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Pierce Thiot, art director at Chiat/Day, makes the list again this year.
It can take many years for the young and talented to get recognized in the advertising industry.
That’s why each year Business Insider puts out a call for the 30 most creative people in advertising who are under 30. The people in this year’s rankings aren’t all huge names just yet, but they are rising stars and they could probably all come up with a wacky way to convince you to buy a chocolate teapot, if they felt like it.
We constructed our list based on agency and peer nominations, our own research into their awards and campaigns, as well as their current seniority and potential to flourish in the industry. Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination and congratulations to our winners.
(One creative listed in these rankings turned 30 in-between the time they were nominated and when this article was published. On this occasion we allowed a grace period as the list was published later than usual this year.)
30. Kevin Weir, art director at Droga5
Age: 27
When Weir is not producing ads for Coke Zero, Under Armour, and Johnsonville, the 27-year-old indulges his passion for GIF art.
His GIFs have been featured in art galleries around the world and easily earn Weir a place on this list. The adverts he works on highlight his fun creative flair, too.
Meet Weir’s “Sausage Nonnas.” Johnsonville partnered with Uber to deliver Italian grandmas — in little grandma homes — to cook for families on “Sausage Sunday.”
29. Shakir Dzheyranov, creative director at Spinifex Group
Age: 28
Dzheyranov’s unique style and confidence marks him out as a powerful force in the advertising industry. He works at Spinifex as creative director these days, but he previously worked for Nike, and Ignition as an art director, as well as Detail Vision as a creative director.
He’s won countless web-related awards, including: Site of the Day (Awwwards, FWA), Webby, Addy, Awwwards, CSS Design and Key Art.
Dzheyranov’s “Calling All Trailblazers” ad for Toyota
28. Kate Danger Baynham, copywriter at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Age: 29
Danger Baynham was a key member in the #IAmAWitness campaign for the AdCouncil. The team created an emoji to call out online bullying.
The Creative Circus graduate has also produced successful campaigns for the likes of Adobe, Nintendo, and is a keen illustrator — having doodled album art for Gypsy Punk band Gogol Bordello and a gig poster for indie band Of Montreal.
The #IAmAWitness campaign featured many YouTube celebrities
27. Jordan Sparrow, digital art director at FCB
Age: 29
Jordan Sparrow has only been in advertising full-time for one year, but he’s already won three gongs at Cannes Lions.
After reading the shocking statistic that “30,000 victims die from gun violence in the US every year,” Sparrow was inspired to remember some of these victims through “The Unforgotten” project, by recreating life-size statues of those who have fallen from handgun violence in Illinois. A name tag activated a mobile app that played a video of a life that was lost, but not forgotten.
Sparrow worked to ensure these gun violence victims are #Unforgotten.
26. Soham Chatterjee, creative at Energy Pool in Leo Burnett Chicago
Age: 28
Last year, Chaterjee was the most-awarded student in the world (according to the person that nominated him,) winning approximately 70 national and international awards.
He received five job offers from top agencies and ended up accepting a position at the Energy Pool. His work has been awarded a the Clio Awards, D&AD, Future Lions, YGA, New York Festivals, ADDY, One Show and applied arts, among many others.
Fun fact: He also claims to be the Indian voice for Ron Weasley in the second Harry Potter movie
Chaterjee’s unique style can be seen in this NPower ad.
25. Kelsey Wilkins, senior writer at Swift Agency
Age: 25
Wilkins had a good year in 2015. The copywriter’s passion for women’s soccer put her in a crucial role in Google’s Women’s World Cup social campaign, creating the popular hashtag #MoreThanAMatch.
She also works on strategy and content for the Google Search app, Google Maps, Google Made With Code, and Google Kids. In the past, she has worked with Nike Running and Starbucks. Word has it that she’s also working on a children’s book. And she somehow also manages to find time to write a blog dedicated to burgers.
Here is Wilkins’ #MoreThanAMatch campaign for Google.
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It’s #morethanamatch. It’s inspiring a generation. #WWC2015 pic.twitter.com/p3daHYV5Kg
24. Pierce Thiot, art director at Chiat/Day
Age: 29
Thiot worked on Gatorade’s 50-year anniversary campaign last year. The art director has also had success with Nissan, where his work helped make the Japanese car brand more accessible to American customers. Another of his advertising stunts involved a world-record-breaking water balloon fight for Holiday Inn. The video got over 2.5 million hits on YouTube.
But perhaps Thiot’s proudest personal success is founding the very entertaining Tumblr where he attaches various ridiculous items to his beard. For this, he has just been nominated for the Shorty Awards “Tumblr Blog of the Year.”
Gatorade’s 50th anniversary “Be Like Mike” commercial, which Thiot worked on.
23. Giulia Magaldi, Jr., creative at Droga5
Age: 27
Magaldi’s short but already glittering career has been recognized at the Clio Awards, YGA, ADDY, One Show, Applied Arts, and Graphis. After finding herself too big a fish in her native country, the Italian national came to the US to study at the Miami Ad School and she has since worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, J. Walter Thompson, 360i, and Pineapples and Umbrellas.
But one of the main reasons she’s on this list is because we love the bold and potentially offensive spot she helped make for Coach, featuring a trembling Santa taking a beating.
Here’s that Coach ad.
22. Rebecca Nadilo, planning director at BBDO Singapore
Age: 29
Nadilo moved to BBDO’s Singapore office in February 2015. Here she works with Visa, SK-II, Fonterra and Smirnoff.
The Curtin University graduate was previously head of engagement planning at BBDO’s New York office, where she worked with clients including AT&T, FedEx, CVS, Johnson & Johnson, and Autism Speaks.
She’s highly rated in the industry and has been described (by the person who nominated her) as “talented, inspiring and smart.”
Nadilo worked on this poignant Anmum campaign, which looked at the role of a mom
21. Courtney Pulver, 29, associate creative director at David&Goliath
Age: 29
Pulver has had great success as a copywriter at David&Goliath, so this year she was promoted to associate creative director. She’s worked with big brands like Kia Motors America, Universal Studios Hollywood, Jack in the Box, and the California Lottery.
She won one national gold and four silver ADDY awards, as well as two bronze Clio awards this year.
Pulver worked on creating the world’s largest coupon for Jack in the Box, which was accredited by Guinness World Records.
20. Mike Ackerman, group creative director at DDB Chicago
Age: 29
Ackerman runs the popular RapPoems Tumblr, a Tumblr staff pick that has been featured on BuzzFeed.
When he’s not busy with collecting the most insightful rap quotes, Ackerman creates campaigns for Domino’s Pizza, Best Buy, Burger King, Microsoft, and Morton Salt, earning recognition from Cannes, the One Show, CLIOs, ADC, Communication Arts, and the FWA.
He’s most recently taken lead of the Capital One account, creating DDB’s first award-winning creative for the brand, with a campaign featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, and Charles Barkley.
Ackerman’s Capital One ad featuring Samuel L. Jackson.
19. Daniel Barak, VP digital creative director at Deutsch LA
Age: 27
Barak already has nine years of experience in the advertising world. At only 27, that’s not a bad stretch.
He’s worked for McCann, MRM, Grey, and WPP’s Interlude on brands including Sony, Volkswagen, Target, ESPN, Nike, Microsoft and more. He has won Cannes Lions, One Show, Webbys, LIA, Clio Awards, Effie Awards, New York Festivals, Epica, Eurobest, Lovie, Creative Circle, PIAF, IAC, W3, Golden Drum, Cresta and FWA.
Barak recently was involved with Target’s “Share the Force” Star Wars campaign. He also led Discovery’s Shark Week “Sharks Rescored” which aimed to change our perception of sharks as vicious killers by allowing users to switch between menacing and peaceful music, through eye tracking technology.
The Volkswagen and Discovery Shark Week teaser Barak worked on.
18. Kelsie Clegg, designer at POSSIBLE
Age: 28
6″5 Kelsie Clegg has many talents. She’s in the process of producing five different board games; she holds the Virginia Commonwealth University Volleyball all time blocking record and, most relevantly, she was internally voted “Most Valuable Player” on Microsoft’s Collective Project campaign.
Without ad spend it generated more than 75 million views and 2 billion impressions globally, winning Gold and Bronze Lions at Cannes. Most importantly, though, the campaign helped an organization which provides bionic arms to children for free.
She has produced other great work for AT&T, St-Germain, and Pringles.
Here’s Microsoft’s Collective Project, which provided robotic arms to kids.
17. Gianmaria Schoenlieb, art director at Wieden + Kennedy
Age: 29
Schoenlieb is an art director who focuses on Coca-Cola, leading the vision behind last year’s Coke Super Bowl spot, “Make It Happy.”
Other standout work from Gianmaria on Coca-Cola includes “A Generous World,” as well as multiple TV spots for Dodge, including the innovative 2013 Dart Registry campaign that allowed family or friends to donate the cost on a new Dodge so users could afford the car.
Here’s that memorable Coca Cola “Make it Happy” spot:
16 & 15. Angelo An and Alan Jones, both 27, M&C Saatchi London
Age: 27
Before coming to London, the pair worked on Prime TV in New Zealand. This work won numerous international awards.
In 2015, the pair — who deliberately cropped the photo like this — won at the Cannes Lions, D&AD, Young Guns, Axis (NZ), Effies and more. Last year Jones was ranked 5th equal creative in the world on Best Ads and the number one writer in New Zealand. One of the best is the Modern Family Favorite Child Detector.
In Jones and An’s first month at M&C Saatchi London, they came up with the pitch-winning creative idea for Cornetto, the world’s second biggest ice cream brand. The pair work in different mediums, but they tend to focus on “big, weird, experimental” ideas “that people want to talk about,” according to the person that nominated them.
An and Jones created this award-winning billboard advertisement for Prime:
14. Kristina Litvin, art director at Mullen Lowe
Age: 26
Litvin illustrates and designs advertising for the Patrón, Paul Mitchell, and Acura accounts for Mullen Lowe in LA.
She just finished production for Acura’s Super Bowl ad — the brand’s first in four years — airing this February.
One particularly big project she worked on was Netflix’s “Watch Together,” a holiday campaign which showcased the power of movies on a child’s imagination, featuring un-staged and unscripted spots filmed inside real peoples homes during movie night.
Netflix’s “Watch Together” campaign
13. Michael Hagos, art director at Barton F. Graf
Age: 29
Based in New York City, Hagos writes scripts and produces content that is getting him noticed. He has produced breakthrough work for Comcast, New York Post, Street Easy, and Rock the Vote.
Most recently, Hagos worked on Barton’s “True Tales of Clash Achievery” campaign for Supercell’s popular mobile game, Clash of Clans.
It would be unfair not to give his 30-year-old creative partner Sam Dolphin a little shout out here, too, who has been working with Hagos since they were in graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University.
They both also appeared in Adweek’s “The Creative 100″ last year.
The latest Clash of Clans ad featuring Christoph Waltz and James Corden.
12. Jeff Scardino, creative at Oglivy & Mather
Age: 29
Scardino has worked on brands including Ikea, Amnesty International, New York Lottery, and Tropicana. But, arguably, some of Scardino’s most interesting work is done in his spare time. His latest personal project, “The Relevant Résumé,” which candidly revealed his personal failures, went viral last summer and was even featured on “The Today Show.”
Jeff also teaches at Miami Ad School, and he’s a permanent FWA Mobile Judge.
Another great piece of work from Scardino was the “Dreams Reclaimed” film, produced by Aetna. The film recreates the first dreams three people have had in years due to a sleeping disorder.
Here are the first dreams these people have had in years. They are vivid.
11. Ross Fletcher, art director at Barton F. Graf
Age: 29
Fletcher’s Super Bowl commercial for Clash of Clans featuring a very angry Liam Neeson was the #2 trending video on all of YouTube globally in 2015, with 95 million views. He’s also worked for brands like Tomcat, KAYAK, GoDaddy, and Little Caesars.
Before coming to Barton F. Graf to focus on art direction, Fletcher worked at Saatchi & Saatchi LA.
He’s won many awards at One Show, D&AD, the Andy Awards, AICP, and the Webby awards.
You can watch Fletcher’s viral ad here:
10. Chaz Whitworth, senior art director at Media Arts Lab
Age: 26
Whitworth spends his days working with Apple’s advertising partner in LA. Creating ads for such an enormously successful company certainly demonstrates incredible talent in such a young ad man.
He’s won a Daytime Emmy Award, three Cannes Grand Prix Lions, and several One Show Pencils. He was also named “One to Watch” by the One Club in 2015. Before working exclusively on Apple, he worked at Pereira & O’Dell in San Francisco where he created more award-winning work for Intel.
Whitworth’s simple ads demonstrate the iPhone 6 camera:
9. Ruslan Tovbulatov, brand strategist at Google BrandLab
Age: 29
Tovbulatov was a founding member of the Google BrandLab when it launched in 2012 in YouTube’s headquarters in California. Since then, he has helped launch BrandLab Paris and New York, running workshops with more than 150 of Google’s top brands with their digital content and creative strategies.
He co-authored parts of YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands.
Tovbulatov has also helped in the creative strategy planning for many notable brand campaigns, including Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” and, most recently, SyFy network’s made-for-YouTube content strategy.
He helped Syfy create a series of YouTube videos.
8. Bianca Guimarães, associate creative director at BBDO
Age: 27
Having featured on this list in 2012, 2014, and 2015, Brazilian-born Guimarães was a clear favorite this to be on the list again year. Having joined BBDO from JWT as a senior art director in 2014, in November last year, Guimarães was promoted to associate creative director.
In 2015, she was honored at Cannes, Clio, LIA (London International Awards), FWA and Epica awards.
Guimarães worked on the Band Aid Magic Vision campaign, which brought Band Aids to life to help distract children from their injuries.
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7. Will Davie, strategy director at Droga5
Age: 27
This Aussie in New York chiefly works with Reckitt Benckiser brands Clearasil and Air Wick.
The strategy man relocated from Sydney in 2012. He led a new teen-focused brand positioning and national campaign for Clearasil called “Let’s Be Clear” and developed a global brand platform for Air Wick titled “Home is in the Air.”
This year he’s also worked on strategic development of Honey Maid’s “This is Wholesome” campaign, which won him three Effies, including Gold, and a Cannes Lion Grand Prix for “Creative Effectiveness.”
Davie’s Clearasil campaign
6. Alex Spott, copywriter at 72andSunny
Age: 28
Spott works on the Google account, most recently the Google Star Wars “Awaken the Force Within” project. She is also one of the masterminds behind the pop-tastic and catchy Target Holiday and Back to School campaigns.
Billed as a copywriter, Spott also has a design background.
Diane Martel, seminal music video director and creative director for Miley Cyrus, said of Spott: “You can tell Alex is the smartest girl in the room; her mind never shuts off, it’s both frightening and awe-inspiring.” Fine praise from a woman of Martel’s reputation.
The dark side or the light side?
5. Sam Shepherd, creative director at Deutsch New York
Age: 29
Shepherd and his team had particular success in 2015 with the “Hashtag Killer,” a campaign which attempted to undermine the popular but insensitive #FirstWorldProblems, by getting people in relative poverty in Haiti to read out the first-world complaints. This success was then used to generate money for charity Water is Life.
Together with his creative partner, copywriter Frank Cartagena (who is 30,) he has won a string of awards. This year alone they become the 5th most awarded copywriter/art director duo in the US and they picked up a Fast Company “Innovation By Design” award for their “Drinkable Book” project, which was also named in Time Magazine’s Top 25 Inventions of 2015.
This will make you feel bad about tweeting #FirstWorldProblems
4 & 3. Scott Kelly, 25, and Ben Polkinghorne, 28, creatives at Wielden + Kennedy London
Age: 25 and 28
This creative duo left New Zealand to help BBDO NY with the global relaunch of Pedigree, before settling at Wieden + Kennedy London.
Winning big in Cannes, the pair added four Lions from 10 shortlists across four clients this year to an already impressive cabinet. A standout price of work is the mobile app “Found” which involved a close collaboration with Google.
Outside of their day jobs, Kelly has also designed a flag for each planet in the Star Wars universe, meanwhile Pokinghorne started a company that makes sausage burritos, called Bangerritos.
Have you lost your dog? Pedigree and Polkinghorne and Kelly will show you how to find it.
PEDIGREE Found from Colenso BBDO on Vimeo.
2. Brock Kirby, freelance copywriter
Age: 29
Kirby has won three different Cannes Lions with three different sets of creative directors, making his talent undeniable.
And since his previous appearance on the 30 under 30 list, Brock has won gold at Cannes for Nike’s Ripple, dropped Nike’s winter anthem Snow Day, and unleashed Otis Day & the Knights with Nike’s Shout.
He’s also won player of the year in the Portland flag football league. Our sources tell us he’s probably most happy about the last one.
Here’s the Cannes Gold-winning work for Nike Golf.
1. Adam Wolinsky, copywriter at VBP
Age: 30
Technically a couple of weeks too old, Wolinsky squeezed in as he was 29 at the time of the nomination. A winner at the Cannes Lions, One Show, the Webby Awards and more, Wolinsky has had the honor of making the only Google brand commercial ever created externally. The moving video profiles a small business using Google to support the LGBT community.
He’s also worked on brands including Toyota, Tundra (for which he helped the team win four Gold Lions and two One Show awards,) and REI.
A nominee from another ad firm said: “He has one of those brains that creates work that is staggering to think what dark recess it came out of.”
Wolinsky’s “The Story of Jacob and City Gym” for Google.
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