For too long, dyslexia has been perceived as a disability, as a mode of thinking somehow less than ‘normal’. And yet, the world’s largest recruiter, Randstad Enterprise, concluded in a far-reaching global study that the skills that Dyslexic thinkers typically excel at such as creativity, problem-solving, lateral thinking and communication are now “the most sought-after skills in every job, across every sector, around the world.” So we decided to challenge the idea that dyslexia is somehow an impediment by reframing it as a rocket ship to success - as a mode of thinking that will better equip everyone to thrive against the demands of the future. To do it, we teamed up with Virgin and Open University to create DyslexicU, a fully-functioning University where you can learn how to think like a Dyslexic thinker. See for yourself at: www.madebydyslexia.org/dyslexicu

Awards:

Cannes Lions, Health, Bronze.

Cannes Lions, Innovation, Shortlist.

Cannes Lions, Glass, Shortlist.

Cannes Lions, Sustainable Development Goals, Shortlist.

AWARD Award Gold.

AWARD Award Silver.

AWARD Award Bronze.

MADC, GOLD, Charity Campaign.

12x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

When Lionel Messi scored his 644th goal for Barcelona, he broke Pele’s record for the most goals scored by a single player for a single club. To honour the achievement, we created 644 customised and numbered Budweiser bottles, one for every goal of Messi’s career - and as soon as Messi broke the record, we sent the bottles to every one of the goalkeepers Messi had scored against. Each keeper received their bottles in personalised packaging that included a letter from Messi himself. Many of the goalkeepers, legends in their own right, posted the gesture to their social media feeds, sparking headlines all over the world. Coolest of all, I got to shake Leo’s hand.

Awards:

2021 Cannes Sliver Lion - Entertainment Lion for Sport fans and community - Influencer and Co creation.

2021 Cannes Shortlist - Direct / food and drink.

2021 Cannes Shortlist - Social and influencer - Partnership.

2021 Cannes Shortlist - Social and influencer - Innovative Use of Partnership.

2021 Cannes Shortlist - Excellence in Sports Entertainment - Partnerships with Sports Talent. Cannes Shortlist - PR - Food and Drink

2021 One Show Finalist X 2. Influencer Marketing - Single Channel, Social Post - Real Time Response.

2021 Webby Nominee X 2: Food & Beverage , Best Influencer Endorsements.

2021 Shorty Winner x 2: Sports, Wine, Beer, Spirits.

Recognition:

3+ Billion Earned Impressions. 1200+ earned articles and coverage in 84 countries. $20M+ of Social Media Value and more than +3% total increase in followers across Budweiser’s social channels.

Featured on USA today, the New York Times, CNN, ESPN, goal.com, Sky Sports Football (UK), The Daily Mail (UK), The Sun (UK), Good Morning Britain (UK), Marca (Spain), Gazzetta Dello Sport, China Daily, Contagious, Adweek and more. Creativity Pick of the day.

In 2022, DDB Group Melbourne won Australia’s largest pitch of the year and developed Smith St, a bespoke agency model for Coles supermarkets. The Great Lengths campaign was a complete turning point for the Coles brand (not to mention the stock price). Before the campaign came out, most punters thought that Coles food was lower in quality than their bigger competitor Woolworths. Not only did this campaign, drastically transform those perceptions, it helped deliver a new tone of voice for one of Australia’s biggest advertisers. Two years later and the Coles brand is liked, listened to and trusted more than Woolworths on almost every recordable metric. So much so, that for the first time in it’s history the company is finally bigger and more profitable than it’s long-held rival, in no small part because of the health of its brand.

Along the way, we managed to create a heartwarming Christmas spot with Rudolph the basset hound, and a new value expression for Coles retail which let me to shoot a stuntman popping a wheelie on a trail bike through the aisles of a supermarket. Oh, and we helped build new habitat for picky little koalas, amongst a thousand other things.

Awards:

META’s  Australia Awards, Creative Campaign, Winner.

1 x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book Christmas.

1 x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book. Coles The Longest Table.

The Work. Print Craft - Illustration. 'The Picky Little Koala’.

The Work. Miscellaneous. 'The Picky Little Koala’.

For years Movember has used the power of men’s moustaches to help tackle serious men’s health issues like suicide, depression, testicular and prostate cancer. And they’ve always done it with good humour and a healthy dose of fun.

Now it was time to dramatise the power of moustaches with science. So we teamed up with genetic testing specialists EasyDNA and gave men the chance to find irrefutable evidence that could prove how great their moustaches really were. By sending in a strand from your hairy top lip we could scientifically match your DNA to great moustaches of the past. This way, men could discover if they were a distant relative like Genghis Khan or Eric. And more importantly, they could also find out if there were any congenital health issues that their genealogy made them particularly susceptible to. With this information, we were able to create highly personalised cancer risk assessments for men all over the world, and we were able to give them simple steps for checkups, self-care and cancer screenings so that they could ultimately lead longer, healthier lives.

Awards:

Cannes, Brand Experience, Shortlist.

Cannes, Health & Wellness, Shortlist.

MADC, GOLD, Charity.

AWARD, Silver, Health & Wellness, Disease Awareness.

AWARD, Silver, Art Direction, Craft.

AWARD Silver, Charity, Design.

AWARD, Bronze, Charity, Direct,.

AWARD, Bronze, Creative Strategy.

Superbowl campaigns are monstrous, daunting, white-knuckle privileges. Having just launched a new brand positioning, the pressure was on for GoDaddy to make a Herculean splash in advertising’s most crowded popularity contest. The plan: not one, but two separate Superbowl spots. Yes, it nearly killed all of us, but it was also a blast. In two very different ways, we wanted our small business owning customers to know that GoDaddy could help them kick ass online. A particular highlight was helping to write the lyrics of the Bodybuilders song, which still gives me a giggle to this day. Not to mention working with Jesus from The Big Lebowski.

Recognition:

USA today Superbowl Ad-Meter top 10 - Bodybuilders.

Cannes Shortlist Film Craft. Use of original music.

One Show Silver Film Craft: original score.

The economic power of creativity in Australia has always been underestimated. While traditional industries like mining, technology, manufacturing, and finance have always been easily quantifiable on the stock market, creativity has been treated more as a cultural, rather than an economic force. And this perception has meant there is now a popular push for schools to teach fewer creative classes to our kids.

But the truth is that creativity is Australia’s most valuable resource - a force with a towering economic as well as cultural potential. To prove it, we decided to make the value of Australian creativity just as quantifiable as any other resource.

For the first time ever, we put an actual dollar value on Australian Creativity using live market data from Australia’s stock market. The Creativity Index tracks a range of ASX listed companies selected after meeting a list of creative criteria and benchmarks that we developed in collaboration with Jarden Group, one of Australia’s leading financial services companies.

The Creative Index was launched at the National Gallery of Victoria as one of the finalists for the 2023 Rigg Design Prize.

Awards:

Andy Award, Regional Shortlist.

MADC, Gold, Brand activation.

AWARD, Bronze, Digital Tools & Utilities.

AWARD, Shortlist, Data Visualisation.

AWARD, Shortlist, Services & Utilities.

AWARD, Shortlist, Creative Expression.

AWARD, Bronze, Early Stage Innovation.

AWARD, Bronze, Service Innovation and Design.

Caples, Highly Commended, Best in Show.

Caples, Silver, Use of Data.

Caples, Gold, New Product Launch.

Caples, Bronze, Branded Content.

3x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

I always wanted to work on Skittles. So I was over the moon to work on a global brief for Skittles China. And even happier when my scripts were chosen by the New York global brass ahead of dozens of other writers around the network. One of the great highlights of this campaign was getting to work closely with Ari Weiss, though at times, the experience of making a Chinese ad felt like I was in my very own Skittles ad. Nevertheless, I was thrilled with how it all ended up.

Vodka Cruiser, a brand known for bright colours and fun-in-the-sun, launched two new dark cola flavoured drinks. So we encouraged our audience to embrace their dark side by getting revenge on their exes. Scorned lovers could offer up their exes’ old stuff to be hexed by real life witch Ms Angela Dix. And in return for serving up their exes some ice-cold karma, they received a free four pack of the new Vodka Cruiser Colas. The campaign saw overwhelming demand, with all hexes and four packs sold out within 24 hours of the giveaway’s launch on socials, Tinder, and online.

Over 400 exes’ items were hexed — from hoodies and undies to jewellery, perfume and even a pug — with the campaign earning 84M+ global reach, $10M in earned media and 100% positive brand sentiment.

3x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

For years, sports performance brands like Nike have told us there’s no place for enjoyment on the road to greatness. If you want to be at your best, you have to sacrifice everything. But Usain Bolt is living proof that many top athletes actually perform better when they manage to enjoy a beer or two along the way. So in the lead up to the Olympics, our global campaign took aim at one of the biggest brands on Earth. While they were screaming JUST DO IT, we were putting forth the opposite mantra: “Don’t Just Do It. Enjoy it.” This campaign was terrifying because the whole success of it lay in the fact that we knew we were immediately going to be sued by Nike in the first moments after it launched. But it was also incredibly rewarding. If you had have told me that I’d be on the phone with Usain Bolt designing a set of dominos, I’m not sure I ever would have believed you. But there you have it, advertising can be a crazy ride.

None of us make smart decisions all the time. Particularly in the complicated world of home DIY. Happily, British Paints offers a great mix of quality and value. It's a no-brainer, even for those who often fail to make smart choices in life. Like Baz, the budgy-smuggling exhibitionist who gave me one of my favourite ever product pack-shots.

Global footballers are some of the most influential personalities in the world. Yes, they’re famous for playing football, but they’re also famous for other lifestyle passion points like fashion, music, art. And tattoo culture.

Aside from being one of the greatest players of his generation, Sergio Ramos owns some of the most iconic tattoos in world football, and in global tattoo culture more broadly. So when we revealed his body without any of his trademark ink to his 36 million Instagram followers, we hit headlines all over the world. Then we brought each tattoo back, one by one, chronicling the personal stories behind the ink and marking the achievements of Sergio Ramos’s rise to greatness.

Recognition:

47M views on Youtube. 6x higher engagement (130% above IG benchmark) .

One show finalist “Moving image: craft.”

Webby’s mobile: People’s choice nominee.

Webby’s interactive: People’s choice nominee.

Creativity Ad of the day.

When you bet with Dabble, you can copy all your friends’ bets and other influencers’ bets, too. All of which is why we created Roger, a robot that loves copying people to feel more human. Had a blast shooting this spot with almost no CGI.

Awards:

MADC, Gold, How is this even a job.

When Messi announced in an interview that he was staying at Barcelona, he triggered one of the biggest social media events in football history. Within one hour of the announcement, we’d written a script and had it approved. Within 48 hours, we had produced and released the film to dozens of countries throughout the world. At the time, this story was breaking the internet. Our clients were at DEFCON 4, we’d just signed Messi to a contract, and we knew we needed a message that could give Budweiser a reason to be a part of the moment. An insane, panicked, but ultimately enormously rewarding project.

Recognition:

Creativity Pick of the Day.

We had to move GoDaddy away from its bikini-filled past and show small business owners that GoDaddy could help them kick ass online. Who better to send that message than JCVD? Was a blast hanging out with the man, the myth, the legend for a week.

Recognition:

More than 6m views on YouTube. Creativity Pick of the Day.

USA Today, New York Times,

New York Post,

AdWeek,

The Drum,

LBB online and more.

A recent study of the Australian public found that more than half (54%) of respondents had no awareness or no understanding of the use of Generative AI in news reporting. That’s why we helped Crikey, a fiercely independent Australian news organization, to create the Bullshitometer.

It invites readers to select from a range of recent significant stories from the news story of the moment – the US election – then uses AI – bespoke large language models built by Pow Wow Solutions to instantly polarise those stories. The Bullshit’o’Meter shows users just how easy it is for bad faith news outlets to distort the truth and educates news consumers on how to spot and avoid AI-generated slop in the future.Stories are routinely being added to the Bullshit’o’Meter, allowing users to experiment with breaking news and polarise the election’s biggest stories with their own AI powered newsroom.

We had a blast messing around with AI to make this happen with zero dollars. Big shout out to designer extraordinaire Adam Hengstberger for making it look slick. It’s not like I gave him a whole lot of variety with the copy in my script.

Awards:

2x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

A Funpass from Funlab offers you and your friends a subscription to a bunch of genuinely fun things to do, like Karaoke, ten pin bowling, mini golf and more. So to encourage people to get up off their couches and start having fun, we created a special offer. All you had to do was unsubscribe from one of your streaming subscription services and we’d give you a Funpass for free.

Awards:

AWARD, Shortlist, Best use of Copywriting. Subscribe to Fun.

Campaign Brief, The Work In Book. Subscribe to Fun.

Stay Kind is a charity with the worthy aim of trying to make Aussie kids kinder by tackling problems like bullying, violence, self-harm and suicide. We gathered together 128 of Australia’s most prominent Twitch streamers to create the kindest gaming tournament in history, one where you could win, not by being the best player, but by being the kindest player.

Awards:

AWARD, Bronze, Branded Content. Kind Royale.

AWARD, Bronze, Digital. Kind Royale.

AWARD, Shortlist, Innovation. Kind Royale.

AWARD, Bronze, Health. Kind Royale.

Caples, Silver, Not for Profit.

Caples, Bronze, PR.

Caples, Bronze, Digital.

Caples, Bronze, Gaming.

MADC, Gold, Charity Experience.

3x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

After years out of the spotlight, one of the most iconic brand ambassadors in American advertising history, the Green Giant, was ready to make a comeback. But before he returned to his famous Valley, we took him and his sidekick Sprout on a road trip across America, each of them documenting their journey on their own IG and FB accounts. We created dozens of posts at some of America’s most famous landmarks, each shot from both the Giant and from Sprout’s perspective. And we built geofenced Snapchat filters at each landmark along the way.

Recognition:

Over 750 MM PR impressions.

Featured in over 700 publications including The New York Times, USA today, Good Morning America, Jimmy Kimmel Live, CNN, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Adweek and more.

One show finalist: “Moving image: craft.”

Shorty Winner: Campaign by platform - Instagram.

Shorty Winner: Mobile.

Webby nominee mobile.

Creativity Editor’s Pick.

Our school system isn’t designed for people with Dyslexia. And yet, they are often our most gifted thinkers. As the parent of a kid who’s wonderful mind lies somewhere in the bouillabaisse of neurodiversity, this project was a labour of love. It kind of had to be because we had zero money to make it happen. When Jeremy Irons agreed to do the voiceover for free, I found myself loving the project even more.

Awards:

SHOTS, Silver, Charity Film.

AWARD, Shortlist, Film Advertising.

Caples, Bronze, Film. Square Pegs.

3x Campaign Brief, The Work In Book.

Most people have no idea what PwC actually does. All that they know is that it’s likely extremely boring. So with the firm's first brand campaign in over a decade, we brought PwC's extraordinary capabilities to life. When I first got this brief I thought there was no hope of making anything amazing. We ended up winning the first ever awards at D&AD for PwC, not to mention their first ever Cannes shortlists. Absolutely nothing about this project was easy. But I’m very proud of it.

Recognition:

D&AD Wood Pencil: Art Direction for Digital Marketing

2 Cannes Shortlist.

One Show Silver: Interactive Websites,

One Show People’s choice

Art Directors Club Silver: Digital & Motion.

2 Webby Nominations.

FWA Site of the Day.

FWA Mobile SOTD.

Awwwards SOTD.

Communication Arts, Luhrzers Archive.

Over my career, I’ve worked on a bunch of clients that other creatives have tried to avoid with the force of a thousand suns. Siemens is a good example. Siemens MindSphere is a platform that lets developers build apps for the Industrial IOT. Not inherently exciting, I grant you. But it did give us the chance to bring to life raw industrial data in a super imaginative way. We couldn't demonstrate MindSphere in the real world, so we built a miniature world of our own.

Recognition:

2 Cannes Shortlist: Interactive, Data Visualization

2 Webby Honoree,

One Show Merit: Dynamic Data Visualization.

CommArts Digital Annual.

Shorty Nominee.

Archive, Mashable, Tech Crunch..

The Superbowl is a massive moment in American advertising. Our task was to transform America’s biggest party into a truly global moment - one that could inspire Budweiser drinkers in more than 25 different countries. In 72 hours we created thousands of pieces of locally optimised content, transforming America’s biggest party into a truly global event.

In hindsight, it might not have been a great idea to bring people from pretty much every country on Earth together in January 2020. But those were simpler times. It was at least a month before the phrase ‘mother of all superspreader events’ had been coined for the first time.

Recognition:

Generated more than 1b total social impressions.

‘BudX won the superbowl.” Campaign Live.

“Best Superbowl activation.” Ad week.

AdAge, iHeart Radio, Rolling Stone, Campaign US, Event Marketer, MixMag and more.

2021 Shorty Winner: Micro influencer campaign.

1 Gold, 3 silver and a bronze at BEA Experience Awards 2020.

We found two kings of global street fashion and paired them up with two kings of world football - bringing them together to create exclusive Budweiser fashion drops that we released on Instagram before El Classico - one of the biggest football games of the year. Had an absolute blast running around the streets of Barcelona and Madrid with a tiny camera crew.

Some teenagers will do anything to get rid of pimples. Our job was to get them to consider advice from a doctor rather than advice from Youtube. 

Recognition:

Cannes, Health & Wellness Products. Shortlist.

Cannes, Health & Wellness, Brand-led Education and Awareness. Shortlist.

Adweek, LBB Online, The Drum, Huffington Post, Curbed, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Creativity and more.

Contacts change the way you experience the world. They let you connect with people more directly and intimately. They can change a lot more than just your sight.

Recognition:

The Drum, LBB Online, NY Egotist, Fast Company.

The Jolly Green Giant was back after a long hiatus. But what did he learn while he was away? A fun campaign that I worked on with my old boss Menno Kluin.

Recognition:

Effie Shortlist. New York Times, Huffington Post, Curbed, Food & Wine, Thrillist, Creativity, Adweek, The Drum, LBB Online, MSN Money, Delish and more.

… it’s as if your spills never happened.

Recognition:

Archive, Communication Arts.

There’s no such thing as a standard family. That’s why standard life insurance policies are a bad idea. Happily, Lifebroker are experts at finding exactly the right policy for any family.

A V/Line train ticket gets you into lots of places. A V/Line radio record sometimes gets you into Luna Park where we live-recorded our spot to great effect.

Recognition:

Cannes Shortlist. Single radio. Rollercoaster.

Spikes Silver. Single radio. Rollercoaster.

Siren Award x2,

MADC x2,

AWARD. Radio. Rollercoaster.

AWARD. Radio. Aquarium.