Tom Hutton
Content creator & Customer Experience Designer
My Backstory.
Not a great start in art.
I left school with below average grades, a heap of bad attitude and a love for art, drama and playing bass guitar. I got sent off to work as a cowboy or ‘gaucho’ in Argentina before heading to art school and a career as a sculptor… but I wasn’t very good at it!
Somewhere along the way I took a different turn and ended up as a designer in a digital design agency in London building interactive videos and websites. Then in 1997 I decided to go backpacking around Australia. Well that was the plan. The trip started in Sydney, but I never left and have been working in digital and advertising agencies across Australia and Asia ever since.
Agency Experience.
Over the years I have been an Art Director, Copywriter and Creative Director responsible for creating compelling content and experiences that change consumer and business behaviour. I have worked for a wide range of brands, including Microsoft, Xbox, Google, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Nikon, Stanley Black & Decker, DeWalt, NSW Government, Australian Federal Government, Salesforce, Telstra, Westpac, Logitech, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Weight Watchers (ironically working on those last two at the same time!).
I have worked for large international communication groups like IPG, WPP, Y&R Brands and Dentsu at agencies like McCann-Erickson, BWM, George Patterson Bates and Gyro. For a few years I was a through-the-line Creative Director for McCann WorldGroup across the APAC region.
I was the first employee at Amnesia-Razorfish and I was a founding partner in Apparent Communications, one of Australia's largest independent customer experience agencies.
Today I work as a freelance writer and I am a senior copywriting consultant for Webprofits, a global independent performance marketing agency based in Sydney, although much of my work is for their clients in the US.
Action Sport & Youth.
Since 1995, I have been a freelance creative consultant for Extreme, an 'action, adventure and fun' youth brand based in Europe. Today Extreme runs a number of international destination and content activities, plus it engages an army of over 7 million Facebook fans with a broad range of content on its 'Unreel' Facebook page (facebook.com/Extreme).
mental wellbeing.
Over the years I have worked across a number of healthcare and wellbeing initiatives.
I started to see many similarities between the creative behavioural change work in marketing and the delivery of clinical behavioural change. So I studied psychotherapy and clinical hypnotherapy and started my own part-time practice called Headland Health where I work in one-to-one clinic sessions and specialise in helping blokes of all ages — kids, pre-teens, young adults and grumpy old men — to realise their wellbeing, performance and growth goals.
I use a bunch of techniques including hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, creative expression and counselling. Some of this stuff has been used effectively for thousands of years —not just for healing but also in combat (a long time ago) and sport (more recently) to ensure that warriors and athletes perform at their best!
I am also a surf mentor with Waves of Wellness.
What peers and clients say.
"Tom and I worked together building the early days of ChromeOS,
Android Enterprise, and multiple use cases and platforms for Google Cloud. We worked together completely remotely with me being based in San Francisco, and Tom in Sydney. It was a creative partnership that shaped much of Google's approach to the Education and Enterprise markets still active today. He is the creative partner that we all need: agile, pure empathy for the customer, and deeply strategic."
Nick King • Former Head of Global Marketing
Android and Chrome Enterprise at Google
"Tom's superpower is his ability to build teams that feel more like
family. His authenticity, humour and care builds trust and empathy
quickly. His creative smarts inspire and enable teams to develop and grow with a laser focus on team and business goals."
Jacquie Ford • Former Creative Operations Lead
Canva
"I had the pleasure of working closely with Tom for a number of years across a range of domestic, regional and global clients. Tom is a unique creative leader as he is at the same time strategically creative and creatively strategic. He understands the nuance, can interpret complex language into simple to understand messages. He leads by example and was able to bring his team along the journey, helping them grow and develop their skills while delivering strong commercial outcomes for our clients."
Phil Smith • CEO and Founder
Apparent Communications
"Tom Hutton was my first manager at my first design job. It was the late 90’s and I wasn’t a great designer, but I could draw which was surprisingly useful during the internet’s brief vector animation boom.
Over 20 years later, I still remember Tom’s big hearted guidance and encouragement. Not to mention the hilarious work environment he created. He also identified that I may’ve been a better writer than a designer, and after a crash course in advertising, I have never looked back. Tom understands what makes people tick and how to manage and motivate a team."
Neil Heymann • Founding Partner, Chief Creative Officer
Le Truc at Publicis Groupe, New York
"Tom helped me and others in our team understand how to develop our craft and also ensure we had the confidence to present in large client pitches and navigate the personalities of the mainstream and rather old school ATL creative teams. Although Tom himself was under immense pressure in this role he lost none of the qualities that made him one of the best leaders I’ve had the pleasure of working with, caring, supportive, driven, and always the first to lend a hand to grow other peoples careers. Above all the his sense of humour and quick wit helped take the pressure out of our day to day roles."
Steve Farkas • FORMER Experience Design Lead
Accenture. Liquid Studio Australia
"Tom has been a key mentor for our new business and has been a huge help in instilling confidence and direction. He has been helping us to win new business, to cost and schedule projects realistically, and, perhaps most importantly, helping us to define and refine our own brand and offering. He's an extremely personable guy with an
incredible aptitude to think quickly and creatively across a vast range of subjects. His generosity with his time and his ideas is truly amazing and both my business partner and I believe we could not have found a better mentor."