People

Dan Cullen-Shute, Worldwide CEO & Co-Founder

Dan started his career as a grad at Ogilvy, then spent nigh on a decade at DLKW, running business in the automotive, financial, charity, public information and entertainment sectors, before spending a quick 18 months running Nokia’s digital advertising globally at glue Isobar. He founded Creature in 2011, and has led the business ever since. He is a member of the Forbes Agency Council, sits on the IPA Council and Membership Committee, and in 2014 founded Le Cure, a cancer charity that has raised nearly £2m for the Royal Marsden Hospital. A proud working dad, Dan is a fierce advocate of the value of flexible working, and of making advertising an industry the world wants to work in: along with the rest of the Creature team, he is quietly - and, often, not so quietly - determined to leave the industry better than he found it.

Ben Middleton, CCO & Co-Founder

Ben - or to call him by his full name, ‘Ben out of Ben & Stu’ - has wanted to work in advertising and to run his own agency since he was a kid, growing up on the mean streets of Guildford. He got his wish straight out of university after he and Stu nabbed a coveted role at multiple-Agency-of-the-year, Mother. They spent the better part of the next decade there, working (and winning awards) on pretty much every client in the building, before ripping the agency’s creative heart out when they left to set up Creature with Dan in 2011. Ben’s never happier than when he’s riding a wave of intelligent misbehaviour to create work that real people can’t help but care about.

Stu Outhwaite-Noel, CCO & Co-Founder

Stu’s bio is nigh on identical to Ben’s, which makes writing this paragraph easy, but making it sound interesting hard. The key things you need to know about Stu is that he grew up in Northumberland, where he was desperate either to work in advertising or to be a long-distance truck driver and neither he nor Dan are posh, they’ve just taken their partners’ names. Stu was one of the driving forces behind the Placement Poverty Pledge (an initiative that aims to ensure all creative placements are paid a living wage), and remains a passionate advocate for lowering the barriers to entry into advertising: as he’s fond of saying, if we get the best people in, we’ll get the best work out.

Andrew Gibson, CSO

Andrew’s day job is putting the ‘intelligent’ into ‘intelligent misbehaviour’, but he’s far from averse to a spot of strategically astute mischief. He kicked his career off at strategic behemoth McCann, where a few months in account management showed him that he was perfectly suited to a role as a planner. He soon made that leap official, leading all sorts of pieces of global business, including Mastercard and Nestle. Andrew joined Creature in 2013 to head up strategy on the Carling account, becoming our first Head of Strat two years later, and our first CSO at the start of 2017. As passionate about helping businesses be better as he is about driving their comms, Andrew’s twin obsessions are making sure we understand audiences better than anyone else and making sure we’re focused on making work that works.

Hanisha Kotecha, Chief Client Officer

Hanisha Kotecha has spent almost two decades helping deliver effective and award-winning campaigns for global brands, renowned charities, and disruptive social enterprises including Dunelm, Clearscore, Outsystems, Motorpoint, Escada, Dogs Trust, WaterAid, Public Health England, Vodafone and Lexus. Having worked at both big network agencies and independents, most recently as MD of GOOD, Hanisha’s experience covers almost any scenario you can think of. Which is why she is pivotal in helping organisations drive business transformation and results, building brands that real people can’t help but care about. Under her leadership, the account management department drive deeper and more meaningful relationships with all our clients and ensure we exist as extensions of their teams, caring as much about the results of any campaign as they do. Hanisha is a member of WACL and consults for Creative Access.

Kelly Taylor, Head of New Business & Marketing

Kelly started out in comedy & theatre production, talent management and TV before trading that all in to join the advertising world where she now focuses on PR, Marketing and New Business. Her experience has included leading the PR launch of a global National Geographic series, launching a disruptor brand, and producing the award-winning Loved Lived Here campaign for Pride at Proximity London. Nowadays, she’s responsible for ensuring that Creature roars louder than ever before.

Kristie Girvan, Head of Integrated Production

Kristie first dipped her toe into the world of advertising at independents and networks in Auckland and Sydney. In 2008 she produced the first-ever digital project for Sydney International Airport, before leaving the southern hemisphere for the sunny shores of England. On arrival, she met a Spice Girl, won a Promax & became head of stills at C5. Her heart still held a flame for agency life, which led her to The Corner, where she helped build one of the first truly integrated production departments in London. There she did all sorts, including using scooters to deliver wifi like pizza, won a 'Good' Lion for 'Heart Immigration', and bossing around Gerard Butler. At Creature, she brings our partnership promise to life: making sure that the right idea comes to life brilliantly, whatever shape or form it may happen to take.