Helping excellence happen on purpose.
Less magical, more methodical — repeatable, predictable and scalable.
Why us?
01
Pioneering expertise
Our founder Arif led the project to build the original Creative Ladder for Heineken in 2013. Since then we've worked on similar programmes for the likes of PepsiCo, Mars, Kraft Heinz and D&AD, and we still work with Heineken today. Between us, we have decades of experience in brand management, agency strategy, facilitation and learning design.
02
Facilitation at the heart
We're specialists in designing human-to-human experiences that inspire and equip your team to learn and grow together. Above all, we know a culture of creative effectiveness isn’t about messages to be passed down, but practical behaviours to be practised up close every day.
03
Blue-chip experience in a nimble package
We're a small, proudly independent team. No layers and no bureaucracy between you and the people doing the work. There's nothing else we're trying to sell you. Our only focus is this work and we know it better than anyone else.
It started with
a question.
In 2013 at Contagious, co-founder Paul Kemp-Robertson set an internal challenge in response to a brief from The Heineken Company: could large multinationals make creative brilliance happen on purpose more reliably?
Working hand in hand with Heineken's Marta Garcia-Alonso, Arif Haq led the Contagious team that found the answer – the Heineken Creative Ladder, offering a system for elevating creative quality at scale. Ad Age described it later as having “helped the brewer scale creative heights, culminating with the 2015 Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year award”.
Since then, the Creative Ladder System has been used by a variety of the world's leading brand owners. Arif and his team have helped build Creative Ladder Systems at companies like PepsiCo, Mars Inc. and Kraft Heinz – and, over a decade later, we still work with Heineken.
Practitioners, not Pundits
Arif Haq
Founder, Brand Management, Facilitation
Arif started at the legendary Soho agency KLP Euro RSCG before a decade in brand management at PepsiCo. He then became the founding head of creative capabilities at Contagious, leading the project to build the original Creative Ladder for Heineken. An experienced facilitator, he is also a Masterclass Leader at D&AD, where he runs three courses, all on his specialist subject of practical creativity.
Hilary Chittenden
Graphic Design, Learning Design
Hilary trained as a graphic designer and cut her teeth in creative agencies, before spending almost a decade at D&AD designing and delivering learning programmes for the creative industries. Curious, people-first and happiest with her sleeves rolled up.
Nick Radley
Strategy, Effectiveness, Award-winning Practitioner
A CSO since 2005, with a career spanning international qualitative research, brand consultancy, strategic planning, agency MD and founder of a crowdsourcing agency. He's worked across categories and won multiple awards including 8 Creative Circles, 2 TMS awards, and 2 IPA Effectiveness Golds.
What it's like working with us.
“You can't have a meeting with Arif and not feel deeply moved by his passion for both creativity and humanity. He drips both beautifully. I've seen first-hand how his empathy-led facilitation approach elevates confidence and ambition in senior leaders. By helping teams overcome their own perceived limitations, he enables them to take on harder, better things than they might otherwise have thought possible. I truly enjoy being in the room where Arif happens and I know you will too. If you don't, you are probably dead. Enjoy the guy.”
“There’s something quite low key about the way that they deliver really intellectually smart stuff. It doesn’t come across as smug or pleased with itself because they come with a level of humility that means everybody engages as peers. Hilary has such a brilliant design eye. She’s one of the best designers that I’ve worked with. The feedback we’ve had is that it’s taking us to the next level. It just looks better than any other agency in our class.”
“Our team has been buzzing with excitement and energy after the Creative Ladder sessions last week in Sydney. Arif's energy and delivery of content was really incredible. He did a great job at facilitating all of the right conversations and landing the right points.”
“Arif is probably the best facilitator I've worked with. 21CB have partnered with him for over four years and he never fails to deliver incredible value for our client transformation programs. He treats experience design and workshop facilitation with the same level of intensity and craft as Dan Wieden would on a Nike anthem. He manages to bring a combination of positive joie de vivre to live event facilitation while also being all over every element of the detail.”
“If you want your team to be shaken up, challenged and then put back together then Haq is your person. He brings an immense energy to everything he touches that your business can't fail to benefit from. A masterful facilitator and inspiring trainer - he truly understands what it takes to get out great creative work. I always leap at the chance to work with him and you should too.”