Starting my career as a junior creative in Auckland 20 years ago I’ve been fortunate enough to go on to work in some of the most revered advertising agencies in Australia, London, America, and New Zealand.
In recent management roles I’ve been tasked with turning around the creativity and business success of agencies such as CHEP Melbourne and Fallon Minneapolis, as well as building an office and culture from scratch as the founding Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Melbourne.
Among the work I’m most proud of is a book I wrote in 2016 about facing and overcoming fear, which was cited by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge as being a key inspiration behind their AFL Grand Final victory.
For 3.5 years I was a partner in the independent creative agency Robyn&Leon, where we put a focus on articulating purpose in creative ways for internal communications to help brands and companies align what they say with what they do.
In 2021 I left the agency to take a hiatus from working full time in advertising to set up Destroy All Monsters, essentially a moniker for putting physical and functional creative products into the world.
I’m a keen sailor and recently sailed doubled handed on a high performance yacht between Tahiti and Fiji over two weeks, but when on the water am usually kite surfing or paddling about in a canoe I built during Covid lockdown.
Work history
July 2021 -
Founder, Destroy All Monsters
Destroy All Monsters was set up to put creative physical products out into the world. Things that are best experienced in real life rather than through a screen.
Dec 2017 – May 2021 (3.5 years)
Director/Creative Director, Robyn&Leon, Melbourne
In 2017 I partnered into what was then a design studio to expand it into a full service creative shop. We put an emphasis on helping clients articulate their purpose and communicate that internally to their staff in order to get way upstream of their consumer comms. We called this ‘Branding from the inside out’. Some of our clients included Origin Energy, Australia Post, Simply Grow, Lifeline, Melbourne Central, Florentino and Auckland Fish Market.
2015 – 2017 (2.5 years)
Executive Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi, Melbourne
In this role I joined the fledgling Melbourne agency as its founding Creative Director when it had only just been registered as a business and had no creatives, studio, or office. Accomplishments during this time included staffing the creative and design departments, leading the Bank of Melbourne account creatively, and creatively helming the two biggest pitch victories in Australia of 2016… Devondale Dairy and VinoMofo.
2013 – 2015 (1.5 years)
Executive Creative Director, CHE Proximity, Melbourne
When I joined CHEP it was primarily a Direct agency. To me this meant it had the potential to do great things as it had good channel and development competency… it had just suffered for a long time by not having strong creative leadership. I came on board to partner with the new, dynamic CEO to grow the agency financially and creatively. By the time I left it had more than doubled in size and the awards were starting to come in the door. Clients that I worked with at CHEP include Foxtel, AGI, Cricket Australia, and Telstra.
2012 – 2013 (1 year)
Senior Vice President Group Creative Director, EnergyBBDO, Chicago
In this, the longest job title I’ve ever had, I led the creative for the agencies largest account, Wrigley. This involved not only creative directing work for North America, but working with our Latin language partner agency and at times leading strategic and creative directions globally.
2009 – 2012 (2.5 years)
Group Creative Director, Fallon, Minneapolis
I joined Fallon as second in charge of its creative offering in an effort to reignite a once great agency that had suffered several gigantic client losses and become financially weakened and culturally chest fallen. During this time we won Chrysler, Cadillac, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and H&R Block and grew the agency and its confidence significantly.
2007- 2009 (2.5 years)
Creative Director, Publicis Mojo, Melbourne
Back before there were the titles ECD or CCO this was my first role as the Creative Director of an agency. Publicis Mojo was a creative gem in the global Publicis portfolio at the time which saw me working with great clients across all manner of sectors, including (locally) Victoria Tourism, Nike, Cadbury, Nestle Peters, as well as creating the lead campaign for a global Nescafé pitch being run out of Paris, and creating a Coca-Cola TVC for the Russian market.
2002 – 2007 (5 years)
Senior Copywriter, Mother, London
Joining Mother when it was only 5 years old I was part of its growth and evolution from a purely comedy shop into an agency with a broad range of tone and communication. Clients that I worked on during this time included The Observer newspaper, Dr Pepper, Skybet, Orange, Homechoice, Frank, Boots, and Red. During this time the agency was ranked Campaign magazines, ‘Agency of the Year, and ’Agency of the Decade’.
1999 – 2002 (2.5 years)
Creative, Colenso BBDO, New Zealand
Where it all began, Colenso was my first job as a junior creative. Part of a very hungry and proactive agency and creative department full of extremely talented people this was a very formative period of time for me, and saw my partner and I winning the largest amount of awards globally at the first Young Guns Award (creatives under 30).
Education
1999
Top Student, Axis Advertising School, New Zealand
1992–1996
BFA Fine Arts Degree, Elam - Auckland University, New Zealand
1991
‘A’ Bursary, Northcote College, Auckland, New Zealand
Technical Skills
Proficient in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Lightroom, Procreate App, iMovie, Studio Photography, Intaglio Printmaking, Screenprinting, Woodworking.