Nick Hunt, who recently joined Seattle independent Creature, has been on the account side of the advertising business for 15 years. But he revealed a secret about how he goes about his job: “All good account people are closet creatives.”
While content to leave the copywriting to others, Hunt, 42, has taken his own creative talents to Creature as a group account director, working with clients including Windstar Cruises and Oberto. Hunt also will “be the other half of the two-headed account monster as far as new business,” said the one half, Holly Petitjohn, Creature partner and director of client services. “He’s a good mind to have on our pitches.”
Hunt said Creature, which celebrates its third year this month, “is a highly creative, extremely entrepreneurial” agency that reminds him of that first job.
“Everyone has ownership in everything, [and is] working for the same goal,” he said of the 13-person shop. “It has that something extra, hard to quantify, but I know it when I see it. It’s got a little bit of the pixie dust in it.”
A native of Coventry, England, Hunt traveled after completing school and decided that he “didn’t want to go straight into the London ad scene,” he said. He then worked in marketing at AT&T Wireless in Seattle for a couple of years, before moving to Boston to work at Modernista! in 2001. Hunt, who is married with a 3-year-old daughter, returned to Seattle to work at Sedgwick Rd. in 2002, serving most recently as an account director there.
Hunt said Creature has to set its sights beyond regional clients to break out from a pack of creatively driven shops in the Northwest. “You have to be creative in everything that you do,” he said. “We’re looking at it more like we’re a national agency that just happens to be in Seattle.”
Hunt Takes AD Job At Creature
