Nigel Lopez-McBean

Critical feedback is such a vital component of the creative journey. Don't fear it! I prefer an open and collaborative environment where clients, partners, and team members feel super comfortable sharing their insights and perspectives from the early stages of a project. Integrating feedback continuously rather than relying on a final ‘big reveal,’ I ensure creatively diverse viewpoints are incorporated.

Being based in Australia has significantly shaped my work as a creative strategist. I migrated here from the UK, and having multiple geographical and cultural perspectives has influenced my work. Australia’s fun mix of diversity, multiculturalism, and strategic position within the Asia-Pacific make it a unique cross-cultural and creative landscape I find incredibly inspiring. My work in other markets, such as the US, was only made possible by the experiences and perspectives I gained working here...and a forced understanding of timezones prepared me for remote work.

My quiet mantra is finding new, collaborative ways to make things happen involving great people, creative intuition, and insights. I'm equally comfortable building teams and being brought into existing teams. I've had a career that's spanned advertising, brand marketing, film and TV production, and tech startups across three continents, which has given me a deep love of multi-disciplinary environments. I've learned that everything converges at a certain point, and the rest is an exercise in active listening.

Critical. I've spent two years as a fractional leader in a content recommendation and audience insights startup. Working with data scientists and understanding the relationship between creative and audience at a technical level has informed my approach to audience research. They're more complex than ever, understanding this is a step to avoiding regressive stereotypes.

One of my ongoing projects is developing new consumer food and drink products with a brand and design studio. It's been a fantastic platform to test new approaches to audience engagement.

I'm a committed reader of newsletters, selective social media, and industry media across the design, creative, technology, food and entertainment industries. It's incredible how interconnected it all is. I trial a lot of technology to evolve my tech stack. I set quite a high bar for inclusion; I like to view the technologies critically, understand their context, and question their design and implementation, which also helps advise clients and teams; just because you can doesn't always mean you should.

My two influences are interconnected; the first is my brother Colin, aka Mr G, a house music producer and live artist. He's had an incredible culinary arts, fashion, and music career. Growing up around somebody who was so effortlessly multi-disciplinary affected me. I'm beginning to understand now that he's the most astute tastemaker I've ever met because of his background.

His ability to track trends, understand trends, dismiss trends, and have a cold eye on what's creatively exciting is kinda unique. My second influence is Art Spiegelman, the creator of Maus. It was a book my brother gave me when I was a kid and demanded I read. As a piece of raw storytelling, it was profound and still inspires me. It's storytelling of the most complex, challenging, and brilliant kind.

...and Jamaica, a beautiful creative madhouse with a ridiculously outsize influence on pop culture.

Great creativity is now built on collaboration. It's tough to work in isolation successfully. I've been lucky enough to see how creative is developed in different industries, which has informed my approach. I'm open-minded in my work, which tends to make things easy.

I'm British of Jamaican heritage, and annual summer family holidays in Jamaica via NYC were a form of visual communication that gave me the idea I could do something exciting and get paid for it. My first meaningful job was working in a bookshop during university, which led to my first gig at the BBC, both were educational early insights into commercial creativity.

I've led creative teams inside brands, built a content studio, and led a startup team and learnt creative development comes in many forms but usually requires the same balance of guidance, inspiration, freedom, and trust. A typical scenario is to recognize a team member's strengths; you can also identify their areas for growth and work collaboratively to bridge any gaps. That and never asking anyone do to anything you wouldn't be comfortable doing yourself.

On a personal level, I creatively assess and provide feedback on graduate-level screenplays for UCLA's MFA Screenwriting program which always feels a privilege. I love the work of new creators.