Ten worlds. Around 5,000 guests. Sold-out crowds, sponsors and press, over ten years. My own R&D into what actually makes a stranger choose to stay.
One of them pulls you aside. Gives you a mission. The music builds. The story takes over. Suddenly hundreds of people are living inside the same world.
You came ready for a new world. You left a bigger character than yourself.
Fictional characters crash-land in Tron · Narnia glitches inside the Matrix · Climate change hits surreal Winterland · Orwell’s 1984 collides with MTV · Earth doomed, Studio 54 in space in 2054
ACT III
Now I bring both to the same table.
Twenty years of knowing what makes a brand matter, plus ten of actually building the thing people walk into. Most people have one or the other.
Zerodha. I named it — zero for zero-commission, rodha the Sanskrit word for barrier. The name tested poorly. The CEO backed the story anyway. Now India’s largest stockbroker, valued at $3bn+.
Lemons.life. Co-founded after a friend lost her husband suddenly with no will in place. Now broader support helping women prepare for financial hardship, alongside a partnership with Quilter Financial Advisers.
Arley’s Foods · Brilliant & Bloom · GrubClub. Named, positioned and built from inside the business, alongside their founders. GrubClub from inception through to acquisition.
Landor & Fitch. Global repositioning for BAT’s reduced-risk portfolio — glo, Vuse and Velo — moving the whole thing from product-led to culture-led.
So — which of those is your problem?
If you’re a brand: you know who you are. The question is what you do next.
If you’re a founder: you know it should exist. The question is why anyone would choose it.
If you make experiences: you can build it. The question is why anyone would come.