About me

Neil is Executive Creative Director for Critical Mass in EMEA and APAC. A member of the Global Creative Council, and is part of a team that steers creativity across CM's 12 offices and is responsible for craft, creativity, and community. Day to day, he oversees a team of Designers, Copywriters and Experience Designers.

Passionate about creating brand experiences that connect across his clients' ecosystem, Neil is changing the way that his team thinks about this by approaching briefs with a very clear narrative, and with a greater emphasis on creating work that is insightful, intelligent, and impactful. He is pushing his clients to connect the dots, to think globally, and to create experiences that are improve awareness, engagement, and sales.

Recent work has included

- Leading the re-brand and re-positioning of the whisky platform, malts (which will launch in the Spring)

- Since starting, CM has become the global brand agency for The Bar, a new D2C proposition from Diageo

- Led the scaling of The Bar from 2-17 markets

- Responsible for leading the global digital guidelines for The Bar

- Launching 'The Pathway to Inclusive Investment' for BNY Mellon, which sets out to explore the gender investment gap, and the far-reaching benefits of bringing more women into investing

- Currently developing a sensory brand experience for a global car brand

- Enabled a new creative energy across the company by introducing agency briefs that encourage everyone to be creative

Neil has always actively found ways to support and develop the creative community in and outside of the office. He was recently a mentor at New Blood Portfolio Surgeries and is currently part of Brixton Finishing School's 'Key Skills and Attributes Panel Discussion,' which offers a chance for students to hear from employers about what skills they look for when hiring, and what skills are suited to different job types/roles.

Neil is also a proud Mentor for the Executive Programme for Design Leaders for the Future London Academy. The programme is specially designed for creative leaders with 15+ years of experience. These are usually CEOs, Creative Directors, Design Directors, Heads of UX, Product Owners, and Innovation Managers who want to be better leaders and take their career to a new level.

Neil also ran a module and a series of workshops on 'Building Company Culture,' which focused on explicit and implicit organisational culture, defining the culture you want to create, and how to grow and sustain company culture.

Outside of the office, Neil gives his time and support to the founders of iloomi, a start-up that uses data and machine learning to help people understand and improve their mental health, with a mission to set humanity on a happier, healthier, and more resilient path for people and organisations. Neil is helping them to develop a shared vision and purpose, while also rolling up his sleeves and helping them articulate and craft a brand and identity.

Neil's reputation for developing company and creative culture is expanding out of his day-to-day with Critical Mass—he has been recommended by two senior executives in the industry to help mentor two of their top performers in their respective agencies. His role is to work with them to discover how they can inspire and engage their teams differently to boost performance and to enable them to grow within the business.