Growing up on the east coast of New Zealand, I discovered early on that I had a passion for art and design, which found me getting arty and abstract chasing a Design Degree in Wellington.

But the advertising papers had other ideas, sparking a newfound fascination for writing and ideas. 

Now joined at the hip with my uni mate and newly-titled ‘Art Director’, Cory and I ventured off into adland, having a ball over the next 10 years at some of the country’s top ad agencies.

At Y&R, we made our first big budget TV commercial featuring a community of CGI pigs coming together for a party. Followed by an award-winning campaign featuring a live virus that got sent through the mail. (In hindsight, this was very close to Anthrax, which makes it even wilder than we thought at the time). 

Soon we were part of the furniture at Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland, dreaming up ideas for brands like Toyota, Telecom, Tui Beer, Skinny, Weet-Bix, Marmite and ASB Bank. Highlights include a raft of controversial Tui ‘Yeah Right’ billboards, a world-first in banking on social media, a promotion to Creative Group Heads (whatever that meant) and rallying the nation to not freak out during the 2012 Marmite shortage.

But the dairy farms of Taranaki soon came calling for my Art Director, which seemed a good time to break away from the big network agencies and take up the challenge of leading the creative department at a production company with new creative ally and joint CD, Rich.

Here we helped transform the prod co into a ‘hot creative agency’ (Campaign Brief’s words, not ours), securing the global Adidas Rugby account, Wendy’s, Tourism New Zealand and producing a bunch of successful and attention-grabbing campaigns over the next 5 years. 

But like the allure of advertising at design school, it was time to change tact and set up a new independent creative agency with my creative partner and colleague – two great mates.

And over a yarn we launched Yarn, where we’ve surrounded ourselves with some of the best talent we’ve met over the years and clients who share the same ambition to create work that gets people talking.

In just a few years, our work has been recognised at Cannes, D&AD, Spikes, The Webby’s, Axis Awards and more, as well as making headlines around the world, from the New York Times to the local rag of Stockholm.