If you could attribute one other person or life event to your success, who or what would it be and why?
Anywhere in my life where there’s love, those are the people who are driving my success. That’s the foundation.
What is the number one quality you look for in talent?
Perseverance. There aren’t many easy answers to the big questions our clients are asking us to help them solve. Hard roads take grit to walk. And there are some folks who for whatever reason just love the grind. These are people who see and believe in hard work’s ability to manifest great outcomes through exploration, discovery and polish. For me, the grind is one of the most rewarding parts of the job. I gravitate to collaborators who love it too.
What is something the industry isn’t paying attention to that they should?
I’m concerned our industry has put too much hope into abstract ideas of human creativity. It’s common in AI thought leadership, for example, to say versions of, ‘AI is great, but will never replace human creativity…’ as if stating it as fact will save us.
I’ve seen many bright agency CEOs wield creativity as a shield, placing the fortunes of their agencies on the semi-true belief that in creativity we’re selling something clients can’t get elsewhere. Meanwhile, our entire industry has been slow to adapt to rapidly changing business conditions that are undermining its value, such as conservative structural approaches to innovation and outdated pricing models.
When I look at creativity in all its forms, I see underlying systems at work. The rule of thirds, the colour wheel, grammar, the structural foundations of narrative and genre, the way we encode lived experience through words into the novel… the systems go on into infinity. Not only that, but human creativity, though amazing, accounts for just a tiny fraction of all that’s creative in the universe. Look back far enough and you have elements from the periodic table slamming together in deep sea thermal vents making life itself – no human creativity involved.
Isn’t it plausible that someday soon machines will be able to produce work that stands alongside some of the universe’s other creative achievements? If the industry more broadly acknowledged some version of that, we might be able to get out a defensive stance and take the whole thing to an amazing new level together.
What is the very best career advice you’ve ever received?
Keep at it.
What are you most proud of in the last 12 months? Or, what milestones do you most look forward to over the next 12 months
Launching a new agency! Memory! I spent my first six years in the business at an amazing indie agency called Grip Limited. I always admired what those founders had built and how they were working with clients. After another 14 years working at holding company agencies, for which I’m very grateful, it’s a joy and a dream to be starting an indie. I co-founded Memory with a former client and CMO, Ryan Bullock. And it’s the distillation of everything we’ve learned on our journeys so far, and hopefully addresses some of the pain points our industry is facing, such as the fracture between brand and performance.
As for the next 12 months… I’m excited to make work with our clients that expresses the vision of the agency – technologically progressive, measurably effective, emotionally engaging and culturally relevant.
What has been the most challenging moment so far in your career?
I’m reading “challenging” here in its positive sense, because that’s what most of us want… a career that challenges us to live up to our potential. Any time there’s massive upside potential on the table… maybe we have a big idea in need of a genius tactical unlock. Maybe it’s an unwieldy pitch tangle of data, tech, creative, media and production that needs a unifying force. Maybe it’s the dream brief that’s secretly a nightmare brief because everyone keeps saying it’s a dream brief and the expectation is that it’s an easy grand slam…. These moments are challenging because we know they need our best, and nothing less is going to solve it. And meeting a challenging moment with your best is… the best!
