About Will

Hello, I’m Will Pyne. I act as a trusted advisor to founders and CEOs. I help them to frame their narrative and build stronger brands through better comms, marketing and creative.

I started out in this industry as a young, creative founder and through ability, hard work and timing (never to be underestimated) was fortunate enough to become a successful entrepreneur. With my co-conspirator I started Holler, an award-winning creative agency and my calling for 15 years.

By the time we’d exited via Leo Burnett (Publicis) we’d made the E4 TV show ‘Skins’ off-the-scale famous via social media, created a Cannes-slash-Emmy-slash-everything-winning film in ‘Like A Girl’ for P&G Always and helped brands like Red Bull, Innocent and Mercedes Benz connect with new audiences with refreshingly authentic, always creative, marketing.

As Chief Creative Officer at Brave Bison I applied commercial nous and creativity to build a team and studio to enable multi-platform content creation at scale across a global network of entertainment channels.

I now support my fellow founders, helping them to build better.

I’m a straight talker who won’t recycle industry bullshit, speak in buzzwordy riddles or offer up generic insights into Gen Z.

Instead I want help as many founders and CEOs with progressive ideas achieve their vision by applying my marketing experience and creativity, and simply put helping them get shit done.



A creative culture

My purpose is to instil creative culture and leadership in businesses I work with and I do this because in business, and life, creativity counts; I believe it’s not what you do but how you do it. Creativity impacts everything from a single social media post made to sell more products to a strategy for your next raise. It’s about connection through emotion to elicit that desired response from fellow humans. Creativity, design and storytelling applied with an objective in mind.

And the tech, while useful, won’t do it for you. To move beyond utility and turn data and information into a story the empathy, nuance and creativity of a human is required.




CEOs and founders, I will help you:

  • Articulate the Why, What and How so your people are clear and aligned on the mission.

  • With your brand repositioning / rebranding process

  • Identify what you shouldn’t be doing as much as what they should when it comes to the marketing mix

  • Build your teams

  • With your agency pitch process, helping to find the right partner

  • Create better marketing materials so you can better communicate your vision

  • Identify the balance of long term brand building vs short term marketing

  • Up your creative game; instilling a creative culture and making culturally relevant marketing

  • Build stronger brand stories you can tell again and again in different ways while finding the all important brand ‘consistency’.

  • Make the complex, simple.


I’m in service of founders and CEOs to advance the cause of progressive business. Those with a strong sense of their mission and those that have a net positive impact on society. I believe that if we are to collectively overcome the challenges humanity faces we need to be creative in so much of what we do.




What my clients say about me

Harry Destecroix, CEO, Science Creates

Will started working with me in 2020 when we were known as Unit DX and had identified that we needed a rebrand after having established our first incubator. We had big ambitions to grow the organisation, open a second incubator, grow the network and start a venture capital fund and Will was instrumental in helping us navigate the rebrand, bringing strategic marketing and creativity which enabled us to develop an incredibly well-received brand narrative across multiple channels. He continues to act as a great mentor and advisor for my marketing team and been the kind of ally that a CEO needs.




Charles Brahman, Co-Founder, &Dine

We brought Will onboard soon after our second raise advise sense check and advise across brand and marketing strategy. As founders of a start-up we hugely appreciated Will’s experience and creativity as well his timely introductions to strategic partners.




Paul Sampson, CEO, Lickd

Will played an enormous part in helping us at Lickd structure our Marketing dept as well as directing our Communications strategy and creative messaging. His vast experience and expertise helped us right many wrongs and steer us is the right direction. he was an incredibly popular part of the team and his charisma and passion for storytelling were matched by his diligence and integrity.




Adam McVicar, Founder, Yappa

I worked with Will in 2021 when our startup was at a critical, embryonic stage. He advised us on product and brand strategy when we needed it, asking difficult questions that led to us defining our market positioning, in sum making a complex problem simple. I highly recommend Will for any founder who is looking for someone who combines real commercial understanding with deep experience building brands.

 

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Some images from my hippocampus…