Andy Fackrell

After starting my career in Wellington, a new job has generally meant a new continent. From Sydney to Singapore, Portland, Amsterdam, Auckland, Los Angeles. Now, totally disoriented, I’m splitting my time between Sydney and Amsterdam.

Mackay King, a fiesty independent, was my first agency, before moving to others of that ilk; Connaghan and May in Sydney, then Batey Ads in Singapore. After five rewarding years, I caught a break and found myself at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland.

My first two major Nike ideas were groundbreakers in alternative and digital media; a live-to-air training campaign - 120 bespoke ads - for Latin America then the first ever content campaign to continue a narrative online, whatever.com.

Next came the hugely awarded Nike 'Play' campaign, featuring Tag, Shaderunning, Tailgating. Shot by the great Frank Budgen.

Finally at W+K, a retro funk basketball campaign; from a reimagined documentary of a 70's street legend to naming and designing our own make-believe ABA team, The Roswell Rayguns - later to become an actual Nike SB line - to a Soul Train homage starring Snoop Dogg and Parliament Funkadelic.

My next stop, for nearly a decade, was at 180amsterdam co-running the creative department - dubbed by someone nice "The Kings of Content." Our Impossible is Nothing moment; third most awarded agency at Cannes in just our second year for our category changing adidas work. The Backpacker Agency became a boutique by winning Sony and launching make.believe. On the back of that win, we opened our 180LA office.

Basketball has been my muse. It started when I was seven years old and 10,000 missed layups later, I'm still hooked. One of my more meaningful moments was making The Boroughs campaign back in New Zealand, while running DDB Auckland. As well as helming a documentary series, a good chunk of the budget went on building five high-tech street courts, for a town that had none. Winning awards for all of DDB's deep roster of clients, after two years I moved home to Sydney and took a role as Asia Pacific Regional CD for DDB.

In 2016, I sneaked in a sabbatical year to write and illustrate a children's book about endangered animal collectives, before leaping the Pacific, again, to R/GA’s Hustle in Los Angeles. Reunited with Nike, I produced the Kyrie 4 film 'Find Your Groove' and launched the Twitter campaign 'See Every Side.'

In April, I decided to go it alone. Under the name Dog Beach, I released my first project in October; an anti-poaching film for Over&AboveAfrica. I’m based back in Amsterdam. For now.

My work has had a fair bit of award recognition. Nike Tag, a 2002 Cannes Grand Prix winner, still gets industry recognition (Adweek recently rated it one of the best 24 ads of the last 15 years) and most of what you see on the portfolio page has been recognized in the two shows I care about most, Cannes and D&AD.
www.andyfackrell.com