WORLD MARATHON MAJORS

The campaign was built around the World Marathon Majors and a special edition colourway launch. One of the biggest challenges was that the athletes were based all over the world, making it difficult to create a consistent campaign.

Initially, there were two options: fly each athlete to a single location and use local photographers or to appoint one photographer and project manager to oversee the entire campaign and travel between locations to ensure consistency. We chose the second option.

Phil acted as both photographer and project manager throughout the project. He coordinated schedules, managed logistics across multiple countries, and ensured consistency in both the creative vision and final imagery. In the past, working with different photographers often meant repeating the same brief multiple times and still ending up with inconsistent results. Having Phil oversee the entire campaign gave us one point of contact and a much more cohesive outcome.

The campaign included hero content, athlete-focused content, rapid-fire interview videos, and still photography for each athlete.

The rapid-fire videos have performed particularly well across social media. The shorter edits are generating stronger engagement than the longer-form content, especially across Meta and Google advertising, which is largely what we expected.

The photography has supported a different strategy, with individual athlete imagery performing particularly well within their respective countries and regions. The local relevance of each athlete has helped drive engagement across multiple markets.

The rapid-fire interview content featuring Andy stands out as one of the strongest-performing assets. It’s candid, real, grounded and humorous, allowing audiences to connect with the athlete’s personality rather than just their performance.

The Connor Mantz content has also performed particularly well, especially within the US market, where engagement has been very strong.

Phil brings much more than photography to a project. He’s an extremely strong project manager who thinks through every detail, from scheduling and logistics to budgeting and reporting.

As projects become larger, one of the biggest challenges for brands is managing the administration and internal communication. Phil provides a level of professionalism that makes that process much easier. Every project comes with clear documentation, detailed reports and well-structured presentations that can be shared internally with stakeholders and senior management. For a company like Shokz, Phil’s approach is incredibly valuable. He combines creative execution with strong project management, making it much easier to manage complex campaigns with multiple stakeholders.

Many photographers simply execute a brief. Phil takes the brief, interprets it creatively, and then presents his ideas and deliverables in a way that is easy for both the marketing team and wider business to understand and approve. He operates with the structure and professionalism of a much larger agency while maintaining the flexibility of an individual creative.

“Working with Phil always feels calm, organised and under control,  no matter what challenges arise, he makes the whole team feel confident, supported and in safe hands.”