From left, Ash Stapleton, Strategy Director; Andy El-Bayeh, Co-Founder and CEO; Rebecca Jarvie-Gibbs, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer; and Chris Loukakis, Chief Strategy Officer, ExampleExample, the cultural creative and communications agency working with some of the world’s most recognised luxury hotel, destination and hospitality brands, has made two senior appointments to its strategy leadership team. Chris Loukakis has been promoted to Chief Strategy Officer and Ash Stapleton joins as Strategy Director.
The appointments reflect growing demand for Example’s Earned-First approach across its APAC and Middle East markets with work that spans brand strategy, destination positioning, concept and experience development, and the cultural campaigns that make all of it real in market.
Loukakis has spent three years at Example leading the strategy behind its Earned-First methodology across hospitality and spirit brands. Before joining, he held senior roles at AnalogFolk, working with Afterpay, Pernod Ricard and Diageo. As CSO, he leads strategy across Example’s full portfolio and all three markets.
Loukakis said, “It’s an exciting time working with brands that have an ambitious quest to be at the bleeding edge of culture while balancing effectiveness and impact. Underlying the briefs we’re getting is a question about the role of distinct brand assets in environments where DBAs are often contextually wrong and can harm a brand’s story by clobbering its prospective customers with over the top branding”.
He added, “We’re solving this by working with brands to make a specific feeling a distinct asset so that potential buyers see a brand and feel something that makes sense for them, makes sense for the brand and makes sense in culture. It’s an exciting challenge that I’m proud to spend my time working on.”
Part of Example’s extended network for the past three years, Stapleton joins from Verve, where she was the lead brand strategist and acting CMO, and previously held senior roles at Interbrand and Landor.
Her work includes the Australian Open rebrand and the Sydney Fish Market repositioning. Her experience across agency and client-side gives her a direct view of how brand thinking does and doesn’t translate into business performance.
Stapleton said, “I’ve spent my career defining and building iconic brands, and what drew me to Example was the focus on earning a distinct place in culture. Not through comms strategy applied after the fact, but woven into the product, the place, the whole experience itself. In a market where the noise is getting louder and consumers are more discerning, that’s easier said than done. But it’s the only way to build a brand that actually sticks and that’s exactly why I’m here”.
Commenting on the Rebecca Jarvie-Gibbs, Co-founder and COO, Example, said, “Chris has a rare combination of intellectual rigour and genuine humanity – he leads with conviction, believes in simplicity as a discipline, and has a deep love of what hospitality means in people’s lives. Ash brings a calm, level-headed brilliance that makes the most complex thinking feel clear and inevitable”
She added, “We’ve spent nine years proving that cultural strategy drives commercial outcomes across hotel brands, destination operators, dining groups and drinks companies. The leadership of Chris and Ash gives us the strategic depth to do that at greater scale and to do it consistently across every client and market.
