Simple wins.
Meet the simpleton.
Neil Johnson, Founder and Principal, is a newly independent strategist and creative partner. He’s been blessed to work with brands (75+) of every shape and size; from global Fortune 500 enterprises to aspiring regional companies, and from household-name consumer brands to out-of-sight B2B manufacturers.
He has been a go-to for their pressure-cooker rebrands, must-win campaigns, and sticky-situation problems. As a natural multi-hyphenate, he adapts fluidly to complex challenges in complex industries, always with an aim towards the simplest story and solution.
Neil is goal-obsessed and brings competitive fire to everything he touches, and he believes that doing is more important than the decks.
He is also one of those annoying morning-people.
Neil Johnson
Founder and Principal
Boss brands, rich with results, in life before Laird NRC:
The Laird story.
Robert ‘the Laird’ Campbell
It was 1831, and boatloads of Scottish families were arriving in Canada. In the rough clay hills of Mosa Township, mostly everyone was either a Campbell, a McKellar or a MacDonald so it was customary for families to be given a nickname to distinguish them from the 20 other farming families in the community with the same name.
Thus, Duncan ‘the Laird’ Campbell settled in southern Ontario with his eight children, and eventually his grandson Robert ‘the Laird’ Campbell, would take over the farm.
Even 50+ years after his death, locals still fondly recalled their business dealings with Robert ‘the Laird’. The moniker was a term of endearment, for how the family conducted their business respectfully, for doing right by people and the community, and for ultimately finding success, both for themselves and for others.
Five generations after the original Laird, Neil Robert Campbell Johnson founded Laird NRC with the goal of being remembered the same way.