From Ikea’s ‘Cats’ to getting ITV Creative ‘fit for the future,’ Niki Garner on her career to date

It was this that led her, back in 1997, to study Media and Communication at Oaklands College in Hertfordshire, before making the big move to London to attempt to get a job.

“There was no grand plan on how I would do that,” she laughs. “I realized that the best thing to do might have been to go to university and get a degree, but I’m not particularly academically driven, so I was keen just to go out and work.”

Fortunately, a friend of Garner’s mother worked at a corporate PR agency, Burson-Marsteller, as a traffic manager and her production manager had just gone off sick. The family friend knew Garner wanted to get into advertising and offered her a paid two-week position. “I bit her hand off and stayed there for five years. It was funny because I was being paid to do the job and I couldn’t tell anyone that I was fresh out of college and had no idea what I was doing.”

At that time, press ads were still made using traditional printing methods and Garner had to “wing it” and not raise too many eyebrows. It was an “incredible opportunity” for someone fresh out of college, but she admits she suffered from impostor syndrome for a long time because she had “come in through the back door.”

“I felt very conscious that I hadn’t trodden the path everyone else had. And does that make me qualified to do my job? Does that make me as smart as everyone else? That hung around with me for quite a long time in my early career.”

While at Burson-Marsteller, Garner worked on campaigns for Heineken and Bloomberg before moving on to stints at BMF, Beechwood (now Libertine) and Mother in 2010, where she would stay for 12 and a half years.

A highlight from that chapter of Garner’s career was working on the Ikea account, which Mother won the year she joined, and the first work for the furniture chain to leave the agency door was such an exciting moment, she says. ‘Cats’ saw hundreds of felines let loose in the Wembley Park Ikea store.

It’s a brand close to Garner’s heart. “I’m half Swedish, so my mum is a big fan of Ikea and it was a big part of my upbringing. It was a real moment developing the brand platform and getting that work out. There was a bit of pressure on us as a team to do something brilliant. Ikea had a very good caliber of advertising in the past, including ‘Chuck Out Your Chintz,’ so it felt as if the advertising world was waiting and watching a little bit.”

Garner says it was “phenomenal” when ‘Cats’ came into the world and that working on the Ikea account was a “pivotal” moment in her career.

The creative boss holds Mother in high regard and says all the years she spent there often felt like no time at all. She also adds that many of her most precious life moments, such as getting married and having children, were during that time.

“Aside from the brilliant work, the people in 10 Redchurch Street are just phenomenal. And I think what Bob Saville created all those years ago, that ethos still really sticks.”

In October 2022, Garner left her position as ‘head of mothering’ at the “very special” Mother to take on a new challenge as director of ITV Creative. The call from the broadcaster came as Garner returned from her second maternity leave, when she started to think about what might be next for her professionally.

Unclear whether she wanted to go to another agency and feeling that there wasn’t a lot of room for growth at Mother, she took the call from ITV. “I’m a huge lover of TV. To work for a brand that is part of the fabric of the UK, that is well known and that is there to deliver important news and information, but also to entertain us, to make us feel something through the lens of content and telly... I was just like, well, that would just be super exciting.”

Part of Garner’s brief is to ensure the broadcaster’s in-house creative team is “fit for the future” and “fit for purpose” and much of the past few years has been spent getting the team “in shape” and bringing in new talent to work on campaigns. One of the first projects she was proud to work on was for the general election last year, which was turned around “quickly” and used X Factor footage to encourage people in the UK to go out and vote

“It’s things like that that cement the importance we have as a brand, to have a voice in culture,” she explains. “I mean, the team literally did it in a matter of days.” The fast-paced nature of being part of an in-house creative team is something Garner enjoys – that and the closeness between the creative and marketing departments.

“Until you are in-house and you’re sitting with those people every day, talking to them every day and you have a really clear understanding of what is happening in the business... until then, you’re always at arm’s length. So, being in-house, I think it just allows us to spot more opportunities, to be able to help respond to something that’s going on, or, you know, how creativity can help unlock further opportunities within the business.”

Garner says that, throughout her career, she’s been deeply invested in every brand she works on and teases that there is so much to look forward to from ITV in the coming months. “I’m really, really excited about the work we’re going to be putting out there. We are developing a brand platform. We’re going to be coming out with a brand campaign in the near future.

“I think in terms of how we can help to get ITV in people’s minds, on their radar, through promoting our fantastic content and the brand... It’s more of a challenge than it used to be, but I think it’s an exciting opportunity.”