The Best Gifts Strategists Have Ever Received

A red bike so good it caused its recipient to faint, a mysterious poster, a hand-crafted spoon, ‘five principles to live by’, and a box set of ‘The Wire’ are among the best gifts strategists across Australia and New Zealand have ever received.

Colenso CSO Rob Campbell wanted a red Raleigh Grifter bicycle “more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, but it was expensive and unlikely my parents could afford it.”

“Big, solid, heavy with massive tyres. Made more special by the fact it was built in Nottingham, my hometown.”

In 1982, his parents planned a treasure hunt for Rob to find his presents. “I’d received some lovely pressies when – like a spoilt little prick – I asked if there was anything else.” His parents looked at each other, then told him he’d get one last special thing in the morning. He begged to see it then and there. They told him to check the back room.

“I ran there, pulled open the door, jumped up to reach the light switch and – on turning around  – saw a brand new, red Raleigh Grifter, resting on its stand right in front of me. My dream come true.

“I was so overcome with unmitigated joy, I fainted. Smashed my head on a table, knocked myself out, and spent the early hours of Christmas morning in the emergency department of Queen’s Medical Centre.”

A couple of years ago, he bought a refurbished red Grifter for his little boy. “Or at least I’ve told my wife it’s for him.”

In 2009, Simon Wassef, Clemenger BBDO’s chief strategy and experience officer, was a young planner “at that cathedral of creativity, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO”. He benefitted from a generous and anonymous present-giver in the office Kris Kringle that year, receiving a DVD box set of ‘The Wire’ - £70 from HMV, “even though it was a 25 quid limit”.

“I took it back to my suitably shambolic share-house in Clapham (of course), pushing past the empty Fosters cans and ignoring the fevered text messages telling me to come to Shay Boo Walkabout, and I watched. And watched. And watched.

 

“This show taught me how to do my job better (“All the pieces matter”), how to write better (“You come at the king, you best not miss”), even how to swear better (“Sheeeeeeit”).

 

“And it was 70 quid! Which, in 2024 dollars, is like $137,000. Gotta cherish that.”

Emily Taylor also recalls an anonymous gift. The co-founder of Bureau of Everything, alongside her former M&C Saatchi colleague Cam Blackley, rewrites the brief, “like any good strategist.” She doesn’t want to offend the “myriad of excellent gifts my husband has selected over the years” so she chooses the best anonymous gift she’s ever received: A poster tube in the mail, containing a big print, even though “it wasn’t my birthday, an anniversary, or Christmas.”

“It's black with white chalk-style writing on it, which says, "NOT THE N.F.T. YOU WERE EXPECTING". It is FUNNY. It had no sender on the tube. The artist, who I contacted, refused to tell me who had gifted it to me. My best guess is Cameron Neale Blackley, but he only smirks at that question.”

Last year, Dom Hickey, the CSO at Australian indie Howatson+Co, received a “spoon, hand carved out of Huon pine by a friend of mine. It’s the most perfect wooden mixing spoon that delivers happiness in every stir. A thing of absolute beauty, made with pure kindness and one of my prize possessions.”

A couple of top strategists opt for a less-tangible present. Ryan O’Connell, co-founder at AUNZ independent jnr., counts a colleague’s introduction to a client as among his favourite gifts.

“The truncated version of that intro is: ‘You’ll enjoy working with Ryano. He likes to keep things smart, but simple. Unlike most strategists,'" he says.

“Apart from the fact that was a very nice thing to say, it was also the first time I’d heard myself described that way. From that day on, I’ve always tried to live up to it.”

When he founded jnr. with John Marshall, he turned that introduction into the agency’s promise to clients: “we’ll keep things smart, but simple.”

Jane Jacob’s choice is “what I call ‘my five principles to live by’ gifted to me by my late father.” Ogilvy Sydney’s head of planning says those principles are: If you don’t know, say you don’t know; common sense is the rarest sense of all; “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”; bad people usually self-destruct; and "Honesty, honesty, honesty": speak your truth and do the right thing, always.

These pieces of wisdom “have served me well throughout my career, resonated and guided many of my colleagues and fellow strategists too,” she says.

“And in all frankness, these principles … have allowed me to show up simply in an authentic way in my almost 20 years in the industry.”