Pete Martin

Responsibilities:
Creative Direction, Commercials Directing, Selling Creative Work, Advertising & Brand Strategy, Concepts, Writing (short or very long!), Information Architecture, Agency Profile.

Achievements:
• Founding director of SMARTS Advertising in 1990 – one of the UK’s first integrated agencies.
• Only 3rd agency in UK to gain Investors in People.
• Selling agency to Incepta plc in 2000
• Former Executive Creative Director of The Gate in New York
• Working with stellar film talents like Oscar-nominated DoP Seamus McGarvey

Awards:
Under Pete’s creative direction, the agency has picked up:
• 24 effectiveness awards – inc. IPA Awards and Scotland’s Millennium Marketing Award
• 35 creative awards across all disciplines, advertising, design, online, DM, integrated – inc D&AD, EPICA, Roses etc.
• Specialist financial sector awards – Money Marketing, Financial Communications Society of America, UK B2B Awards etc.

Work:
• Won 3 largest pitches in our market last year: National Australia Bank Group, SSE, VoteScotland
• Long-term client relationships – worked for some major clients for over 10 years
• Re-branding of UK’s biggest passenger transport firm FirstGroup
• Global re-branding of AIMR to CFA

Side projects:
• Last year, personal film nominated for JPA Short Film Awards
• Took a playwriting course at the Traverse Theatre

Experience:
Commericals director for 12 years; an adman for almost 25 years.

Qualifications:
MA (Hons) English Language & Literature, St Andrews University, Scotland

Skills:
Indesign, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Wordpress, Microsoft Office etc.

Background:
Scottish with Irish roots, I’m the fourth kid in a family of six. With Scotland’s system of broad-based education, I’ve got Highers in maths, physics, chemistry as well as the humanities. While my degree is in English – and I specialised in modernism (Joyce, Beckett, Katherine Mansfield) and the Jacobeans – I also studied Psychology and Economics. So, I’m obsessed by information theory, effective communications and all sorts of ‘commercial creativity’. Also, for a creative type who likes science as well as art, I’m pretty comfortable with ‘hard subjects’ like technology, pharma, finance or ‘sensitive’ subjects in social policy.

Interests:
Writing, film-making, script-writing, football, martial arts, management, science. I optioned the film rights to ‘The Glamour Chase’ – the maverick life of Scottish pop star Billy Mackenzie – and pitched the project to most of the major studios… One day, maybe someone will think the story is as brilliantly tragi-comic as I do.

Super-power:
X-ray hindsight

Favourite Brands:
Apple, Penguin books, Tunnocks Caramel Logs, Nike 90 trainers.

Music:
Too many to mention… But have a big soft spot for Scottish pop – Associates, James Grant, Aztec Camera, Danny Wilson, Blue Nile, Simple Minds.

Movies:
It’s a Wonderful Life, Leon, Jerry Maguire (Show me the money!)

TV:
Cracked Actor (Bowie documentary made by Alan Yentob), Bleak House, Kitchen Nightmares

Books:
Ulysses, Norman McCaig, Damon Runyon

Quotes:
“Events, dear boy, events.”

Vice:
Impatience