Southpaw
A strategic creative agency for challenger brands that want to outsmart the crowd.
Agency Info
Chambord: Changing a one-night-stand into a love affair.
Launching e.l.f. in the UK with purpose, noise and cut-through.
Sanctuary Spa: Reframing self-care from a ‘guilty pleasure’ to a ‘pleasurable necessity.’
The Glendronach: From understated to extraordinary.
Why marketers need to rethink their approach to midlife women
Midlife women control 95% of household spending, yet 94% feel invisible in advertising. Discover how brands can better connect with this powerful but underserved audience.
How Southpaw grew from scrappy start-up to strategic powerhouse
From feisty Tunbridge Wells start-up to strategy-led creative force, Southpaw shows how independent agencies can evolve while keeping their edge – helping challenger brands like e.l.f. and Estrella Galicia achieve dramatic growth through insight-driven creativity.
Claire Lambell (she/her) – Managing Director
Claire leads the charge in shaping and steering the agency’s future for sustained success. She plays a pivotal role in helping Southpaw’s brands outsmart the competition, positioning the agency as a trusted partner across UK, EMEA, and global accounts. With extensive experience in sectors like automotive, beauty, financial services, and restricted categories such as alcohol, Claire fosters strong client relationships and ensures bold creativity is at the heart of brand growth. Her leadership encourages curiosity and innovative thinking, inspiring both the Southpaw team and clients to embrace change and challenge the status quo to achieve their goals.
Glenn Smith (he/him) - Creative Director
A charismatic creative leader with 25 years of experience running creative departments and driving brand growth across the UK, EMEA, and global markets. Specialising in creative storytelling and innovation, Glenn is passionate about bringing brand stories to life with flawless craft, restless passion and infectious energy. Having honed his skills at renowned agencies such as BANC, Y&R, WCRS, and Leith, Glenn joined Southpaw at a pivotal moment. Since then, he has played a key role in shaping the agency’s culture and is the driving force behind its creative originality. He is obsessed with human behaviour and strongly believes in the power of emotion to build brand salience and drive action with consumers.
Niki Jones (she/her) – Head of Strategy
An experienced leader and marketing strategist with over 20 years of experience working with UK and global brands across FMCG, alcohol, leisure, fashion, beauty, luxury, and charity. Niki is passionate about delivering campaigns that create change, especially when that means supporting the underdog. Drawing on her rich background at Unilever, BBH, Mullen Lowe, and Southpaw, she creates campaigns that resonate deeply and grow brands. Her people-first approach is backed by qualifications in Behavioural Science, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Executive Coaching, blending marketing science with bold creativity to deliver campaigns that are insightful, meaningful, and transformative.
Dan Harold (he/him) - Operations Director
Dan is the Operations
Director at Southpaw, where he is responsible for ensuring operational
excellence and commercial integrity. With a focus on creating the right
conditions, processes, and structures, he plays a key role in enabling the
agency to deliver outstanding work for clients. Bringing over 30 years of
experience from a range of prestigious agencies - including Bates Dorland,
Leagas Delaney, M&C Saatchi, Wieden+Kennedy, and Publicis - Dan joined
Southpaw’s Senior Leadership Team in 2009. Since then, he has offered pragmatic
insights and valuable opinions that have contributed to the agency’s strategic
direction and growth. Known for his inspirational leadership and team-building
skills, Dan excels at fostering strong relationships and driving successful
outcomes.
About
We’ll fight your corner! A strategic creative agency for challenger brands that want to outsmart the crowd. Fiercely Integrated. Our name comes from boxing. It means left hander or ‘unorthodox’.
Southpaws are a rare breed and often turn up as the underdog, so we bring a challenger mindset to your brand from the outset. But, we don't just believe in fighting hard, to truly outperform the competition you need to fight smart. And for that you need: INSIGHT, FORESIGHT and CREATIVE FIREPOWER.
INSIGHT: Our bespoke neuro/behavioural strategy tool creates detailed consumer insights at pace, allowing us to generate a unique emotional ‘Neuromap’ of your target audience.
FORESIGHT: We use your audience’s ‘Neuromap’ to analyse, predict and influence their behaviour, pin-pointing a true consumer centric response that helps you outmanoeuvre rather than outspend the competition.
CREATIVE FIREPOWER: Creativity is our strongest weapon, so we never hold back. Anything we present back to a client must first pass four tests: Is it BOLD enough? Does it DISRUPT the category? Is it CHALLENGING the norm? Does it create a positive EMOTION?
SERVICES:
BRAND STRATEGY & CREATIVE ADVERTISING: We use our strategic edge to build brand positioning, visual identities and comms strategies that disrupt categories and grow market share. High impact, emotive campaigns that build lasting impressions on audiences across TV, Cinema, OOH, Press, Digital, Radio & VOD. We also extend these ideas to retail and digital touchpoints with brand toolkits and guidelines.
SOCIAL & DIGITAL PRODUCTION: Strategically led and creatively driven, our social media team motivates communities through Channel & Influencer Strategy, Community Management & Reporting. Content Creation: Digital design, front-end development, video & photographic studio production & motion design.