The best work rarely comes from the most efficient process
Some careers are not chosen so much as recognized — a convergence of instincts that finally finds its proper form. Christos Cardovillis, now Group Business Director at Rare, followed a thread from a childhood fascination with creative advertising through university studies in psychology and marketing, arriving at a discipline that demanded all three of his loves at once. His most defining work — the Bisto Spare Chair Sunday campaign — revealed what advertising can be when it refuses to settle for the merely efficient: a force that names a social fracture, and then quietly helps to mend it.
- A beloved British brand was losing relevance as the Sunday roast tradition quietly eroded, taking with it one of the last reliable moments of intergenerational connection.
- Research uncovered something more urgent than a sales problem — elderly people were growing isolated as busy families let the weekly gathering slip away.
- Rather than reach for discounts or product messaging, the team partnered with a loneliness charity to invite strangers to the family table, turning a gravy brand into a social intervention.
- The campaign delivered record sales for two consecutive quarters, but its deeper proof was that advertising could locate a genuine human need and use a brand's authentic place in daily life to address it.
- Now Cardovillis wrestles with a quieter tension: how to protect the slow, wandering thinking that produces work like this in an industry increasingly seduced by the speed of technological efficiency.
Christos Cardovillis was eight years old when he taped a beer advertisement to his bedroom wall — Beck's bottles dressed as superheroes, a piece of visual wit that lodged itself somewhere permanent. His parents disapproved. The image stayed anyway. When he reached university, studying marketing with a focus on psychology, he found himself caught between three competing interests: creativity, business strategy, and human behavior. An advertising elective resolved the tension. It was the only field that required all three.
Now Group Business Director at Rare, Cardovillis points to the Bisto Spare Chair Sunday campaign as the work that changed how he understands the profession. In 2015, the British gravy brand was in decline — not because of price or product, but because the Sunday roast itself was fading. Research revealed that the weekly family meal had become the primary moment when people saw elderly relatives. As schedules tightened, the tradition eroded, and with it, the connections that sustained older people. Loneliness was rising quietly in the gap.
The team chose not to promote the product with discounts or features. Instead, they partnered with Re-engage, a charity combating isolation, and launched a national television campaign inviting families to set a spare chair at their Sunday lunch for a lonely elderly neighbor. The charity made the introductions. Families volunteered. Meals happened. The campaign achieved record sales for two consecutive quarters — but what Cardovillis values most is harder to quantify: proof that a brand could identify a real fracture in how people live, and use its authentic place in that life to help repair it.
The tension he navigates today is technological. Efficiency is a genuine pressure, and he does not dismiss it — but he has learned that optimized processes rarely produce the work that matters most. The best ideas tend to emerge from time that looks wasteful: conversations that wander, research that goes deeper than necessary, partnerships that take longer to build than a brief demands. Having worked at McCann London, adam&eveDDB, and on the client side, he has come to see agencies not as service providers but as partners in problems clients may not yet fully understand.
A recent holiday in Perth — rainier than expected — reminded him that disconnection is not a luxury but a condition for the kind of thinking that produces campaigns like Spare Chair Sunday. The work requires both intensity and its opposite. Holding that balance, he has found, is the real discipline.
Christos Cardovillis was eight years old when he taped a beer advertisement to his bedroom wall. The campaign featured Beck's bottles dressed as Superman and Batman—visual wit that arrested his attention in a way few things do. His parents were not pleased. But the moment stuck. Years later, studying marketing at university with psychology as his focus, he found himself unable to choose between three competing loves: creativity, business, and the mechanics of human behavior. An advertising elective solved the problem. The field, he realized, was the only place that demanded all three.
Now Group Business Director at Rare, Cardovillis has built a career on the principle that the best work rarely emerges from the most efficient process. He points to three campaigns as markers of what matters: work for Teenage Cancer Trust, the inaugural brand campaign for Wimbledon, and one that changed how he thinks about advertising altogether.
In 2015, Bisto—the British gravy brand synonymous with Sunday roasts—was in decline. Fewer people were cooking the traditional meal. The brand's research team dug into why, and what they found was not about product or price. The Sunday roast had become the one meal each week when a family gathered around a single table. It was the moment when people saw elderly relatives they might not otherwise encounter. As schedules grew busier, the tradition was fading. So were the connections. Elderly people were seeing their families less frequently, and loneliness was rising.
Cardovillis and his team resisted the obvious path: promote the gravy with discounts and product benefits. Instead, they partnered with Re-engage, a charity focused on combating isolation, and created Spare Chair Sunday. A national television campaign invited families to set an extra place at their Sunday lunch for a lonely elderly person from their neighborhood. The charity facilitated the introductions. Families volunteered. Meals happened. The campaign did not just sell gravy. It rebuilt a tradition and addressed a genuine social fracture.
The results were concrete: record sales for two consecutive quarters. But Cardovillis is proudest of something harder to measure. The campaign proved that advertising could do more than move product. It could identify a real problem in how people live, and use a brand's authentic place in that life to solve it. The work required resisting efficiency—it required time, research, partnership, and a willingness to let the brand serve something larger than itself.
Today, the tension he grapples with is technological. The pressure to be more efficient is real and relentless. But efficiency, he has learned, is not always the friend of good ideas. The best work, the best experiences, the moments that actually matter—these rarely come from optimized processes. They come from people thinking deeply, from conversations that meander, from the kind of time that looks wasteful until it produces something that could not have existed otherwise.
Cardovillis has worked at McCann London and adam&eveDDB, and spent time on the client side. That exposure taught him something crucial: agencies are not service providers. They are partners in solving problems that clients themselves may not yet fully understand. The role requires understanding not just advertising, but the broader landscape in which clients operate. It requires the kind of thinking that takes time—the kind that efficiency threatens to eliminate.
He recently returned from holiday in Perth, where he learned it rains more than in London. The break reminded him of something he finds difficult to practice: the necessity of disconnecting from the adrenaline of the work. Stepping away, resetting, refocusing—these are not luxuries. They are conditions for the kind of thinking that produces campaigns like Spare Chair Sunday. The best work requires both intensity and rest, both efficiency and its opposite. Finding that balance is the work itself.
Notable Quotes
We resisted the easy option of promoting the product using USPs and promotions but instead dug deep into a meaningful role the brand played in people's lives.— Christos Cardovillis, on the Bisto campaign approach
The need to be more efficient is undeniable but sometimes inefficiency creates magic.— Christos Cardovillis, on the tension between technology and creative work
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You mentioned that inefficiency creates magic. Can you point to a specific moment in the Bisto campaign where that played out?
The research phase. We could have done a quick survey, gotten some data, and moved on. Instead, we sat with the problem. We talked to families. We listened to what they actually said about Sunday lunch—not what they said about gravy. That took time. That felt inefficient. But it's where we discovered the loneliness angle. Without that slowness, we would have made another product ad.
Why do you think agencies often default to efficiency when it works against the best outcomes?
Pressure. Client budgets are tight. Timelines compress. There's a natural instinct to optimize—to do more with less, faster. But the best clients understand that some problems require depth. They're willing to invest in that. The agencies that position themselves as partners rather than vendors are the ones who can have that conversation.
You've worked on both sides—agency and client. Did that shift your perspective on what's actually possible?
Completely. When you're inside a client organization, you see the full weight of their challenges. It's not just about selling product. It's about market share, organizational change, stakeholder management, long-term strategy. An agency that understands that context can be genuinely useful. One that doesn't is just a vendor.
The Bisto campaign achieved record sales while addressing loneliness. Do you think those outcomes are connected, or coincidental?
Connected. When you solve a real problem for people, they respond. Bisto became meaningful again because it was positioned at the center of something people actually cared about—family connection. The sales followed because the brand had earned relevance. That's the opposite of efficiency-driven marketing.
What would you say to a young person entering advertising today, given all the pressure toward automation and speed?
Learn the craft. Understand psychology, understand culture, understand how ideas actually move people. The technology will change. The fundamentals won't. And protect time for thinking. That's your real competitive advantage.