Experience

sweetwater mea

• United Arab Emirates
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Creative Director

  • May 2018 - Present

  Lead a multi-faceted creative department, foster creativity within the organization as a whole, and manage various skillsets to help them deliver impactful, effective work. One of my highlights is to have championed a rebrand & reposition of this incredible agency as one that is "pleased to disrupt you" forming a new identity that better aligns with our history of delivering disruptive creative work that creates cultural impact and business results for a mind-numbingly awesome range of brands & clients, including: - adidas - Vans - Reebok - Absolut - Unilever (Lipton, Pukka) - British American Tobacco (Vuse) - Marriott (Westin) and many more. Our work focus here includes creating innovative activations, 360 campaigns, live experiences, digital content, retail-boosting concepts, strategic planning and creative platform + ecosystem development. We're an experience agency and my role is to lead creative ideation, design, strategy, and collaborations supporting brand engagements, both live and online. Highlights including stealing the spotlight at Sole DXB, Formula 1 Abu Dhabi, and other key cultural events, increasing and exceeding sales targets for major lifestyle brands, working with some of the Middle East's most innovative creators, and most of all, surprising and inspiring consumers when they see the brand's promise come to life in an experience that makes them feel seen and heard. Duties include managing a diverse team of 9 creatives, plus contributing to agency management & culture as relates to fostering creativity within the frameworks of our overlapping industries - activations, events, creative campaigns, retail, and creating + crafting PR-worthy moments.



M&C Saatchi UAE

• United Arab Emirates
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Art Director

  • Feb 2019 - Jul 2019

  I loved working with M&C Saatchi in Abu Dhabi, especially on their government client twofour54 which is an evolving and dynamic brand that is a passionate empower-er of the creative communities of the UAE. My work included 360 campaign concepts that covered everything from content to activation, promoting the facilities and services of this creative community. While in this contract role I also worked on other projects for the Abu Dhabi government including the TAMM, the government's digital services arm. I didn't stay on with M&C because the commute was a bit rough from Dubai, and my interests took me elsewhere, but I found the group to be very passionate and dedicated to their clients & doing quality work.



Publicis Middle East

• United Arab Emirates
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Art Director

  • Jan 2017 - Jan 2018

  At Publicis, I helped top brands (especially from Nestlé group) transform the way they communicate, by saying and doing things that cut through the clutter with strategic creativity. I believe in digital-first, because that's where my eyes are most of the day, but I do 360 work for the agency, from TVCs to activations, to social media content, and beyond. Some of the awesome brands I got to work on included: - KitKat - Renault - Ram Trucks (FCA) - Nescafé - Nestlé Pure Life - Cerelac - Nido



Tonic International

• United Arab Emirates
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Art Director

  • Feb 2014 - Jan 2018

  My role is to come up with digitally-driven creative that puts people before pixels. Role: - Handling creative projects (especially those with a digital focus) from concept to execution - Collaborating with colleagues across advertising, branding & digital departments - Delivering innovative integrated marketing solutions Key responsibilities include: - Conceptualizing, art directing and/or visualizing concepts for digital (and some offline communications) with a focus on web & mobile experiences, social media campaigns, branded content, activations, and 360 degree brand campaigns - Presenting internally and to clients with a key role in pitches - Designing & delivering presentations in a strategically-oriented narrative - Working closely with digital, video and offline production to ensure brilliant execution - Collaborating with social media writers and strategists to develop share-worthy content - Working closely with teams across the agency with the mandate to encourage meaningful integration - Provide constructive feedback to colleagues regarding digital best practices - Use industry-standard tools and production methods to deliver pixel-perfect design Have worked on campaigns and projects for clients including: - Audi (MENA and Germany) - Yas Waterworld (Abu Dhabi) - Starz Play (US-based, MENA launch) - Danat Al Emarat Womens & Children's Hospital (Abu Dhabi) - Roshan Telecom (Afghanistan) - Smart Telecom (East Africa) Notable achievements: - Winning, retaining & expanding the scope of key accounts including Audi, Yas Waterworld, Danat Al Emarat & Starz Play - Key role in conceptualizing and delivering an ambitious multinational 'Land of quattro' activation campaign for Audi involving simultaneous activations in 7 countries - Proposing and winning branded and digital marketing concepts that pushed both our production and creative capacities



Frag Games

• Pakistan
• Software Development
• 100 - 200 Employee

• UX / UI Designer

  • Mar 2013 - Jan 2014

  Working at a start up means working in tight teams and doing big things. This was my role at Frag - to work as the sole designer on an interface for our flagship product - the Sorcerer's Ring, a 3D unity-based game for mobile working on the free-to-play model. Because of our choice of product and model, the interface was key to generating conversions and enabling users to play a very complicated game in a simple way. We got great feedback on the interface from publishers around the world, including top-10 publishers based in the US and Europe. The game went on to be sold to a telecom company who plans to launch it at a later date as part of a broad multimedia offering for their customers. See the project at https://www.behance.net/gallery/16785961/Sorcerers-Ring-iOS-Game-Identity-Interface



Publicis Pakistan (pvt) Ltd.

• Digital Communications Head

  • Aug 2012 - Mar 2013

  Launch and grow our first-ever digital department through experimental forays into social media, digital design and development. This head-first experience involved aggressively pricing our services and putting together a young, creative and energetic team. During this time we worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and LMKR, a gas-industry technology company, Headstart School and others. While the department name changed from Pixl4 to back to being part of Publicis Pakistan (and thus better-integrated) the agency still offers digital services after this initial experiment and has gone on to grow their roster of clients. This was a great learning opportunity and put our audacity and ambition to the test. Above all, during this time I'm grateful to have worked for Masood Hasan while he was still with us, as a mentor and boss.

• Visual Communication Designer

  • Jul 2009 - Aug 2011