Dave Waters

DAVE WATERS

Owner/Founder of WATERMILL

Studied fine art and graphics at Colchester school of art.  Worked as an artist and designer for 3 years at First City Advertising, London.  Then an art director for 7 years at Gold Greenlees Trott, London. Became a board director and won (at least one of) every, British and European  advertising award over that period.  Created ‘More reasons to shop at Morrisons’, ‘How do you eat yours’ for Cadburys crème eggs, ‘Ariston and on and on’ and the butter man for Ariston. All of which ran for more than a decade.  Started d, f, g, w in August 1989, it went on to be a top 30 advertising agency for 17 years.  Created ‘Hit the hut’ for Pizza Hut, ‘That’ll be the Daewoo’ and over 300 ads for dozens of interesting clients. Including Toshiba, COI, BBC, Co-op, Disney, NME, Mothercare and Kerrygold.  Won the COI their only Advertising effectiveness grand prix for anti drugs work.  Designed the Body zone in the Millenium dome.  Directed several short films, commercials, and trails.  Became President of the Creative Circle.  Sold d,f,g,w to Freud Communications. (Remained for a year as creative director).  Started WATERMILL with Bertie Miller. A new communications company, media neutral, project based, doing interesting projects with people we like.  Projects include UKTV, Camden Town Unlimited, 118 118 and ebookers.

Mike McKenna

MIKE MCKENNA

Mike began in advertising as a despatch monkey but one D&AD course later, (as well as a grave misjudgment by the agency ECD) and he was propelled into the creative department as a writer.  That was a long time ago...in the intervening years he has worked in some nice places and had the good fortune to work with some very talented people including; Dave Dye, Richard Flintham, Nick Bell, Greg Martin and Dave Droga. Which ensured he won some awards.  He has been President of the Creative Circle, served on D&AD committees, the Ideas Foundation and spoken at the IPA, the London Business School and Feltham Young Offenders Institution.  Mike has two pieces of advice to people starting off as creatives:  The first: have a goal, an ambition. This could be to get into Wieden’s or Mother, work for Finky in China or Rosie Arnold at BBH, start your own agency, or become ECD. You decide.  Set yourself a time period for this: a year, three years, five…and then go for it.  His second, even more profound piece of advice is to have fun.  At the moment Mike is working as a consultant, you can see his work on gregandmike.com

Nicky Bullard

NICKY BULLARD

Creative Director at LIDA

Nicky is responsible for every piece of creative work that leaves the agency.  In her first year as Creative Director, the agency has won 22 industry awards across 5 different clients, with two campaigns making it to no1 and no7 in Campaign magazine’s top 10.  And Nicky herself shot straight into the No5 spot in Campaign’s Top 10 Direct Creative Directors.  As she looks about 25, it's hard to believe Nicky has 20 years of experience writing award-winning words across all mediums and sectors. She loves the customer and passionately believes 'insight is all'. She currently judges Campaign Big, Creative Circle, D&AD, The Best Awards and the DMAs and runs the Tone of Voice module of the DMA’s copywriting workshop ‘Sharpen Up’.  And outside of the day-night-weekend job, Nicky has been known to do a bit of stand-up and is in the middle of writing a play.  

Career highlight:  Alan Bennett writing in his book ‘Untold Stories’ that her Carte D’Or commercial was a ‘stroke of genius’ and that he wished he’d written it himself.

David Judge

DAVID JUDGE

Executive Creative Director and co-founder of Start JudgeGill

David Judge is the Executive Creative Director and co-founder of Start JudgeGill, the international brand, digital and environments agency.  David is an accomplished brand and retail experience designer with 26 years in the industry working with some of the best agencies in the world (Landor, Conran and Imagination) and creating multi awarding winning experiences for global brands such as adidas, Virgin, Diagio, M&S, McLaren, BP, BAT, Ford, DeBeers, P&G, IBM, DVLA, PWC, Barclays,BDO, Fred Perry and MTS. David’s passion lies in creating dynamic interactive spaces for clients, enabling their brands to engage and interact with their customers and their staff. He is a specialist in understanding the effects of an environment on all the senses helping to create an emotional experience.  Fundamentally, David understands how environmental design works as part of a brand strategy and is passionate about pushing the limits within intergated design experiences. Over the past five years, David has been developing the strategy “Connected Retail”, which is the story of how, at each touch point, we as consumers can be connected to a shared experience, not only with our chosen brands and their products but with each other also. The momentum that interactive retail is moving at proves that we are indeed moving closer to a connected retail reality and as a result David is in high demand to teach and share and deliver his in-depth knowledge and understanding of this exciting next stage in retail history, he is a true specialist for the connected generation.  David has spoken at several industry forums and conferences including the World Retail Congress in Asia and Berlin, where adidas’ Virtual Footwear Wall, which StartJG created, won Business Innovation of the Year award. He has also spoken at INSEAD, The Note to Self Creative Consortium and was guest speaker at L:SN Global. This year David also partnered with our client from adidas to co-write the inaugural issue of The Journal of Brand Strategy, a white paper titled ‘Re-Imagine Retail: Why store innovation is key to a brand’s growth in the new normal, digitally-connected and transparent world’.

Steven Anderson

STEVEN ANDERSON

Creative Director at Smith & Milton

Over 20 years, Steven has gained integrated branding experience with a mix of leading design and advertising agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi and Light & Coley. This variety has given him a unique insight into design for business success and building brands across most sectors and creative disciplines. He has been Creative Director at Smith & Milton for the last six years which has seen some of the branding agency's most successful projects for Warburtons, Legal & General, Ginsters, CBRE, AXA Wealth, Business Link, Crabtree & Evelyn and English Heritage. Before joining Smith & Milton, Steven was head of design at Banner Corporation, Europe’s largest technology agency and part of Y&R. There he created brand and communications programmes for Blackberry, AT&T, Sony, Motorola, Cisco, Hitachi and Hewlett Packard.


 

Garry Blackburn

GARRY BLACKBURN

Creative Director and co-owner of branding consultancy, Rose

Garry Blackburn is Creative Director and co-owner of branding consultancy, Rose. He spent over 10 years at Newell & Sorrell and then Interbrand, working as a Creative Director. He then became a partner at The Fourth Room with Wolff Ollins founder Michael Wolff, before joining Rose in 2003.

Nigel Clifton

NIGEL CLIFTON

Head of Creative at Havas EHS

An art director by trade Nigel is happy creating ideas for any media, from TV to mobile apps and direct mail to social media.   He is obsessive about creative ideas that are customer-focused, consistently challenging everyone to create relevant and engaging creative platforms that provoke conversations.  He has created over 30 award-winning communications from Cannes Lions to Grand Prixs, but he has never had a piece of work that has won a Chip. He did however touch 3 last year at the awards ceremony.

Rosie Arnold

ROSIE ARNOLD

Deputy Executive Creative Director of BBH London - Outgoing President, D&AD

Rosie started moonlighting at a tiny creative hot shop called Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1983 while studying at Central St Martins.  She has been there ever since.  Always motivated by the opportunity to do mould breaking creative work amongst like-minded people, she has had no reason to move.  She spent the formative years of her career working closely with John Hegarty, learning the trade. In her time to date she has been responsible for some of the Agency’s most iconic work from Pretty Polly and Levi’s in the 80s; The Independent, TAG, Robinsons and Omo. She lead Axe (Lynx) for 14 years and more recently is behind the latest phenomenon that is Yeo Valley.  Her work has amassed many awards including six Cannes Gold, six D&AD pencils and three Campaign Golds.  In September 2007 Rosie took a three month sabbatical and went back to art school. This time to the Royal College of Art to pursue a personal art project.  On her return to BBH she was one of the three Creative Directors appointed to the UK Management Board and in July 2008 was appointed Deputy Executive Creative Director. She is, sadly, one of just a few women running creative departments in advertising agencies in the UK.  Rosie regularly appears in the press  and featured in a Channel 4 documentary called “From the Top” on life as an advertising creative. She is President of D&AD and has presided over the Charity’s 50th year and their involvement with the Olympic ceremonies.  Rosie has managed to combine her successful career with raising her two boys and three step daughters and learning to Fence. She says of  her multi tasking role “It feels a bit like being Ginger Rogers. You’re expected to do everything that Fred does just backwards and in heels!”