December, 2025.- In this Roastbrief interview, Eloise Smith, Executive Creative Director at OLIVER UK, discusses how creativity and technology are converging to redefine the modern agency model. Having led major campaigns for Amazon and MullenLowe, Smith now oversees creativity across OLIVER’s vast network, guiding teams through one of the most transformative eras in marketing.
For Smith, AI is not replacing creativity — it’s amplifying it. Tools like The Brandtech Group’s Pencil represent a shift from sequential processes to dynamic collaboration, where strategy, storytelling, and craft evolve together in real time. “AI gives us speed and scale,” she notes. “Humans give it taste and emotional truth. That’s where the magic happens.”
Her background as an Olympian and author has shaped a creative philosophy built on discipline, curiosity, and courage. Smith sees storytelling—whether in novels or brand worlds—as an act of full commitment to imagination. At OLIVER, she channels that spirit to empower teams, nurture innovation, and champion a new era of in-house creativity that is faster, smarter, and profoundly human.
1. You’re stepping into this expanded role at a pivotal time for OLIVER. What excites you most about leading creativity and innovation across such a large and diverse client base?
What excites me is the scale of possibility. OLIVER works across so many categories, cultures, and channels that no two challenges are the same. Each brand is at a different stage in its journey—some are just starting to experiment, others are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. That variety keeps us sharp. It means we’re constantly switching gears, learning, and inventing.
And then there’s the industry itself. AI isn’t a side note — it’s a seismic shift. Tools like The Brandtech Group’s Pencil are changing the way ideas are imagined and delivered. It’s not just about speed; it’s about rethinking the entire creative process. Being at the crest of that wave — where creativity and technology meet to transform marketing — is an incredible place to be.
2. AI has become an increasingly central tool in the creative process. How do you envision AI reshaping the relationship between strategy, storytelling and craft at OLIVER?
AI is collapsing the old silos. Strategy, storytelling, and craft used to move in sequence—one after the other. Now, with agentic AI and daisychaining, they can work in parallel, feeding into each other in real time. That’s powerful.
But the real opportunity isn’t replacing humans—it’s pairing automation with talent. Daisychaining agents can accelerate the flow of ideas, but we also need a daisychain of humans: strategists shaping smarter prompts, creatives steering narrative, designers pushing craft. When those loops tighten, the relationship between disciplines becomes more fluid, more iterative, and more collaborative than ever before.
AI gives us speed and scale. Humans give it judgment, taste, and emotional truth. Together, that’s where the magic happens.
3. You’ve worked on major campaigns at Amazon, Mullen Lowe, and now OLIVER. What have been the key lessons in building brand narratives that truly resonate across platforms and audiences?
From my time at Amazon, I learned the value of building a consistent brand across every touchpoint. As marketers, we get bored of our work way before our audience does. It’s tempting to jump from campaign to campaign before an idea has time to breathe. The secret? Sometimes you need to stick with it — often for years.
However, consistency doesn’t mean copy-paste. A brand platform should flex, showing up differently for different audiences and touchpoints. The days of slapping the same key visual everywhere and calling that consistency are long gone.
4. Leading a 200-strong creative and design team requires both vision and adaptability. How do you foster collaboration and creative excellence in such a multidisciplinary environment?
At OLIVER, collaboration starts with structure. Our in-house model means teams feel deeply connected to the brands they work with, while still part of a wider creative network. It’s not one giant department — it’s a series of embedded studios with shared support.
But creative excellence doesn’t happen by accident. We run regular inspiration and knowledge-sharing sessions so ideas and best practices flow across teams. We invest in continuous AI upskilling, because mastering new tools is now part of the craft. And we set clear benchmarks for quality — so everyone knows what great looks like and how to push beyond it.
5. OLIVER’s model focuses on in-housing creativity within brands. How does this approach enhance innovation compared to traditional agency structures, especially when integrating AI tools like Pencil?
In-housing isn’t just a structural tweak — it changes the game. When you’re inside the brand, you’re not guessing at the brief from a distance. You see the real challenges as they happen, and you can respond in real time. That closeness builds new levels of trust and partnership. It means we understand the brand so deeply that sometimes we can spot opportunities before the client even realises they need them.
That’s why AI adoption feels natural in our model. It’s not a pitch; it’s part of the workflow. Tools like Pencil don’t sit on the sidelines, they become part of how the brand thinks and creates every day. And when creativity and technology meet at the heart of a brand, that’s when transformation really takes off.
6. Beyond your creative leadership, you bring a unique background — from author to Olympian. How have those experiences shaped your perspective on resilience, performance, and creative ambition?
My Olympic moment was a long time ago, but the lessons stuck. Years of training, defeats, and near misses were as important as the medals (which now live in a shoebox in my attic). It taught me that even the most outrageous dream is possible if you keep going — step by step, never giving up.
That resilience gave me the confidence to take a career break and become a children’s author. Terrifying, of course — laying out my creativity on the shelves of Waterstones — but the joy of building imagined worlds and sharing them with young readers was worth every ounce of angst.
And now I’ve returned to advertising, I realise writing novels and building brand worlds aren’t so dissimilar. Both demand total commitment to the internal logic of the universe you’re creating. You’ve got to entirely commit to the fantasy, whether it’s a children’s story or a brand story.
