After a decade in New York, Darren recently landed back in Sydney, where he worked several lifetimes ago. He returned to work more closely with teams, move faster, and get back to truly strategic, conceptually disciplined work. Most recently, he served as ECD at TBWA\Sydney under Matt Keon.
His career has taken him through Johannesburg, Prague, New York and Sydney. At TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, he helped win Nissan North America back for the agency and was promoted to Group Creative Director. He later worked across Mother, FCB Chicago, 360i, Grey, Fred & Farid and TBWA\G1 Paris.
As Joint ECD of Spark44 New York, he led Jaguar, Land Rover and Tata Global Beverages.
While working independently with Grey New York, Darren helped create Pfizer’s Science Will Win campaign just before COVID. It became Pfizer’s global platform and was publicly supported by Joe Biden and the President of the European Commission.
The platform later expanded into Pfizer’s global Design for Science competition and its flagship Science Will Win podcast. Now in its sixth season, the podcast has passed three million downloads and ranks among the top 1% globally. The original campaign won a Gold Effie. The podcast has since won Tribeca X for Best Audio, multiple Shorty honours, Fierce Pharma’s DTC Audio award, MM+M’s top podcasting prize, Signal Gold, Hermes Gold, and honours from the w3 and Digiday Awards.
Separately, Darren launched two agencies during his time in New York. The first was RUNT, a small, fast-moving, project-based agency whose first official client was Biden for President. Darren served as a creative director on the campaign.
The second was Inkfish, built around a new global agency model. Inkfish recruits specialist talent from around the world and assembles the right team for each American client and project. Darren works mainly with startups and technology companies that need to move quickly and disrupt their categories or risk disappearing.
Darren and his creative partner Rob Rutherford also conceived and co-wrote ASICS’ Mind Games: The Experiment. Filmed across Europe, North America and Asia, the idea became a feature-length documentary narrated by Stephen Fry. It is still available globally on Prime Video.
His work consistently wins locally and internationally, including two D&AD Yellow Pencils, multiple Cannes Lions including Gold, and top honours at The One Show, Clios, LIAs and Spikes.
One thing Darren has learned is that while the creative concept is king, it needs to be built on a strong strategy and flow naturally through the media plan. He gets involved as far upstream as possible and stays hands-on until the work appears on screens around the world.
Darren also enjoys mentoring the next generation of creatives. Most recently, he tutored at AWARD School and has served on juries for some of the world’s top award shows.
Some additional highlights
Helped Our Next Energy develop product communications designed to bring electricity to communities across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Helped Our Next Energy launch its $1.6 billion ONE Circle battery factory in Michigan.
Created the award-winning Take Control campaign for Therabody.
Led the global social AOR pitch for Uber with VMLY&R Kansas City, overseeing teams in São Paulo and Paris.
Helped VMLY&R Kansas City win Lidl with a new brand platform.
Created Quit Poocrastinating, the campaign that helped Chemistry Atlanta win PetSafe’s ScoopFree business. More fun than a self-cleaning litter tray sounds.
Created Land Rover’s integrated Play Harder This Winter campaign, announcing its sponsorship of US Ski & Snowboard and featuring Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin.
Repositioned DAZN’s combat-sports streaming service with Blowing Up the Fight Game, launched through a Tom Kuntz-directed film starring Tracy Morgan.
Worked on Mother New York’s winning Wrangler pitch and its Stella Artois Big Lebowski Super Bowl campaign.
Brought in alongside Rob Rutherford to work directly with Chris Garbutt, Global Chief Creative Officer of TBWA at the time.
Created a Nissan x Star Wars campaign with Lucasfilm.
Collaborated with Noam Murro and The Mill on an animated special.
Made some wonderfully strange Nissan advertising with Traktor.
Wrote the most-awarded radio campaign at the 2017 London International Awards.