AWARD School 26 Melbourne
Ad school: completed it mate!
After many years of AWARD School swimming around in the back of my mind, 2026 was the year I finally took the plunge. I’ve been thanking my gut ever since that I did.
Learning a process to hone deep human truths into moving stories or ideas has changed my game. I’ve always been super creative, with a strong sense of empathy and understanding of people, a strategic mind and an instinct for impact - but having a clear process for creating great work was something I was searching for.
One of my biggest learnings was the process itself - and how to trust it, give yourself to it, maybe walk away from it and then come crawling back. It was reassuring to find out that even the best creatives still go through the trials and tribulations of discovery and execution. I’ve learnt there are no shortcuts to great work; you have to love the process, embrace the uncertainty and just keep going.
SOME OF MY FAVOURITE BRIEFS
PRINT: When it came to ‘Australia’s warmest wetsuit’, one word that stood out to me was ‘thermal’. That’s how I came up with a crazy Superman open shirt series where the wetsuit reveals its strength: keeping your morning coffee, or beans, or whatever else - nice, warm and toasty (like a proper flask). With time, deliberation, and great guidance, this idea developed into ‘Surf Snacks’, a series of close-ups showing surfers pulling out their favourite Aussie snacks mid-surf, because the ability to keep things warm - be that snacks or humans - really is that good! I loved this idea in the end - and had many other angles and snacks to play with. I also taught myself how to digitally draw for this execution - a skill I am smug to have bagged.
RADIO: Every time I go to buy Funday sweets now, this ad comes into my head. I may be biased, but I think it weirdly works. The brief was ‘guilt-free sweets’. There was a toss-up between this script and another featuring a woman who would only engage in long indulgent sniffs with the lollies so she wouldn’t inhale the calories (throwback to a crazy diet “trick” I was exposed to as a teenager). For some reason, though, I kept coming back to this one. Maybe because it’s annoying. Maybe because it’s a little addictive to say. Maybe because it gave me that little eureka moment when it finally clicked. I’m not entirely sure. But for some reason, it has convinced me that Fundays are perfectly acceptable to buy every day of the week.
SOCIAL: A self-proclaimed social media obsessive and sustainable fashion die-hard, the Clutch Glue brief led me down a path to a creativity challenge that would feed into something a lot bigger. The rate of consumption online scares me. Every day, I watch haul after haul of ‘must-buys’ and micro-trends. Trying to speak to fashion-conscious consumers, I felt a great way to demonstrate Clutch Glue’s strength was to challenge them to share their own design journey, but with a twist - only using the body glue and deadstock fabrics. They could use anything: pillowcases, old clothes, bottle caps from their stash of empty soda bottles in their bedroom… The idea is to create a movement that demonstrates Clutch’s strength, making deadstock ‘stick around’: on our bodies, and on this planet - for a lot longer.
COMMERCIAL CREATIVITY: My little Nestie! I was proud of this one because, although it was layered with multiple insights, when it came to fruition, I realised there is a real market for something like this in our ever-digital world.
Reduce screen time? Check.
Bring back imaginative play? Check.
Not use more technology to do so? Check.
Teach kids about healthy bedtime, screen time and hygiene habits? Check, check, check!!!
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