I’m a social innovation strategist advocating a new economic paradigm for a world in transition.

Here’s what I’ve been up to these past few years:

Consultant to The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on a project that is examining the period 2020-2030 and how Britain should strategically respond.

Providing strategic leadership as a Board Member for the NSPCC’s Now I Know Appeal.

Head of Innovation at Strategic Comms agency Corporate Edge.

Member of comms team that wrote the Manifesto for the 2012 Green Party Mayor of London Campaign.

Account Manager and one of the lead creatives at Frank.

Director of Ark°, the not for profit clothing label and social movement.

Member of the Irish Foreign Ministry’s diplomatic team that renegotiated the EU Lisbon Treaty for Ireland.

Wrote about the Arab Israeli conflict from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Graduated top of the 2008 psychology class at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

If you’re looking to follow my career as a story then start at the bottom of the general posts and work your way up. If you want to see what I’ve done most recently then begin at the next post and work down. If you are interested in a certain discipline such as brand strategy or design thinking, just click on the categories on the right which group related work.

I’m @RonanHarrington on Twitter if you’d like to get in touch.

You can also follow my social innovation blog: All About Ideas

Having spent six months as one of the lead creatives at Frank, I switched to one of their sister agencies within The Photon Group to take up a more senior strategic and creative role. Corporate Edge is a brand led communications agency, providing full client service across the marketing life cycle of a brand. Everything from brand positioning to digital build to social media . By being involved from the start we ensure brands are communicating a core idea that resonates through the line.

I bridge their strategic and creative worlds, leading the research that uncovers the compelling insights about a brand and their audience, and then exploring how they can be creatively communicated in design and as dynamic campaigns.  Within three months, I assumed the position of strategic and creative lead on big positioning, brand identity and digital projects, one of the youngest to do so at this level in the industry.

My clients are multi million (indeed billion) dollar corporate giants, including EDF Energy and EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company). Due to the ongoing nature of our work, I cannot discuss it in a public domain but happy to oblige as appropriate on a private basis.

As Ark° was growing we set our sights on London. When it came to the big launch, there was only ever one agency I wanted to work with. Frank PR are one of the top players in the game, having won Marketing Week’s agency of the year three times, most recently in 2010.

It quickly became apparent that we couldn’t afford their fees but in recognition of my talents and work to date, I was offered a job personally by Graham Goodkind, Chairman of Frank.

This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Frank works with the biggest UK brands and their creative campaigns are renowned internationally. While I have a huge amount of love for Ark°, I felt I had taken it to a great place and was happy leaving the reins to Cameron who had plans to bring the movement to America.

The next six months were an exposure to the very best in corporate consultancy. I was brought in as one of the lead creatives in the development of national PR campaigns for household brands. This involved participating in design processes to unearth creative ideas for our clients, and respond to briefs for new business development. Frank is a hot bed of ideas and I immediately felt at home.

I also worked directly on CSR for the energy giant Npower and coordinated global PR for Grolsch in Russian and South African markets. The latter allowed for significant immersion in brand positioning, culminating in a research trip to Moscow to understand how local consumers responded to the re positioning of the brand.

My speciality at Frank (informed by my previous work at Ark°) was in the not for profit and charity sector. This involved the classic nuts and bolts of PR: Implementing campaigns, building relations with the media, writing press releases, and selling in campaigns. One of my most significant contributions during my time at Frank was for Global Cool, a green charity that promote sustainable lifestyles. As part of their thought leadership drive I aided in the drafting and editing of ‘Sustainability: Moving from the Nerd’s choice to the Herd’s choice’, a white paper on how brands can utilise behavioural economics to nudge consumers toward more sustainable consumption. I was also project lead on the follow up sustainability roundtable that brought together industry heads, including the Customer Sustainability Director for Coca Cola Europe and the Global External Affairs Director at Unilever, to map out the case for sustainability and what business needs to do to move from green to growth.

My contract ended in March, having given me the opportunity to gain rapid immersion in a whole new industry setting. I now move forward with fundamentals of PR, and enhanced understanding of the creative process, and best practise in high profile client relations.

Designing Dublin was a three month Dublin City Council project that brought together 20 entrepreneurs, designers, and all round doers to rethink how the city should be designed in order to liberate its potential. I was invited onto the Steering Group through my work at Ark°, and my role involved selecting candidates for the project and reviewing their work at intermittent stages in the design process. The group used the principles and tools of design thinking, an iterative process that understands complex briefs, identifies insightful opportunities, and generates creative, robust solutions.

In Design Thinking I found a home for my creativity. A place where I could thrive, and run wild in the most productive sense. Where I could use my abilities to tackle really tough corporate and social challenges and generate imaginative solutions. It’s now what I want to do with my life.

Here is a sample of my work, highlighting imaginative concepts, engaging copy, and beautiful story telling. All perfectly suited to our audience of university students.

We created viral Ark° suggestion coupons that people could print out and put on notice boards around the world.

We brought thirty of our most loyal fans on a ‘Great Ark° Underwear Run‘ around London.

We revealed our top five business failures, an intimate look at our shortcomings and the vulnerability of every brand.

We crafted a compelling brand story around the founder Cameron, revealing intimate points along the journey, such as his very first t-shirts, made in his economics class as a teenager.

We allowed our community to vote on all major decisions we made, from the colours of our t shirts to the designs we would commision

We ran two way design thinking processes with them to help shape and define our brand.

We told the story behind every tee, gave them intimate access to the behind the scenes, and sent them daily doses of banter. 

The creation of truly engaging home for our online movement was my proudest achievement in my time at Ark°. I believe this what it means to use communications to make a brand resonate with the people who matter most.

How can you re imagine communications to achieve this goal?

When I first approached this challenge I knew that simply telling people that they should get out there and Ark° would not cut it. People are already overloaded with visual and verbal instruction and don’t need a kindness organisation telling them what to do. Instead, I asked: how it could be made experiential? How could it be unusual and disruptive? How could it be Fun? How could it be memorable and worth telling as a story? These are the real elements of engagement and word of mouth.

With these preliminary elements in mind I led a design process with the question:

How might me get lots of people Arking, and by their actions, get them to facilitate more people to do the same?

As a team, we looked at various ways we spread information on a one to one basis in the on and offline world. We looked at letters, emails, status updates, clothing, fridge magnets, notice boards, and even some items that have no relationship with communication like frisbees and car keys.

From this process, we brainstormed a number of possible solutions and rapidly prototyped them.

What emerged was ‘The Ark° clothes peg’, an ordinary wodden clothes peg that had an Ark° suggestion inscribed on it, with information on the brand and movement on the other side.

We felt that these could be best used as a social game in a festival setting as people have more of an openness to interaction. We envisioned people pegging each other once they had completed the Ark°, giving the former an excuse to engage a stranger in a positive way and the latter an invitation into an exclusive game.

We went ahead and bought 8,000 clothes pegs from a factory in China and made them the centerpiece of our marketing campaign at Electric Picnic, one of Europe’s largest music festivals.

They went down an absolute storm. People loved the imaginative use of what is an ordinary clothes peg and once we started the process of Arking people and attaching the clothes peg, they were almost running off to pay it forward!

There were also unintended consequences. Some people labeled them ‘positivity pegs’ and only Arked people who looked like they were feeling down. Others still were so taken by the pegs, they wore them as a fashion accessory in their hair and on their wellies! This is what I love about the design process. You can only know how a product will fare when it is fed to the lions!

Ark° was the talk of the festival with radio stations and personalities asking ‘What are these pegs about?!’

It’s a good case study in re imagining what it means to communicate. Rather than take the traditional approach of tagging your message onto established lines of communication, just be imaginative and create your own. Now everyone that buys an item of Ark° clothing receives an Ark° peg. Many are now adorning washing lines keeping coffee fresh around the world.

With Ark°, I didn’t make kindness the ultimate end but the means to end the pervasive problem of disconnect in society. It’s a sad reality that we have all personally identify with and I wanted to capture just how untenable it was and just what we could do about it.

The first example is a Manifesto I wrote for the Ark° community outlining our vision for society, our brand, and movement.

The second is an opinion piece I wrote for The Irish Times on how our movement was the way forward from Ireland’s Celtic Tiger days of materialism.

Both pieces are outlined in full underneath. Some context on what Ark° is can be found here.

The Ark° Manifesto

For the past year we’ve strived to take a simple idea and create a movement that could change the game. The game isn’t changed yet, but we’ve made an impact. People are standing up and taking notice of a little movement that is growing slow but strong. For this, we only have you to thank. The idea that there are people out there wearing our brand and making people’s day gets us out of bed every morning and decide to push it a little further. We are proud of how far we’ve come but this is just the beginning. During this beginning, we’ve been simply telling anyone who would listen (and many who wouldn’t) about our idea by describing how it works: Perform one act of random kindness every time the clothing is worn. But describing how an idea works does not bring it to life. It doesn’t convince anyone why it matters, or what its purpose is, and what could be achieved if enough people engage in it. This manifesto, written on the first day of a new decade, is here to show why Ark° matters, what its purpose is, and what can be achieved if enough people engage in it.

A lot of people in modern society quite frankly don’t give a shit

All great ideas come against the backdrop of a problem. Ark° emerged from the problem that a lot of people in modern society quite frankly don’t give a shit. They are largely out for themselves, are massively cynical, and live their daily lives going from A to B without a thought or concern for anyone else. We think it’s madness that that we don’t know our neighbours, that it’s weird to salute strangers, and that community is a thing of the past. People talk about poverty in the third world but we have an all pervasive poverty on our doorstep. It’s a poverty of values and priorities.

Kindness is the bridge to our common humanity.

When all pretences have been stripped away, happiness in our sine qua non. We weren’t born with a manual about how life should be lived, but one thing we’ve personally learnt on our short stay is that happiness is to be found in others. We may be individuals of self-interest, but we are interdependent in all we do. Kindness, and in particular acts of random kindness, are the bridge to our common humanity. They are a reminder that amidst the hustle and bustle of modern life, a gesture can be made that genuinely lifts a person, that moments can exists between strangers and friends, that despite all the challenges we face, the ability exists to take someone’s breath away and make their experience of life that little bit sweeter. That faith can be restored in humanity, that people’s attitudes can be changed, and that ripple effects with no known end can be created. There is also the world’s best kept secret: That they are as good for the giver as they are for the receiver. Make their day make your day.

This is our business: to create a brand so that you can aspire to inspire others.

Many people (our mothers included) are often confused about what it is we do – Are you a movement? A clothing company? A Charity? We are a message – about what life is about. Like any message, it can get tiring to hear and fall on deaf ears. That’s why we have done something special: Linked it with clothing, becoming the world’s first brand to pioneer social action through fashion. But an Ark° t-shirt isn’t just a t-shirt, it’s an everyday motivator to get out there and become the change you want to see in the world. It is a statement by the person who wears it about what they believe life to be. It’s that thing in your wardrobe for the days your feeling inspired, and for the days you need to be. A couple of people have said ‘I don’t need an Ark° shirt to be kind’ (usually at 3am outside a kebab shop). Of course that’s true but the reality is that we all forget despite our best intentions. While our vision is that Ark° becomes a simple lifestyle for people that don’t even need reminders, the shirts are the key to getting there.

We have designed these shirts so you can carry a message and generate a conversation with society.

But it’s not just about you, it’s about what you can do. We have designed these shirts so you can carry a message and generate a conversation with society. For many of you, I’m sure you’ve noticed friends and strangers alike staring at your shoulder so as to read the ‘So I have this idea’ story that started it all. It may be simple but to know that a message written by a teenager half way up a mountain can make it onto the back of your shoulder packs a powerful punch. They may not even pass comment but be sure that in their quiet moments, they are reflecting on your choice and the kind of person they could become. This is our business: To create a brand so that you can aspire to inspire others.

It’s not just my words, it’s the words of a thousand people from twenty five countries around the world.

We’ve also had the odd person comment that all this can be achieved without the clothing. We beg to differ. Ark° without the shirt is like Movember without the moustache. The Aussie guys would never have had any luck generating global awareness about men’s health issues by simply going around talking about it and asking others to do the same. They would have run out of steam within a year. The Mo is a collective symbol for the message of men’s health. The Ark° shirt is a collective symbol for the message of kindness. It binds everything together around something that’s tangible, something you can always come back to by wearing and arking. Sure you can promote Ark’s work by talking about it, but if everyone chooses to simply talk it misses that traction. To truly partake is to wear it with pride. What you wear is who you are, and when you wear Ark° you are saying this isn’t just a whim you happened to have on a day you’re feeling good about life, it’s a conscious choice and a collective to which you proudly belong. It’s a brand you have chosen to identify with, and a group of people you have chosen to support through your purchase. It’s not just my words, it’s the words of a thousand people from twenty five countries around the world. Since the beginning of our time we have aspired to make the world a better place. Now we’ve got your backs – literally.

Making the world a better place has now come down to a consumer choice – we want to bring this to life for you.

We not only want to support you in changing your world, we want you to support us in changing the world. This year will see numerous high-impact campaigns that will achieve our mission of taking back society to its rightful place – from ‘I’ to ‘We’. We will be picking areas that are a symptom of the problem, setting an aspirational bench mark, and working with you through the money we make to bring about a solution. Making the world a better place has now come down to a consumer choice – we want to bring this to life for you. We wish we could reveal more but it’s all going on behind the scenes. Just be ready

Today is the first day of a new decade. It is our goal to become a global brand by its end.

Today is the first day of a new decade. It is our goal to become a global brand by its end, showing people that a new type of business driven by a new kind of people can succeed. It’s an insanely high ambition but nothing else will allow us to achieve our vision. It’s going to be tough, we’re still finding ourselves, not to mention our business feet. But you can help us take the first step. You can be the early innovator, the opinion leader, the person who wore an idea on their back when everyone else was skeptical. Entire villages, towns, schools, universities, counties, countries, and even continents are waiting for this movement to knock on their door. We are asking you to knock first so that others may follow and change the game.

You are our heroes.

For the thousands of you who proudly wear the symbol of a new conversation, keep arking, inspiring, and spreading this most important message. You are our heroes. You are the beginning, middle, and end of our marketing strategy. For those of you who are yet to buy, perhaps unsure of who we are and what we stand for, this is us.

It’s New Years day and a time for resolutions.

This is ours. Join us

RICHES THAT ALL THE MONEY IN THE BOOM COULDN’T BUY

I was also commisioned by The Irish Times to write a full page opinion article on what future direction Ireland should take in the wake of the financial crisis.

Note: As head of communications for the brand, this is entirely my own work but all outward-facing communication was credited in the founder’s name as he is the face of the brand.

OPINION: LAST WEEK, my friends were in an off-licence getting a couple of cans for a quiet night in. No job, so no money for big nights out on the town anymore, writes CAMERON STEWART

They came to the top of the queue at 10pm and were 20 cent short. The shopkeeper, after a long and trying day, was having none of it.

That was until something amazing happened. A homeless man, who was begging outside after an equally long and trying day, heard the commotion, walked up to the guys and placed 20 cent in their hand.

This for me is hope.

The knowledge that despite all that is wrong with society, despite “these recessionary times”, despite those personal moments when it seems the universe itself is conspiring against you, that all is not lost, and that there is everything to be found.

All is not lost – even if every headline from here to next year sends a chill down the public’s spine. When your material world comes crashing down, all it takes is a call from a friend, a breath of fresh air or a gesture from a complete stranger to remind you of the wealth that permeates your life.

This wealth doesn’t have a figure attached, and maybe that’s what makes it priceless. It can be as simple as the health you take for granted, a family who are always there for you, or the community to which you belong. It is these elements that make up the fabric of our daily life, requiring neither recession nor boom for illumination.

Last year, aged 18, I decided to take a chance on an idea that could illuminate what life is about. I started a clothing brand that could encourage people to make the world a better place. My idea: Every time you wear the T-shirt you perform one Act of Random Kindness, an Ark°. Buy a stranger a coffee, give up your seat on the bus, help a drunk home. Just make someone’s day.

I initially thought about how it presented an opportunity to gain financial freedom, even become a millionaire. Then I realised that Ark° points to the world’s best kept secret: That you make a living by what you get, but a life by what you give.

With that, I emptied the Acts of Random Kindness Ltd business bank account, and what represented my life savings, and used it to buy gifts for the homeless in Belfast. At the time, I was written off as a naive idealist, with everyone saying that I was better off going to university and getting a proper job.

One year on, perhaps to this very day, Ark° has taken off, with people in 23 countries proudly wearing the brand and performing Acts of Random Kindness. We’ve also organised Ark° projects all over the world, from helping a family bring home their turf in Connemara, to repainting an orphanage in Zambia. In fact last week an Ark° volunteer in Nigeria called a meeting in his village with one simple question, how can we simply help each other more?

He is 16 years old.

When something like this can emerge from one person’s simple idea, I’ve reason to believe that far from being lost, everything is to be found.

I feel that while this recession has stripped people of hope, it has also brought forward a national self-awareness – an awareness of what works and what doesn’t.

The conversations I have in taxis and queues and lifts all evoke the same sentiment: “those times were good, but they weren’t filled with goodness”.

There is an awareness that living for yourself may get you places, but those places aren’t all that they claimed to be. In some cases, they don’t even exist.

There is a new-found value in the parts of life that taxation cannot touch, authentic wealth that is found in loving families, lasting friendships and meaningful pursuits.

If that is truly the case then the only thing in real recession is the attitude and mindset that defined the boom. I think that that way of thinking is best left in the past.

I read a story of a young man who left Ireland for Australia because there was no hope on these shores. Apart from some extra sun and job prospects, what conditions that contribute to sustainable human happiness are there but not here?

It’s my fear that if he places it in the same criteria that prompted his departure, he may find himself in a different place, but have arrived nowhere new.

We are more a movement than a company so we don’t believe in vacuous mottos that define our brand. However, I can’t help but come back to three words that define what we’re trying to get people to do: Change your world.

The recession may dominate our headlines, but it does not have to dominate our daily lives. Unless we are high-flying builders or Department of Finance officials, Nama does not hold a special place in every waking hour.

Our daily lives are a choice and we can either be a victim or victor of circumstances. We can choose to hang our heads and engage in roundabout conversations as to the state of things, or we can choose to fill our day with moments that all the money in the boom couldn’t buy.

Our jobs may not be safe, but their existence never defined our sense of self in the first place. What does is what you can do. Try buying a chocolate bar for a complete stranger. Try surprising your family with their favourite meal. Try living to give and experiencing the true meaning of wealth.

It’s all about Changing your World. For me that starts with an Ark.

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My most profound career experience to date has been the privilege of running Ark°, a movement that inspires positive social action through its not for profit clothing label. The idea: Every time you wear the brand, you perform one Act of Random Kindness.

Arkhq.com | Facebook.com/arkhq

You can read the story of I came to leave my job in the Department of Foreign Affairs here.

When I joined it was a one man operation. Ark’s founder Cameron had just turned nineteen and was experiencing a wave of initial press attention for what was a very zeitgeisty idea and a compelling personal endeavour. It was my job to grow the business and movement and build a sustainable outfit.

Over the next eighteen months, I crafted the story of a young man on an inspirational mission, transforming Cameron into a media figure that was the antidote to the blanket media coverage of the financial crisis. I also re branded acts of random kindness as ‘Arking’, creating a cool urban lifestyle that university students could aspire to. This unique and creative approach allowed  Ark° to become one of the most popular youth movements in Ireland.

Many posts are dedicated to particular achievements during my time with Ark°, some of which can be viewed individually:

• Building an online community of over 10,000 people
• Compelling copy to rally a tribe around an inspiring mission.
• Using design thinking to reimagine viral marketing

An evolving experience in communications and international relations secured me a high profile internship with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.  I was placed in the lead diplomatic unit charged with renegotiating the Lisbon Treaty with European partners. This was a unique insight into top level international diplomacy as Ireland sought to gain amendments to the treaty before going back to the public for a second referendum.

My primary role was drafting language to be used by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. This included drafting all correspondence with the public and gathering speaking points and steering notes across the intelligence units in the department for use by special advisors. It was another deep grounding in international relations and a great immersion in communication at the top level, allowing me to further hone my copywriting skills.

Remarks by Bertie Ahern, TD
12 December 2008

While at the unit, I had the unique opportunity to draft remarks for former Prime Minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, on the positive role of the EU, to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.  I am unable to provide further details in this portfolio as it is departmental policy that draft language cannot be published in the public domain.

On top of my day to day responsibilities, I played a strong creative role in shaping the nature and approach of departmental communication for the upcoming referendum. There I suggested many ways to simplify the complex legal messaging of what the treaty would bring in favour of simple arguements that highlighted the positive role the European Union plays in all our lives.