About Aurora
We bring wildly creative thinking for big brands that catapults them into growth.
#Stargazing for brands
We help global challenger brands to disrupt. Aurora’s sweet spot is engaging and galvanising communities around brands, creating genuine connection. Consulting at board and C-suite we offer a strategic lens to deliver disruptive ideas that tackle your biggest challenges.
Finding your brand’s Mojo through the lens of culture & zeitgeist.
We build people powered brands because authentic organisations are built on genuine and embedded cultural foundations.
From this solid base, we create powerful, integrated creative ideas that cut through and grow community connection.
The Glow Up
Finding your purpose, bringing it to life at the speed of culture; leading with speed with develop an insightful, informed and engaged visioning strategy for how your brand can project into new horizons; resulting in the creation of an explosively differentiated and powerful positioning and activation approach - which celebrates your uniqueness and captivates audiences, old and new.
Delivered through our comprehensive range of services:
Brand & creative strategy
People powered Inside out brand building - from internal advocacy and pride which fuels external brand power
Emotional storytelling delivered through film and content strategy
Viral campaigns that engage global audiences
Evergreen digital platforms
Global to local…
We are expert at taking campaigns internally, adapting big brand messaging to fit culturally and resonate with local audiences.
Super collaborative, we work with you to forge craft powerful, strategically-led brands and marketing - that helps our clients re-find their Mojo, delight their audiences and surpass their competitors.
Who you’ll work with
Founded by two of the UK’s leading marketing, brand and creative strategists, with decades of experience spanning the full spectrum of the advertising World - supported by our in-house production team & global network of subject-matter experts.
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Co-Founder, CEODawn has enjoyed an award winning and successful 25 year career in leadership roles across the creative industries, entertainment, retail and technology sectors.
She is the Co-Founder and CEO of global creative experience company Aurora – an agency which catapults brands to growth through culture, connection and society level thinking.
She was Vice President Marketing at Universal Pictures and prior this, UK Marketing Director at Nintendo UK.
Over a 10 year period, she oversaw the transformation of the video game and entertainment landscape in the UK, directly overseeing the record breaking launch of the Wii, Nintendo DS, Brain Training and Wii Fit in what was the most successful period of Nintendo’s 110 year history. Dawn was also the only female on the global leadership team.
She has masterminded over 50 high profile film and TV entertainment launches including Despicable Me 2, Les Miserables and Downton Abbey.
She is a long-standing member of gender equality campaigning organisation WACL and has chaired their national mentoring and events programme for next generation talent – Talent Sessions. She has also consulted and sat on the boards of some of the UK’s most dynamic creative and digital start-ups.
A Scouser born and bred, Dawn lives in Liverpool with her husband, son Milo and Snips the Beagle.
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Co-Founder, Chief Creative & Strategy Office
A veteran of the digital and advertising industry, Valerie delivers macro perspective thinking and creativity, imagining breakthrough ideas that transcend the everyday.
Valerie started working in digital in the year Google launched and has been leading creative and digital strategy for global brands over the past 25 years. Following completing a pioneering MA in Digital at City University London, Valerie learnt her craft in UX and copywriting roles at Ogilvy and WPP agencies.
She won awards early on for her groundbreaking digital strategic work for MSN, AMEX, Nestle, Royal Mail, Deloitte and Ford.
Valerie delivered the first ASOS brand and website, and worked with The Who's Pete Townshend on his future-focussed idea to harness digital to elevate new artists. She developed the first website for cult TV series, Red Dwarf, including 3D modelling their much loved Starbug spacecraft.
Valerie has since led brand, creative and digital strategy at renowned agencies leading transformation projects for global clients such as Universal Music, The British Council, MCFC, Canary Wharf Group, Primark and The Liverpool Philharmonic -amongst many other brands.
Her work has spanned private and public sector clients, as well as working in-house as Head of EMEA User Experience at Bank Of America.
Mid-lockdown in 2021 Valerie co-founded Aurora with Dawn Paine, their ambition to build a global strategic creative experience company who harness culture & community to craft huge ideas that shape and change the World.
This kind of thinking is demonstrated by their self-initiated multi-award winning global movement #HelpUkraineSong, which used Eurovision 2023 to build a platform of unity with Ukraine through music & the arts - achieving an incredible international reach of over 450 million.
A huge music enthusiast, with a past performing in bands, choirs and working as a music journalist, Valerie has a great passion for all things entertainment and culture.
Proudly female founded, we are deeply passionate about gender equality. We work closely with our clients and community on EDI - delivering strategy, events, mentoring - and we support women on their career pathways in the advertising industry.
