Reading aloud can be scary for kids, so to boost their confidence we created a set of books specifically designed to be read to someone who’s a good listener, extremely patient and never judgemental: A dog.

The project was backed by a Pedigree funded study which The Waltham Petcare Science Institute conducted, and the books are available in select stores and online.

While streaming giants worry about global viewing figures, TVNZ is just here to entertain New Zealand. So they’ll only stream the stuff that brings us together.

This means, if you ever find yourself in an awkward predicament, just ask ‘…what are we watching?’, and the chance is that everyone here’s watching it.

The film was shot by Tim Bullock at Scoundrel.

The campaign has just launched with AV. More coming soon…

For a lot of parents, policing screen time can suck. So Spark partnered with Gilbert Rugby to develop a smart ball in order to make it suck less.

The smart ball allowed kids to manage their own screen time. They could unlock badges for new throws, kicks, even fumbles, whilst also unlocking screen time.

Play by Spark was the first initiative for the Play platform we developed, designed to help kids build a healthier relationship with technology.

Film by Mark Albiston at Sweet Shop.

Fan welfare during test cricket matches can be pretty inhumane. Most international cricket stadiums have them cooped up in the stands for 8 hours a day in the blistering heat. But NZ cricket stadiums have grassy banks where spectators can roam free.

To champion their shift to 100% Free Range, Tegel cheekily rebranded these grass banks as The Free Range Area.

From tickets, to boundary signage and broadcast moments, every touchpoint drove home the message that we know how to take care of fans and livestock.

Kids have become accustomed to a fast world, so we wanted to give them a good reason to ‘Think Slow’.

We retold Aesop's fable for Transport For London encouraging teens to give their full attention to crossing roads. The fable felt more relevant than ever, and became part of a bigger ‘Think Slow’ initiative.

Film by Sarah Dunlop at Rattling Stick.

Raid71 did the supporting artwork that was clean-stencilled next to busy London roads.

Trying to encourage die-hard Export drinkers to go zero felt stupid, until we approached it with more stupidity - 15 average Kiwi beer drinkers perform a feat of precision that would be impossible if they were anything less that 100%.

This film might be an unnecessarily elaborate response to old mate’s question: ‘Why are we drinking these?’. But it should arm Kiwis with the perfect rebuttal if they’re getting ribbed for drinking a zero beer.

Film by Damien Shatford at Sweetshop.

The Wellerman shanty was first published in New Zealand in the 1970s. It was a piece of entertainment designed to get sailors through bleak times, and 160+ years later during lockdown it coincidentally resurfaced, helping the world get through a pretty bleak time. Spark told the rise and fall of the shanty and how it moved the world.

Film by Sanjay De Silva at Division.

The Royal Mail doesn’t just handle your post, they handle lots of personal information. So it’s in their best interest to make customers aware of the potential threats. To do this, we created a series of short films that demonstrate what your online behaviour looks like offline.

The symptoms of mental illness can be misconstrued as bad behaviour, sloppy attendance and poor grades. If you knew what those suffering from mental illness were going through, you wouldn’t laugh…so we got Michael’s classmates to help confirm how unfunny it is.

We didn’t tell them what he’d be talking about, so they’re all genuine reactions from the first take.

Film directed by Tony Barry at Sonny London.

We worked with John O'Driscoll and co-wrote an adaptation of Stand Up Kid for a fringe theatre show. The playscript is below, although I’m not expecting anyone to actually read it all.

Our bodies are generally quite disgusting, but not in Medibank’s opinion. The Australian health insurer believes they hold every ounce of our potential and understandably want to protect that. So, in between helping them navigate a pretty severe cyber attack, we’ve been busy building their brand with a nauseatingly optimistic tone of voice, which sits somewhere between Ted Lasso and Sir David Attenborough.

The cyber attack has delayed some bigger projects, but if I had to pick a few bits to date, they’d be these…

Gym goers are obsessed with gains. But in between sets they’re just sat around doom-scrolling, not gaining.

So Movember partnered with Life Fitness and offered them a chance to gain mental strength with MindSets : short, simple, minute-long brain exercises designed to be done between sets. Each of the exercises parodied the regular physical exercise stickers found on the machines.

The program was developed by leading psychologist, Jacqui Maguire and more than 130 gyms across New Zealand took part in the initiative.

We targeted gym-goes during the hours they would mindlessly scroll on social.

The first three bits are proactive projects that didn’t see the light of day. The following bits are from the archive.