- My first creative director
This inspiring and motivational quote comes from a catastrophic review in my first week of advertising. It's since proved to be invaluable over the last twenty years of my advertising career, so I'm going to apply it to my bio.
I’m currently a creative director at McCann Singapore, working on clients across APAC, including Mastercard, Microsoft, Chick-fil-A, Reckitt Benckiser, and the Singapore Government. I previously served as a creative director at Ogilvy Hong Kong, helping to lead the charge on the Coca-Cola account for the APAC region. Prior to that, I plied my trade as both a freelance and permanent creative across numerous agencies including M&C Saatchi, Y&R, Ogilvy, FCB, TBWA, and many more.
Along the way I've been very lucky to work with some of the most talented and amazing creative people in the industry both at home in South Africa and abroad. It’s a longstanding rule of mine to always work with the best — along with “never move for money,” which explains my projected retirement age of 107 — and I plan to continue this tradition indefinitely. Or at least until I can become a real writer, just as soon as Penguin Books lift their restraining order.
My strengths as an advertising creative are built on a robust strategic foundation, making me friend to both my creatives and my clients, as well as a secret weapon on pitches. I’m as comfortable thinking up and making award-winning work as much as I am coaxing it out of others, and I’m a firm believer that “the idea” should be the starting point for everything from a 360 campaign to a single tweet.
Finally, I could bore you with my school history, my years studying Linguistics at The University of the Witwatersrand, or the diploma in copywriting I did at The AAA School of Advertising, but that would defeat the intention of brevity (and levity) that this whole thing began with. However, if you would like to pore over my fine print, please reach out via the Contact page to obtain my CV.