Glass Tower is powered by the expertise of two of the city’s most respected communications professionals – Creative Director Douglas Maclean and PR and social marketing specialist Susi Maclean. Add a team of in-house and specialist consultants and the experience base is everything you could possibly want.
Douglas has worked in the advertising industry since the mid 1970s, with stints at several major agencies (including McCanns, Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB and J. Ilott) and has numerous awards to his name. His most recent role prior to joining Glass Tower was 12 years or so as Creative Director at Strategy Advertising and Design. He came in at #36 in Campaign Brief’s 2006/7 Hot 200 Australasian Creative Directors list.
Douglas is fascinated by the merging of the current communication fields, with PR mashing together with the advertising/design disciplines. To this end, he relishes the opportunity to work with Susi on new approaches to familiar problems, creating elegant and smart solutions to some of the challenges facing business today in a communication sense.
In 2007 he won the only Silver Clio awarding in Australasia for his work on the Giacommetti campaign for the Christchurch Art Gallery. He's been a Senior Judge at both the Axis and NZ BeST Design Award events and set up the SIAA for the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies.
Douglas has won a number of key industry awards, including:
- Silver & Bronze Clio
- A.W.A.R.D Silver Pencil (Australia)
- New York Type Directors' Club
- ADC (Art Directors Club of America) awards
- Axis awards
- The One Show
- M.A.P.D.A (Museums of Australia)
- S.I.A.A
- NZ Best Design Awards.
Susi’s primary area of interest is in assisting not for profit organisations to connect with the people that matter most to them - whether those people are staff, reporters, government stakeholders, clients, consumers or patients.
Her passion is for engagement-approaches to transforming the way organisations and people connect, and helping legacy organisations to better align with today’s market.
Susi has worked with some of New Zealand’s leading names in primary care, social services, disabilities and education over the past fifteen years.
Early in Susi’s career she worked in advertising and media fields, was Creative Director for two radio stations and both a behind-the-scenes and on-air journalist. This led to a highly successful stint, lasting for over 10 years, as one of NZ’s leading radio personalities, as part of the Radio Hauraki morning pirates (who rated second only to Paul Holmes on ZB) winning prestigious Mobil Radio Awards, and then on both the ZM network and C93, primarily as breakfast host.
Over the years, Susi’s interests have widened to embrace social marketing, new technologies and employee engagement - especially in the areas related to branding and customer experience.
She is a popular speaker/presenter and regularly runs seminars, workshops and industry events around today’s communication challenges.
Susi provides advice and media training to some of the city’s most high profile business people, as well as media management services to key local companies and organisations.
Susi has been the driving force behind Glass Tower since its beginnings in 1994 and continues to play a vital role in its day-to-day operation and future direction.
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