Enduring Creative Excellence: Le One + CreativeX

“In health, accuracy and responsibility aren’t optional.”

For Lee McEwan (Brand and Creative Strategy, Publicis), that single idea sits at the heart of marketing for Haleon’s global portfolio. “It’s essential that these things are communicated appropriately, not just for regulatory reasons, but to reassure and support consumers.”

Delivering better everyday health with humanity means showing up consistently, responsibly, and credibly across markets, platforms, and moments. And for Haleon, that challenge is addressed through Le One, Publicis’ bespoke, fully integrated agency model.

Michelle Hobbs, Global Media Lead for Le One, describes it simply: “This is an example of a Publicis power-of-one model. It was designed to bring together strategy, content, media, production, and technology all under one brand.”

Rather than assembling multiple agencies around a brief, Le One operates as “one team, one operating model, and one set of shared priorities.” “The benefit of this,” Michelle explains, “is that it really unifies content and media. Content is not developed in isolation and then handed over to the media folks. It’s designed from the start to travel across platforms and markets.”

From Leon to Le One

“The name goes back to our relationship when it was just media,” Lee explains. “We previously called it Leon. What we did was use this power-of-one concept and just grow it — so it became Le One.”

Le One’s ambition? To remove friction, reduce handovers, and increase confidence at scale.“If you have a common set of objectives and priorities between the different parts of the marketing capabilities,” Lee says, “then of course you’re going to get somewhere better and faster.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about better marketing. We achieve that through greater levels of consistency and greater collaboration between the integrated components.”

Scaling excellence without diluting it

For Michelle, one of the biggest challenges in global marketing is protecting great ideas as they travel. “You can have a great idea at the centre,” she says, “but when it travels across markets, it can erode.”

This is where governance, tools, and systems, including CreativeX, play a critical role.

“Sometimes tools and processes can sound like they’re spoiling creativity,” Michelle admits. “But because of the scale we need, the model we’ve set up ensures that this doesn’t dilute as it travels.”

Over time, those systems become invisible. “They just ensure that some of these really integral things are maintained across the huge geography we have to think about.”

Lee agrees, emphasising that standards work best when they’re embedded early.

“When you start laying down rules — for want of a better word — people manage towards them,” he says. “Upstream, everyone is already thinking: are we meeting these needs? It becomes more than a traffic light system,” he adds. “It becomes a conscious part of the organism.”

The partnership between Le One and CreativeX works, Lee says, because of shared clarity and accountability.

“When it comes down to having single points of contact and single places of entry, a client knows where to find something that’s approved, that’s been through the right governance process.”

“People can just go, ‘It’s that one — and I know it’s been approved.’”

“Our oneness,” Lee adds, “matches your oneness.”

Creativity in an always-on world

Looking forward, Michelle sees the media and content landscape shifting away from campaign bursts toward continuity. “We used to think in a burst mentality,” she says. “Now it’s an always-on world.”

“Consumers are connecting with brands daily,” she adds, “so we’re designing content for a broader ecosystem — not single executions.”

Speed is increasing too, inevitably bringing AI into the picture. For Lee, AI is an enabler, not a replacement. “One of our creatives said to me, ‘I’ve got superpowers now,’” he recalls. “I can do things better, faster, easier — but I’m still doing them.”

“The human still sits at the heart of it,” he adds. “Making judgments over what is and what is not right.” “It isn’t particularly good at understanding how people feel about what we’re showing,” Lee says. “That’s where humans matter.”

In a world of increasing complexity, Michelle and Lee keep returning to the same idea: clarity.

“One team. One model. One set of shared priorities.”