Please plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and enjoy our alternate profiles.
Adam Leddin recently gave up his dream of recreating the Trojan War completely to scale with Playmobil men and instead returned to something he was very good at: design. Of course that was after his life-sized Lego space shuttle had failed to launch, and his attempt to incite a revolution by rebuilding the Berlin Wall with tacos had fizzed. Now he puts all that (admittedly insane) energy into creating gorgeous designs and perfect output files.
Angela Stirk is obsessed with Tetris. In fact, she’s so obsessed that it affects other parts of her life. At work, we’ve seen her cut up sandwiches into irregular shapes just so that she can reassemble them later. At home, she has a Pomeranian that’s meticulously trimmed into a furry cube – so it fits neatly into the dog flap. But her favourite obsession is managing the agency’s traffic flow to ensure jobs go to the right creative. Yep, we think she’s the perfect fit for Lowe.
Iconic soft-pop duo Savage Garden formed in 1994 when sloppy-faced singer Darren Hayes teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Carl Gallagher. Their music went on to define everything that was wrong with this country, and as tourism sagged the government was forced to intervene. In a deal brokered by Kofi Annan, Carl agreed to split the band in return for a job as our Executive Producer and $2M in cash. Darren tried to continue to make music, and was assassinated in 2007.
Let’s be honest. Some of the profiles on this page have had the truth stretched a little, in order to make the subject seem more worldly and worthy. But with Account Manager Carly du Toit this is not required. You see Carly spends her spare time helping at an animal shelter for abused and unloved dogs. And there really is nothing more you need to know about someone to conclude they are FRIKKEN AWESOME.
Chris Hunter worked for years honing his writing skills on prestigious clients like Malta Airways, Sunair and Lada. His industry brochures for Scotch Tape drove readership up by at least 3%, and no one was surprised when his infamous 3M headline (“Knock Knock, Glue’s There!!”) swept the Adhesives International marketing awards with two bronzes and a silver. After a few years in rehab for solvent abuse, Chris is back at the top as Lowe’s ECD. Just don’t ask him to mount anything onto boards.
While on a shoot, high up in the snow-capped mountains of Queenstown NZ, we spotted a Yeti with a rather unusual skill: it was snowboarding like a pro. So, armed with a pack of Tim Tams and Vegemite, we befriended the gorgeous beast and got it to teach us some sick aerials and varials. In return, we shaved it down, smuggled it to Australia and gave it a job in account service. Oh yeah, and we also gave it a name: Georgia Mahaffie.
Being the love child of Madonna and Guy Ritchie can be tough. But producer extraordinaire Jake Heath makes it look so easy. Jake tried following in his father’s footsteps and became a video editor, before he discovered his true calling – teaching others how to dance like his mum. Now, whenever there’s a camera nearby and tequila shot on hand, Jake’s arms will go up, ready to vogue, vogue, vogue…
Judi Lewis is our leading creative, specialising in gorgeous colour schemes, immaculate typography and to-the-point copy. She works only 10 hours a week, but her creative skills are so sharpened she never misses a deadline. She also rides a beautiful horse to work. Then she wakes up and finds, alas, she’s still Lowe’s much-loved MD and her day is all meetings.
Julie-Anne Ellem aka Jewlz was raised by French gypsies in northern NSW. At the age of 21 she fell in love with a beautiful machine called Brad. The pair had an immediate sexual attraction. Jewlz would ride him for hours while he would fulfil her every desire. Their love was a forbidden one, as Brad was a bicycle. The couple left the gypsy camp in order to pursue a peaceful existence. They found that life on the street was harsh. Our Chief Financial Officer found Jewlz riding through the park counting pigeons and saw a hidden talent within her. As a result, Jewlz was appointed Finance Manager.
Somewhere near Luxemburg there’s a small, inconsequential place called France. Compared to an awesome country like Australia, France has little to offer the world in regards to art, film, fashion or fine cuisine. So it’s not surprising that earlier this year King Louis XXXI - after watching an inspiring episode of Home & Away - ordered his eldest son Karim Louis Hadid to take the country’s finest donkey and travel across the globe to Sydney to study our advanced culture. Karim soon ran out of French money (called ‘pesos’) and took a job at Lowe as a Digital Producer. And as a result, we’ve won France as our agency charity client.
When Karla Prokurat applied for a job here we noticed her CV mentioned “dressing up” as a hobby. That’s fine, we thought. With all these creatives dressing like homeless hipsters, someone who takes pride in their appearance would be refreshing, right? Only it turns out Karla is a Furry. Which means she dresses in a shapely vixen fursuit, talks in yelps, and takes frequent breaks for public ‘yiffing’. Still, anything’s better than a hipster.
While struggling through the darkest Cambodian jungle on a bonding exercise gone terribly awry, our senior staff stumbled into a clearing to discover a young woman in Blahniks happily tapping away on a macbook pro. It was Lauren Portelli. Within minutes our wounds were dressed, our leeches salted and our location helpfully pinpointed on Google Earth. Such skills would be invaluable in an Senior Account Manager, we thought, so we smuggled her back to Sydney in a suitcase.
Lisa Brown is our Head of Production and a disgraced former Miss Australia who was secretly pregnant when she won the title. Strangely her huge tummy was not mentioned until the closing moments of the Miss World pageant, when a furious Miss Serbia finally pointed out the obvious to the cameras. Stripped of her crown in a violent swimsuit fiasco that left one contestant with a shattered pelvis, Lisa vowed to switch to a more deep and meaningful career – in advertising of course.
By day, Luke Townsend is a fairly normal I.T. guy with a nervous laugh and a Leatherman in his pocket. By night, however, he becomes ‘LuckyLuke67’, a dyslexic old Texan widower who has turned to online poker out of loneliness, who’ll keep forgetting if a straight beats a flush, who likes to chat aimlessly about his horses before the flop, and who will calmly take all your money within an hour.
Our CFO Lyndon Brill is not your run-of-the-mill number cruncher. He’s explored most of the planet and has graced the cover of Adventure Accountant magazine four times – most recently clothed in nothing but the traditional string loincloth of a Khoisan warrior (headline: “Meet Lyndon’s Johnson”). He’s never in a suit, wears a necklace of shark’s teeth (extracted from his femur, of course) and will occasionally pay staff expenses in baht or rupee.
The first time we saw Mae Wong, she was on the TV show Border Security being frisked and interrogated by overzealous customs officers. It appeared their X-ray machines had picked up a suspicious package concealed under her clothing. When it was revealed that Mae was a hotshot accountant and the suspicious item was, in fact, an oversized calculator – we knew we had to track her down and hire her.
Melissa Peters is a style god in Mexico. Her blog, Lovebento, has become the unofficial bible for hip, young fashionistas of El Fitzroy and La Prahran; many of whom revere her impeccable taste and boundless creativity. It was the sort of creativity we knew the Mexicans couldn’t keep to themselves. So we lured her up, made her our Digital Creative Director and, to our surprise, discovered she speaks perfect English.
If our agency was a giant can of coke, Monique Unwin would be the sugar. That’s not to say she’s unhealthy and rots teeth – though she does supply us all with daily Tim Tams – but rather that without her sweetness we’d taste a bit like that old water from the bottom of the toothbrush holder.
Born on the wrong side of the tracks, Nathan Kam hustled his way out of the ‘hood to start a business with Jay-Z and Beyoncé selling limited-edition baseball caps, extra-limited-editions of limited-edition baseball caps, and bobble head figures. But when the partnership turned into a complicated love triangle, Nath was left broken-hearted and sadly turned his back on the venture. Today, Nath channels his creativity into design with the hope that, one day, Jay will come running back into his arms.
Nathan Quailey was hailed a NRL genius. He mentored such stars like John Hopoate and Willy Mason, just to name a few. Always entangled with controversy he took flight to the Colorado Mountains where he swindled rich women by posing as a ski instructor. In order to shake off Interpol, Nathan returned to Sydney to lay low by playing the role of Group Account Director.
Earlier in these staff profiles we had a bit of a lapse of judgement, and rather than making up some silly story about Erin Hamilton to protect her identity, we told the real story of her history in Columbia. Alas, thanks to unlimited Google access in Bogota’s toughest prison, Diego Montoya read the profile and sent a ‘kite’ to his number-one assassin, the brutal Uruguayan killer Nelson ‘The Jackal’ Mercardal. Having recently infiltrated our agency under the guise of an interactive art director, we feel it is only a matter of time before Nelson makes his move against Erin, and – worse still – vanishes the day before a FOXTEL deadline.
Nicola Changhails from a long line of Iron Chefs. This proud epicurean tradition began in 900BC during the Rotorua Dynasty, when Nicola’s great-great-great-grandmother was handed the unenviable task of preparing a winter’s feast for the royal court using just two ingredients: lemon and paeroa. Legend has it, she whipped up a feast that melted the king’s heart. At Lowe, Nicola carries on this tradition by serving up delicious briefs in our account service department. Just make sure the theme ingredient isn’t chips, bro.
Stephen Pearson is the CEO of Lowe Group and one of Australasia’s most experienced marketers. If Stephen were to commit a robbery, it would resemble Hans Gruber’s storming of Nakatomi Plaza, such is the scale of his thinking. Never mind the budget Sharon, he’s prone to say with a dismissive wave of the hand, is the idea BIG enough? Stephen likes to blow people’s minds - albeit less literally than Mr Gruber.
In the late 1970s, British scientists successfully isolated the human gene responsible for extrovert behaviour and excessive partying. It was dubbed the ‘fun’ gene. They spliced this gene with DNA from a rabbit then impregnated a hardworking advertising suit from Essex to create Suze Cain, the world’s first human Energiser bunny.
As a member of ‘80s all-female band, The Bangles, Vanessa O’Brien had it all. The fame, the fortune, the perm. But it all came crashing down during a freak accident when she cracked her head trying to crowd surf – like an Egyptian. As fans rushed to her aid, a dazed and confused Vanessa was heard saying, “Close your eyes, give me your hand. Do you feel my heart beating? Am I only dreeeeeeaming?” …before passing out. Thankfully, she recovered from that near-death experience and is now our brilliant Account Director. Let’s hope she likes manic Mondays.
Research shows that one in every 80 men is obsessed with pugs, so for us to have two such men on staff is a stroke of considerable luck. Tony O’Halloran, Head of Strategic Planning, is one of them. The usual traits of a pug owner are all here in spades: hyper-intelligence, an eye for detail, excellent social skills, and the ability to see beauty in a face like a baboon’s fist.
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