About
I’ve been a writer since I was five years old, when scribbling rhyming couplets in little journals was more fun to me than building Lego space stations with my brothers. (Thankfully my mum never let me have a Barbie, or who knows where I’d be now?) In 1998 I was fresh out of University and I knew everything, so I insisted that McCann-Erickson start paying me to write. Ever since then I’ve been a creative at all kinds of agencies on all kinds of business. Most recently I’ve been at Publicis Mojo in Sydney, fortunate enough to work across a number of excellent Aussie beer brands including Boag’s and Hahn, as well as Toyota, Nestle, PayPal, Coke, Virgin Active and Qantas, and a number of smaller brands as well. Prior to my time at Mojo I spent two years at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney where I was Creative Group Head on Foxtel, Australia’s cable TV offering owned by the Fox Network. I also creatively led the agency’s Procter & Gamble brands including Olay and Head & Shoulders, and the Goodman Fielder brands Old El Paso and Patak’s. Prior to Saatchis I spent six years at Clemenger BBDO in Brisbane and Sydney, working on lots of fmcg accounts such as Masterfoods, Frito Lay, PepsiCo, SunRice, Uncle Tobys, as well as Visa Card, Mitsubishi, and Suncorp Bank and government business such as Queensland Rail and Ergon Energy.
Over the past few years I’ve also judged a number of award shows in Australia, contributed articles to magazines such as B&T, Campaign Brief, AdNews, Australian Creative and The Australian Magazine, and I was National Head Lecturer of AWARD School here in Australia for two years. This is a voluntary position presiding over 120 students per year in which I set the curriculum for the next generation of Australian creatives. It’s a lot of hard work, but I did get invited to a lot of parties.
My work has won a bunch of awards over the years, but some of the work I’m most proud of hasn’t won anything. And some of the work that’s picked up metal, I don’t even have in my book any more. So I’m not motivated by awards (though they’re nice, don’t get me wrong), but by making things that are genuinely interesting and different. I think you work for people, not agencies and brands, so it’s important to me to have a great rapport with the people I work with and for, and it’s especially vital that there’s great chemistry between my creative partner and I. I think chemistry is how the great ideas come about, and chemistry is what solidifies a team that can defend them.
Over the years I’ve discovered that what I love doing most is writing comedy, and I’d like to do a lot more of that in my next role. I also enjoy making people laugh by detailing my own misfortunes, which are generally minor but vast in number. Aside from working (which, to be honest, is my main activity) I love to eat, tweet, take improv classes, play the guitar terribly, renovate my apartment, watch weird movies, and get married a lot.
On a good day I look like this: