DAB Hands
Darren Brett

Experience

Twenty years running other people’s programmes. Seven running my own business.

Below is what I ran, what I was brought in to do, and what came of each one.

Selected leadership impact · seven of them

Build · Anchor Leg · Sep 2019 to Jul 2026

Built a business from nothing and ran it for seven years.

Co-founder, operating as Managing Director. Two of us owned it. My side of the table was operations, delivery, product and commercial performance.

7
Years running it
350-400
Projects delivered
50
People at peak

I built the operating system behind 350 to 400 projects: estimating models, statements of work, resource planning, time tracking and a weekly reconciliation, run on a monthly cadence with a part-time chief financial officer. I led and coached five to six project managers, flexing specialist teams with demand and tying resource decisions to cash flow and delivery risk. Between us we built a client portfolio spanning Nike, HUGO BOSS, Palantir, Western Union and Tommy Hilfiger, across strategy, experience, production and digital delivery.

What came of it
We held revenue flat for four consecutive years through COVID and repeated client restructures, improved margin on delivered work year on year, and mobilised up to 50 people at peak. Nike became the anchor client across five business areas and European and global teams. I stayed personally involved in the work to the end, including shaping high-level strategy and customer experience for Nike.com.

Transform · Volkswagen · Tribal Worldwide London

Took over a programme running hard over budget and brought it back under control.

Head of Delivery, taken over mid-programme. Volkswagen UK, Commercial Vehicles, Finance and campaign work, across the full technology estate. This was the agency’s largest client relationship. My remit was the delivery inside it, not the account.

Largest client
Position
Full estate
Scope
None
Overrun passed to client

I inherited the programme mid-delivery and replaced an unusable hundred-page scope with an executable commercial and delivery plan. Front end, back end, complete API rewrites and content, with data and APIs sequenced a sprint ahead of build. I managed the project management team and client governance across the account. A year in we were running materially over and nobody was saying it out loud, so I put leadership, middle management and the delivery team in one room and had the conversation.

What came of it
The exposure came down materially, the client paid none of it, and I led the successful website relaunch. Across four years I held delivery responsibility on both sides of the agency’s account base and managed the project management teams underneath it, including the Unilever brand digital ecosystem work and the Morrisons app. The chief executive then asked me to design the agency’s first organisation-wide operating framework.

Design · Ways of working · Tribal Worldwide London

Designed the operating framework a chief executive asked for.

Commissioned directly by the chief executive. Written with the leadership team and the head of operations, not issued to them.

3
Disciplines brought together
The CEO
Commissioned by
8 yrs on
Still referenced

Three parts of the agency worked in three different ways. Consultancy, web development and communications were each capable on their own, and none of them handed work over cleanly to the others. I designed the agency’s first organisation-wide way of working, built alongside the leadership team and the head of operations so that people recognised their own practice inside it rather than being handed somebody else’s.

What came of it
It outlasted my time there. A former chief executive still refers to it eight years later, and it is the piece of work I am asked about most. It is also the clearest evidence that what I fix is not only programmes. It is how an organisation works.

Rescue · Fiskars · Mirum (JWT) · Apr to Jun 2018

Produced the honest number that let a client stop before spending more.

Digital Programme Director, contract. Others had held the role before me without being able to steady it.

15
Team re-interviewed
6 weeks
Time to the finding
A decision
Outcome

A multi-market ecommerce build with most of the budget already spent and nobody able to say what finishing would cost. I went to the delivery floor and sat with all fifteen people individually, brought both remaining senior technologists in inside a week, and rebuilt the technical picture, backlog, estimates and plan with the team who would have to build it. Six weeks.

What came of it
The evidence showed the true cost to finish sat far above the budget, and enabled the client to make a defensible decision to stop. JWT’s chief financial officer commended the work. I moved on to a customer experience and service blueprint assignment and was invited to join Mirum permanently.

Win · Falabella · Tribal Worldwide London

Delivered a commerce platform across a continent, with the client eight thousand miles away.

Led the delivery side of the competitive pitch and the resulting programme. Around 20 people across London and Santiago.

5 agencies
Pitch
20
Team
2
Continents

The agency won it off a nine-month competitive pitch against five London agencies, and I led the delivery side of that pitch. It was its first ecommerce build. I planned the whole programme sprint by sprint on a wall, across every workstream, with the risks and dependencies on it, and we negotiated the contract standing in front of it. A complete new commerce platform across several markets and languages, integrating research, twenty-one personas, two rounds of desirability testing, design and front-end build. The client sat in Santiago, which meant a different language, a different continent and a working day that only partly overlapped with ours. The discipline had to carry that distance. One plan that both sides worked from and could see at any time, decisions taken inside the hours we shared, and travel spent only on the conversations that genuinely needed a room.

What came of it
The site shipped, was well received, and the client took it in house and ran it themselves. It put the agency on the map in ecommerce for the first time. Their head of digital flew to London afterwards to apologise for how his own project manager had behaved.

Sustain · Royal Mail Group · Proximity London · 2010 to 2014

Helped hold a multi-year programme together through seven changes of sponsor.

Project Director, promoted from Senior Project Manager within three months. Royal Mail Group, Parcelforce and the Post Office.

4
Years held
30
Team at peak
7
Sponsors survived

I led the delivery element of Royal Mail’s digital estate redesign, across corporate, SME and personal audiences. My job was holding it together: strategy, research, UX, design, front-end build and content, sequenced against Capgemini’s back-end delivery. Twenty-one personas, a team of up to 30, and a migration of more than 2,000 pages. Every new head of digital arrived with their own view, and the last one had the home page replanned from the ground up. Not one of those changes was absorbed. Each was evidenced, priced and paid for.

What came of it
Delivery continuity supported subsequent Parcelforce, Royal Mail Group and Post Office engagements, inside an agency that had never done web work at this level before.

Grow · Nike · through Anchor Leg · 2024 to 2025

Turned one research brief into ownership of Nike.com customer experience strategy.

Shaped, won and led the work. Presented to around twenty Nike leaders including the Head of Digital.

2 days
Won in
20 leaders
Presented to
5
Business areas

A brief arrived asking for clarity on how Gen Z women experienced Nike’s shopping journey. We won it two days later against one other agency, ran it from December 2024 to April 2025, and presented the findings to around twenty Nike people including the head of digital.

What came of it
It extended what we were trusted with. On the strength of that research we were in the running for the dot com work, and went on to shape high-level strategy and customer experience for Nike.com across navigation, search, the home page and the deeper journeys, handed over as a practical platform playbook.
The full recordFull working history

DAB Hands

Jun 2026 to present · Remote

Founder and Operating Adviser

Operating leadership for agencies and brands whose digital has to perform.

I help set the direction, then hold every moving part together until the business gets there.

Engagements start small. A paid diagnostic of two to three weeks, fixed scope, ending in a plan the client owns.

Anchor Leg

Sep 2019 to Jul 2026 · Remote

Co-founder, Managing Director

Co-founded a digital consultancy and owned the operating side of it. Proposition, operating model, delivery and commercial performance.

Delivered 350 to 400 projects for Nike, HUGO BOSS, Palantir, Western Union and Tommy Hilfiger, across strategy, customer experience, production and digital delivery.

Built the machinery underneath it, including estimating models, statements of work, resource planning and a weekly reconciliation that surfaced an overburn while there was still a decision to make.

Led and coached five to six project managers, flexed specialist teams to demand up to fifty people at peak, and held revenue flat for four consecutive years through COVID and repeated client restructures.

Nike became the anchor client across five business areas and European and global teams.

BBH London

Jul 2018 to Sep 2019 · London

Digital Programme Director, contract

Led digital delivery for Audi UK across web business as usual, campaigns, digital experience and a future of mobility consultancy.

Built the multidisciplinary team and operating model behind a newly won account, turning a pitch win into a working capability.

Ran the redesign of the Audi UK front end, with a team of around twenty.

Mirum (JWT)

Apr to Jun 2018 · London

Digital Programme Director, contract

Brought into a multi-market ecommerce build that had lost its centre and could not say what finishing would cost.

Went to the delivery floor, sat with all fifteen people individually, and rebuilt the technical picture, backlog and estimates with the team who would have to build it.

Six weeks later there was a number nobody had been able to produce before, and the client used it to take a defensible decision.

Invited to join Mirum permanently, and moved on to a customer experience and service blueprint assignment.

Tribal Worldwide London

Feb 2014 to Mar 2018 · London

Head of Delivery

Held delivery responsibility across both sides of the agency’s account base and managed the project management teams underneath it, across four years. That covered its major programmes, including the Unilever brand digital ecosystem work, the Morrisons app and O2.

Took on Volkswagen, the largest client relationship, mid-programme and across Volkswagen UK, Commercial Vehicles, Finance and campaign work. Replaced an unusable scope with an executable commercial and delivery plan, brought a projected overrun back under control without passing it to the client, and led the platform relaunch.

Led the delivery side of the pitch that won the agency its first ecommerce build, for Falabella, then delivered it across London and Santiago. Client on another continent, in another language, on a working day that only partly overlapped. One plan both sides worked from, decisions taken inside the hours we shared, travel used only for the conversations that needed a room.

Asked by the chief executive to design the agency’s first organisation-wide operating framework, across consultancy, web development and communications.

Proximity London

Mar 2010 to Jan 2014 · London

Project Director

Led the delivery element of Royal Mail’s digital estate redesign, across corporate, SME and personal audiences.

Held strategy, research, UX, design, front-end build and content together, sequenced against Capgemini’s back-end delivery. Twenty-one personas, a team of up to thirty, and more than two thousand pages migrated.

Helped to hold the programme through seven changes of client sponsor. Every change was evidenced, priced and agreed rather than quietly absorbed.

Promoted from Senior Project Manager within three months. The work opened Parcelforce and the Post Office for an agency that had never done web at this level before.

Redbox Digital

Nov 2008 to May 2010 · London

Senior Project Manager

Delivered ecommerce and digital programmes for Johnson & Johnson and Fortnum & Mason.

First proof that the scrum discipline travelled into an agency that worked nothing like the last one.

Conchango

Jul 2007 to Nov 2008 · London

Business Analyst

Sole analyst on the River Island ecommerce redesign.

Translated merchandising rules, product attributes and buyer workflows into the back-end experience, designed the workflow and wrote the functional specification, then sat with the quality assurance team to test what had been built.

Learned scrum from the people who brought it into the UK.

Herbalife Europe

Feb 2002 to Jun 2007 · Uxbridge

Creative Services Manager, EMEA

Ran creative services across more than thirty European markets.

Introduced an asset management system with the adoption guidance behind it.

First attempt at building consistency and operational control across a distributed organisation.

In their words

“Darren has a brilliant ability to operationalise strategy. He quickly grasps the intent behind an idea, then builds the practical ways of working that allow an organisation to deliver on it. That’s a capability I’ve always admired.”
Neil MunnFormer Global CEO, BBH

Trusted where the stakes are high

  • Nike
  • Volkswagen
  • Audi
  • Hugo Boss
  • Tommy Hilfiger
  • Unilever
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Royal Mail
  • Parcelforce
  • Palantir
  • Post Office
  • Fortnum & Mason
  • Falabella

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