David Nobay’s 30-year career in advertising has put him in the Creative Director’s hot-seat in Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco, Melbourne and Sydney.
His creative contributions to the industry are as mercurial as his infamously chaotic brain and reflect his personal mantra “I’m bored, what’s next?”:
In 2001, Archive Magazine ranked him amongst their top ten most published copywriters of the Millenium.
In 2003, he was promoted to the Worldwide Creative Board of Saatchi & Saatchi. Under his creative watch, Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney was crowned “The Australian Agency of the Decade”.
In 2005, Campaign Brief magazine ranked him the “No.1 most awarded Executive Creative Director in Australasia”.
In 2007, he was asked by David Droga to launch his first office outside New York. Droga5 Sydney officially opened its doors in 2008 and was named “Agency of the Year” by B&T Magazine in 2009. Over the next nine years, the agency led many of Australia’s most iconic brands, including VB Beer, Qantas, Woolworths, Telstra and Virgin.
In 2010, AdAge recognised him as the only Australian-based inclusion in their “Top 50 Creative Thinkers Worldwide”, alongside Lady Gaga and Johnny Ives.
In 2012, he wrote his first stage play, “Moving Parts” which was staged at Sydney’s prestigious NIDA Theatre, with Australia’s acting legend Colin Friels in the lead.
In 2013, he co-hosted Freemantle/Ch10’s primetime TV show “Recipe to Riches”, which takes unknown recipes and develops them into genuine supermarket brands.
In 2015, his first expressionist painting show “Soft Cages” was hosted at Sydney’s Maunsell Wickes gallery.
In 2016, ABC’s Art Channel hosted his poetry and film project “Artbreaks”; 8 original poems by Nobay, imagined by 8 of Australia’s most exciting new filmmakers.
In that same year, he was commissioned by Tony Lake, Global CEO of UNICEF to completely rebrand the entire organisation; notably the first global rebrand in its history. A year later FOR EVERY CHILD was launched at the UN General Assembly, by the Secretary General. The campaign continues to drive the brand in over 200 countries.
In 2017, Adnews named him amongst their “Top 20 Creative Thinkers in Australia”.
In 2018, he co-founded CreativeSpirit in New York, an NGO which seeks to find
employment in the creative industry for neuro-diverse talent (creativespirit-us.org) and just three years later, FAST COMPANY named CreativeSpirit as one of the best “world changing ideas” globally.
In 2019, his insane creation “DUNNY” was chosen by Sculptures by The Sea as their first fully immersive art installation in the exhibition’s 23-year history.
This year, alongside his co-founder Stephen Tate, he launched FAVOURITECHILD.STUDIO. A creative hub with a seemingly schizophrenic slate that reflects the duo’s combined history helping to shape big, transformative media ideas.
