David Nobay is leaving the agency he founded, Marcel Sydney, to launch a new venture, Imperfect Circle, with Fin Design & Effects.
Nobay led the establishment of Publicis-owned Marcel in Australia in November 2015, bringing Tiger Beer as a foundation client, after Droga5 Sydney closed. Nobay had become creative chairman of Droga5 after joining in November 2007. Prior to that, he was executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi for five and a half years. In 2018, Tiger Beer announced it would be transferring its account within the Publicis Groupe from Sydney to Singapore.
Nick Law, chief creative officer of Publicis Groupe commented, “Nobby’s a great bloke, who has consistently created great work. Amazingly, after all the years I’ve known him, he’s managed to shed a ton of weight without losing his infamous talent and energy. I look forward to buying him a Perrier somewhere in the world as he continues his extraordinary career.”
Nobay added, “Like most of us, I still can’t claim to predict what the future looks like for advertising. But I’m pretty sure of what it doesn’t. It’s not rigid; not locked into geography or channel. To thrive again, it has to be more gymnastic. None of which is exactly rocket-science.”
The result is what Nobay describes as a Creative Consultancy model, designed to facilitate genuinely collaborative projects – primarily in Arts and Media. Nobay will become partner and creative director across Imperfect Circle’s five offices from March 1.
Over the last decade, Nobay has become increasingly known for his artistic forays outside traditional advertising, including writing his first stage play Moving Parts, directed for NIDA by Steve Rogers in 2012, as well as his painting exhibitions and, more recently, the project, Artbreaks, created for the ABC Arts Channel and built around his original poetry by Australian directors, including Warwick Thornton.
He coined the new venture, MyFavouriteChild, late last year and was on the hunt for partners, when a chance meeting over Christmas with Fin founder, Emma Daines, redirected the conversation.
Daines explained, “Nobby and I have collaborated on film projects for years. He’s great fun to work with and we share an obsession with craft. For some time, I’ve been musing about bringing in a Creative Partner to help Fin re-imagine a stand-alone creative group to work across our current offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Shanghai, as well as our upcoming offices in Singapore and LA. We wanted it focused on immersive technology, but with a very different creative slant. As soon as we started talking to Nobby, we knew we had found our partner.”
The name Imperfect Circle alludes to the new creative company’s focus on filling its tech-driven creations with a transparently human touch. Fin has also taken an equity stake in Nobay’s MyFavouriteChild consultancy.
Cover image: David Nobay & Emma Daines
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