CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
I began my journey with a Bachelor of Arts in advertising. There I learned all about drilling down into clients’ core truths, understanding who I’m talking to, pitching creative to people afraid of risk and just how quickly you need to drink beer before you’re called out by your peers.
I love writing and developing creative for brands. Below are works I got to bring the collective’s best sensibilities to, shaping marketing briefs and KPIs into emotive, truthful works that add value to the commercial landscape. Don’t skip me, I’m worth it!
BETTERHELP
BetterHelp came to me looking for a commercial that put audiences in the emotional state of crisis. I walked away with two of the best spots I’d ever made.
Following on from a recent spot they’d produced featuring someone in extreme duress who finds a moment of relief, BetterHelp wanted ideas that were as emotionally fearless. They were clear: they wanted something that placed their audiences deep within an emotional state, with concepts that were fresh, relatable, with high emotion that hooked audiences within 3 seconds. After pitching several ideas, they landed on two they loved.
Using very distinct visual trickery, the two states of crises were a panic attack and over rumination. This was for me the perfect confluence of simple, elevated concept, pitch perfect performance and well honed VFX. Shot over two days on a budget that would have made a single commercial tighten its belt, Angle and Fragment went on to deliver exactly the sort of work I came to the States to create.
Produced with The Wild Factory.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Homeward Bound, a not-for-profit initiative uniting women in STEMM around the planet, had the most evocative tagline I’d ever heard: Mother Nature Needs Her Daughters.
The challenge here was: how do we take such a huge message as this and devise a video campaign that could lead directly into it while being produced on the smell of an oily rag?
The answer came to me: messages from daughters to their mothers in the case that their mums were unwell. The invitation was open: imagine your mum is really sick. What would you say to them? Then turn the inevitable messages into one directly aimed at Mother Nature.
Shot on one frozen day on the streets of New York, vox pop style with complete strangers, we invited women to send their messages to their mums right there in Greenwich Village.
Knowing roughly how I was going to edit the piece and having faith in the act of love this involved, we found a heartfelt and emotionally raw piece that still affects me to this day.
I love talking to real people, and managing to get them to open up. But standing behind that camera, doing all I could to draw these women into our orbit, I was struck by the lasting impact our mothers have — and how close to the surface lies all we feel for them.
Hard to imagine a better link to the planet that is so very in need of our love.
JCPenney
Chictopia, an agency commissioned by JCPenney, were about to do their first ever commercial. Four of them.
Chictopia was an agency that specialised in social media, working with influencers and an entirely different world to that of purposeful creative. JCPenney had come to them with a moderate budget, and Chictopia — an ambitious two women keen to make the most of it — had gone all out on a concept that spanned years, had multiple characters, a whole set of messages and scenes that doubled and tripled up on the message in one scene, while other scenes seemed from different spots entirely.
They were, as far as I could see, in trouble.
Graciously, they were willing and ready to collaborate. So I went to their offices and broke down their creative with them, pulling apart key beats, asking them to clarify the purpose for each scene, bit by bit unearthing the motivations and helping them find where they’d nailed it and where they’d misfired.
It was a deeply constructive, open-hearted process we all bought into. Out the other side we came away with a more realistic set of creative demands, spread out across 4 commercials instead of one.
Managing again to pull a big scale miracle out of a modest budget, the spots were glossy, heartfelt and sweet. Blanket, the hero spot, remains as one of my favourite ever works. Tender, evenly paced, textural and true (see the final script for that here)
Produced by The Wild Factory
TODAY TIX
Today Tix are the premiere place to go for cheap seats to the biggest shows on Broadway. How do you say that with heart?
Today Tix had long established themselves as a retail force in the world of budget and last minute broadway tickets. When they came to us, they were looking for something totally fresh for the company. Having a history of purely retail-oriented ads, with price points and special offers, this was a chance to celebrate the spirit of what brought everyone in the company together: the theatre.
Presenting three ideas to the company (one a twist on sports commercial tropes, one a celebration of the mechanics of the theatre, and one an ode to first love), their favourite was chosen. We then worked with various titans from the industry, both old and new, at the Knockdown Centre in Brooklyn over the course of one day to produce a playful, honest love-letter to a passion shared by millions.
HAMILTON (COMING SOON)
RPM, in charge of the phenomenon Hamilton, came to us looking for ideas to make a very un-Broadway Broadway commercial.
Click to see the original ideation deck for Hamilton
RPM were adamant: they wanted a commercial that spoke to young audiences, in a way that was anthemic, fresh and original. They didn’t want it to feel like a retail spot, but rather something that took the central themes of Hamilton and expanded them into a message that was modern and new.
I poured everything I had into the concepts, telling myself the sky is the limit. I even provided a second run of concepts as ambitious and varied as the first, just because I knew this was the sort of client ready to take big swings. No throwing away their shot, as it were.
Click to see the deck presented at that formative boardroom moment
In the end the folks at RPM combined two of their favourite ideas into one, kicking off a months long collaborative process that resulted in one of the defining moments of my career: pitching in a boardroom to Broadway megaproducer Jeffry Seller and his suite of staff, and ending the pitch with Seller and his team talking Super Bowl.
The shoot, unsurprsingly, turned out to be one of the highlights of my career: working with top tier talent, diverse and brilliant. And a crew as equally diverse and brilliant. It stands as the best shoot I’ve ever had for this exact reason, not to mention the joy of working with one of my favourite composers of all time Sly 5th Ave,
COMING SOON
DUNLOP & GETUP!
It all began right here. The first two commercials I ever wrote, shot for loose change and a good cause.
I came out of University raring to go as a commercials director. One on particular day, I shot my first ever music video and my first ever commercial all in one day. The music video was (Kate Vigo’s The Way You Are, which went on to win Best Music Video at the Independent Music Video Awards the following year.
But winning was in the air: this spot I wrote and directed for Dunlop — shot in the last light of an already long shoot day — was an entry into a nation wide competition,
We netted top prize, airing nationally and sending me off on the first and only all expenses paid holiday I’ve ever won. Which to be fair is one more than most get.
Inspired by my love of the likes of Chris Cunningham and Britain’s commercial visionaries, Volleys remains one of my favourite works to this day.
But winning was in the air: this spot I wrote and directed for Dunlop — shot in the last light of an already long shoot day — was an entry into a nation wide competition,
GetUp! is an Autralian organisation devoted to fighting for a fair, responsible and enlightened Australia. 13 years ago they held a nation wide competition looking for people who could come up with a crafty way of bringing their worthwhile message to the masses.
Coming in 3rd place, One Does was shot during my time working as a DA with Exit Films, then a darling of Melbourne’s commercial scene and where talent like Garth Davis, Mark Malloy and Greig Fraser came up.
You can see the company’s influence all through it, from the soft grade to the kitchen sink drama energy.
But clear too is my already rooted loves of patient cinematic moves, emotive music and an understated message that calls people to their higher selves.
A rough but sweet infant gem from another lifetime.