EE was born with strong DNA.

The lovechild of Orange and T-Mobile.

All that creative heritage;

from the Orange Film Board that ruined movies with mobile phones

to the T-Mobile viral flashmob at Liverpool Street before viral, or flashmobs, were a thing.

And of course, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, when EE was born.

Since then, with strong, nurturing co-parenting from Saatchi&Saatchi, EE had grown into a happy, healthy twelve year old.

But we all need to evolve as we grow, and in 2023 EE was re-launching, as a New EE, in a turbulent/disastrous economic climate with a beyond-fractured media landscape.

Many clients would have taken this as the cue to play it safe.

But the EE/Saatchi instinct has always been to look for the right road, not the comfortable one.

That’s why they’re turning their business from a phone company into an everything-for-your-life platform company.

That’s why they’re not afraid to acknowledge the risks that come with arming a generation of teenagers with social media, and know they have a responsibility to do something about it.

And that’s why they make work like this. Cultural, crafted, modern British work.

To not bat an eyelid when they sign off the idea of ‘wi-fi frenzied kids literally raving before bedtime…set to a monster house tune…shot by Daniel Wolfe.’
And then make no changes to the first edit.

To go through a casting process of almost 4000 real kids to get the truth of what you see in Elliot Power’s ‘Freedom’ film. And then seeing the CEO moved to tears as he watches it.

This just doesn’t happen. But maybe it should more.

In my career, which suddenly appears to be 27 years long despite essentially remaining a teenager myself, I’ve never seen such trust in a creative partnership as this.

This work is a huge testament to the taste and the instinct of Pete Jeavons and Kelly Engstrom, Christian Thrane and Marc Allera, and everyone with them at EE.

They say do your best work on your biggest clients.

They don’t come much bigger than EE.