Smith has journeyed from traditional advertising agencies to leading marketing at one of the world’s most desirable fashion houses. In this week’s My Creative Career he shares insights into the creative vision behind some of Loewe’s standout campaigns and emphasizes the importance of cultivating a ‘hybrid’ approach to your career while staying endlessly curious.
Charlie Smith is a strong advocate for careers being fluid and his own is testament to this theory. His diverse career path has led him to the coveted role of chief marketing officer at Loewe, a brand that has become something of a dream project for marketers.
Smith’s background is rooted in traditional advertising rather than fashion. He worked in some of London’s top advertising agencies before landing his current role. Perhaps unexpectedly, he started in account handling rather than the creative side.
The London advertising scene
Originally, Smith studied art in Paris, though he jokes that his French left much to be desired being from Cornwall. He later gained acceptance to an English literature course at Leeds University. During a career day at Leeds, representatives from BBH caught his attention, particularly with their iconic Levi’s ads like 1999’s ‘Flat Eric.’ The blend of creativity and strategy fascinated him. At the time, Smith says that the advertising scene in London felt ‘exciting’.
After graduating from university, Smith landed interviews for jobs at agencies, got rejected by many, but eventually landed a position at a marketing company in Wimbledon called Haygarth just before the 2008 financial crash. His first big brand project was for Nokia, which had a huge market share at the time and a big impact on his career trajectory. “I quickly realized that I wanted to be involved in the big strategic conversations around advertising,” says Smith.
Stints at McCann Erickson, Y&R, Possible in LA and R/GA followed. “I managed to get a new job at McCann Erickson, which was primarily working on Microsoft, and we were doing all of its advertising for the UK and also for EMEA,” explains Smith. “Back then, Microsoft was putting more than 50% of its media budget into digital advertising, which I can tell you, in 2008/ 2009 was pretty unusual. I realized that working in technology and also in digital was a way for me to get ahead faster.”
During those initial years at McCann, Smith was part of the team that devised the Shreddies ‘Knitted by Nana’s’ campaign that ran on TV, as well as Facebook. For the social media drive, people were asked to upload a picture and profile of their nana to a dedicated Facebook page, where users could then vote for their favorite.
“One person got their Nana to do slaloms down a road on a mobility scooter around Shreddies packs,” he recalls. “It was amazing because it was one of the first-ever social media campaigns for a brand.”
While at Y&R he worked on major British brands like M&S, Virgin and Land Rover. But it was the 2012 Olympics in London that would mark his biggest project to date. The two-year project for the BBC consisted of trailers for the momentous event. One of the animations they made ended up being used on the screens in the opening ceremony at the stadium, which had 8 million eyes on it from around the world.
Fashion brands behaving like publishers
Smith’s career took a pivotal turn next. Eager for a change, he decided to transfer with WPP to LA, drawn by the city’s vibrant entertainment industry. At WPP’s agency Possible, the marketer worked with clients like Madison Square Garden and Comcast. This marked a shift from his prior focus on storytelling-driven marketing to building apps, websites, and planning digital media, offering him valuable exposure to the technical side of the industry.
This experience paved the way for his role at R/GA, where he returned to the UK to work on projects for Nike, a long-time dream client. Smith was drawn to the agency’s legacy of innovation, originating as a visual effects company in the 1970s, with Bob Greenberg, creating groundbreaking effects for films like Superman and Alien.
“Nike is probably the experience I have that’s the closest to fashion because retail has a similar pace. It works in this drop cadence [slower pace], which is very much how fashion works now,” adds Smith.
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Smith worked on several innovative projects with Nike, including developing digital billboards equipped with Xbox Kinect cameras. These billboards could recognize the color of a person’s outfit and generate custom shoe designs based on their look. Around this time, Smith says he began to realize that “as a modern cultural brand now, I think you have to behave like a publisher.”
Meeting Jonathan Anderson at Loewe
It’s a philosophy he has taken into his role at Loewe, where he has now been for the past 6 years, helping to shape it into one of fashion’s most exciting brands. Prior to the move to the fashion house, Smith had turned down a job working on a cycling brand (cycling is his passion) and instead flew out to Madrid to meet Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson and its chief executive officer Pascale Lepoivre.
Smith believes that they were looking for someone to join the team who wasn’t from a fashion background. He says he had a feeling when he joined that the fashion industry was in the process of being disrupted by digital, in the way that ad agencies had been some years prior. Previously, the entire fashion ecosystem was built through printed magazines.
“Loewe almost acts like a magazine,” he says. “We have an in-house team where we can make editorial content, producing different content for our magazine, which we publish four times a year, for TikTok, Instagram and for our website, as well as our big advertising campaigns. It means that we’re essentially doing, quite often, two shoots a week.”
This is a huge shift from when Smith started working in advertising, which was all about creating a couple of advertising campaigns a year. Now to “cut through,” brands need to have a team with a “content engine” where campaigns can be generated weekly, he explains.
Loewe’s craft-led approach
Loewe is a brand that has seamlessly blended its rich heritage (it was founded in Spain in 1846), its focus on craft and a digital-savvy approach that has resonated with a new, modern, audience. The craft-led approach is down to Anderson, says Smith, who when he first joined in 2013 went straight to the atelier and factory in Madrid.
“That extends to the marketing communication, not just the product,” explains Smith. “We often create films that are handmade animations, we try to see how we can bring the craft to life in different ways, even if it’s digital. The other one is that we’re a Spanish brand and ‘Spanish-ness’ is this idea of being friendly, approachable, playful and fun. You can be talking about serious subjects like art, craft and culture, but you don’t have to take yourself too seriously doing it, you can have some lols.”
Like any sector, the fashion world is fast-paced and saturated, and Loewe is in the business of competing for people’s attention, says Smith. Primarily, its content needs to be entertaining to capture people’s attention. “And then I think you can worry about the brand message and the product message after,” he adds.
Acting “like you’re the customer’ when marketing products is key to cutting through for Smith. Loewe, he says, is rooted in the real world and in culture.
“I spend a lot of time on TikTok, but I don’t know it as well as the younger people on my team,” he confessed. “So, I really defer to them to be like, what’s cool? What’s a meme that we should be playing off? Come to me with ideas.”
Reinventing Daniel Craig post-James Bond
The surprise element of Loewe is evident in every campaign it puts out. Last summer, when the brand worked with Daniel Craig on its Fall/ Winter campaign people either got it or they didn’t. With everything the brand does, there’s a cheeky nod and a wink in tow. Anderson had worked with the actor on the film Queer, designing all the costumes. “He [Anderson] really saw this opportunity to reinvent Daniel Craig post-James Bond,” says Smith.
“Sometimes in advertising, it’s taking these cultural icons and then bringing them to life in an unexpected way. Some of the stories that people wrote were amazing. They were like, is Daniel Craig having a midlife crisis?”
Smith says it was the same when they photographed the late Maggie Smith for the brand, The Times even had a full-page print of the ad in its paper talking about it which Loewe did not have to pay for. “It was such a privilege to work with her and I think it’s one of the last official photos of her,” adds the marketer.
He feels that because the advertising partnerships usually come together organically, with Anderson having worked with the artist or celebrity in many cases, they don’t always feel too ‘commercial’ or contrived.
That tomato meme
Loewe has always had that spark of playfulness in its campaigns, be it reacting to a photo of a tomato that one internet user dubbed as “so Loewe” or remaking JFK Jr.’s ‘I Told Ya’ T-shirts. On the tomato, which eventually became a clutch bag, Smith says that it was just the perfect storm of “playful, fun and unusual”. He describes Loewe’s ‘brand world’, with Anderson at the helm as eclectic and rich.
Another standout campaign that Smith is proud of at the luxury label is the ‘Decades of Confusion’ ad that featured Dan Levy and Aubrey Plaza participating in a spelling contest. What makes the spot so brilliant is that the brand has shown how in tune it is with people’s struggle to pronounce its name.
Smith says that he’s constantly inspired by Anderson’s vision of Loewe as a cultural brand deeply rooted in art. One of the most enriching aspects of his role has been collaborating with artists, many of whom he had not explored before.
Richard Hawkins works with Loewe
Notable projects include collaborations with Lynda Benglis, an acclaimed American sculptor, and the estate of Joe Brainard, known for his fanzines and paintings. Another example is the brand’s work with collage artist Richard Hawkins for the Autumn/Winter 2024 menswear collection.
“We had some original Hawkins paintings on display at one end of the room and then we had filmed Jamie Dornan, Josh O’Connor and others on a green screen,” explains Smith.
“We gave that footage to Richard, and he created video collages that he then sent back to us, which we then recreated large scale. In the show, we had these video collages playing on these giant LED screens that felt almost like stained glass windows. It’s an example of us collaborating with an artist not to make products, but to make new art.”
Staying curious
Smith says he gets up every day excited to go to work on all of these different projects. For anyone considering a career in this field, he encourages them to explore lots of different avenues and that a “good idea can come from anywhere”.
“I want to listen to someone who started as an intern, just as much as someone who’s been here for 10 years, because that’s how you keep fresh thinking,” he explains. “Try to not let yourself be pigeonholed into one thing. The richer and more diverse your experience is, the more easy it becomes to transition or move, lead into a new industry or a new area.”
For Smith, it’s the idea of being “hybrid” and flexible. “I never saw myself as an account person or as a creative I was just really enjoying working in a creative business, solving creative problems,” he says. “The real challenge is not having the idea; it’s actually bringing it to life and making it happen. That’s where you have to get really creative, you know? It’s that sense of being hybrid, being curious and trying to push things.”
