Hello.
I’m an award winning Senior Creative Director with over twenty years of experience in ad agencies across continents.
I love a lot of things about my job.
I love ideas. I love culture. And I love ideas that have culture at the heart of them, ideas that live IN the world. It stops advertising becoming wallpaper, and I love that.
I love process, collaboration and communication.
I love being a leader and I love being a ringleader.
I love big ideas. And I love it when they stretch from top to toe.
I love mentoring, inspiring, and collaborating with other creative teams and designers to grow, craft and shine. It’s my job to surprise clients, but it’s a creative team’s job to surprise me.
I love when strategy, media, and production collaborate with creative to make the agency presentation bullet proof.
I love seeing something I’ve worked on play in the cinema and hearing someone behind me say “I hate this ad”.
I love my queer community. I love DE&I and helping to change the face of the industry and move it forward with fresh perspectives and energy.
I love my New Zealand home. I love my adopted home in London. I love that my creative experience stretches between the two and I love everything I’ve experienced from travelling the lands in between.
I love everything in my book. All of it is made to be loved. Or hated! As long as it’s not ignored.
Or wallpaper, right?
The above is only scratching the surface. Let’s chat.
Experience
davemygind.com - Freelance Senior Creative Director
FEBRUARY 2025 - PRESENT
VML London
KidsKnowBest
Red Brick Road
Ourselves London
Havas London - Creative Director
JUNE 2016 - FEBRUARY 2025
Eight years leading integrated 360 creative campaigns and brand platforms across a mix of local and global clients including: Reckitt (Lemsip, Gaviscon, Durex, Senokot, E45), Tony’s Chocolonely, MolsonCoors (Rekorderlig Cider, Coors Lite, Carling, Blue Moon), John West, Tilda Rice, Jordans Cereals, Ryvita, UN Women.
Leading teams across various markets, with a strong focus on mentorship, inclusion, and disruptive thinking.
Collaborated across departments at a high level including strategy, design and production to deliver work that spans the media spectrum. From global TV commercials, to social and digital/content, to out of home, to experiential, all the way down to branding and point of sale.
Heavily involved with ‘Platform’: an internal recruitment scheme to diversify from a DE&I point of view and get new people into advertising who are from under-represented and underprivileged backgrounds.
davemygind.com - Freelance Senior Creative
AUGUST 2012 - JUNE 2016
Hired by a range of agencies from top tier large networks to exciting fast paced indies to even exploring in-house agencies. Tapped up to do everything from leading pitches, to day to day conceptualising, to seeing work through production and dealing with challenging timelines and budgets. These jobs required immediate knowledge and hitting the ground running on an extremely wide and unpredictable range of client categories.
Saatchi & Saatchi London
DDB Europe
FCBInferno
Ogilvy London
Sky Creative
ITV Creative
DraftFCB London
Isobar London
Hometown London
Independents United London
Framestore London
Dufresne Corrigan Scarlett Paris
Rehabstudio London
Albion London - Senior Creative
OCTOBER 2010 - JULY 2012
Freelance - Mid-Weight Creative
SEPTEMBER 2009 - OCTOBER 2010
Mother London
Dentsu London
DDB London
VCCP London
Publicis London
Isobel London
Iris London
Hyper London
Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland - Creative
OCTOBER 2005 - AUGUST 2009
Colenso BBDO Auckland - Junior Creative
NOVEMBER 2004 - SEPTEMBER 2005
EDUCATION
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Bachelor of Communications Studies
Major: Creative Advertising
2002 - 2004