NEW ZEALAND // Damon opened The Monkeys Aotearoa, as part of Accenture Song New Zealand, in 2021. He is a founder and the Chief Creative Officer.

Before that he was Regional Chief Creative Officer for DDB (New Zealand and Australia). He was also Chief Creative Officer of DDB New Zealand where he won 20 Agency of the Year titles, including DDB New Zealand being named creative agency of the year in Australia. Before this he was Executive Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia and TBWA Hunt Lascaris, which was voted South African agency of the decade in 2010. He has worked on global brands such as BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Heineken, Visa, Cadbury, McDonalds and the FIFA World Cup campaign for Adidas in South Africa.

Damon has collected awards at some of the most prestigious international advertising festival shows, receiving 54 D&AD Pencils – including two very rare Black D&AD Pencils (The Zimbabwean and Samsung I-Test) and 7 yellow D&AD Pencils. He has also judged D&AD three times. In 2022 he was ranked in the top twenty Chief Creative Officers globally by D&AD. He’s won over 70 Cannes Lions, including the Grand Prix and 10 Gold Lions including a Titanium and Innovation Lion, two Grand Clio, 11 One Show Gold Pencils, and the first ever ADC Black Cube ever awarded.

He is most known for his “Trillion Dollar” bill campaign for The Zimbabwean and Penny the Pirate for OPSM which have won over 200 international awards between them. Penny the Pirate was judged to be the most effective campaign in the world by the WARC 100 last year. The Zimbabwean is in the permanent collection of the British Museum.

He has been recognised as one of the top 10 Executive Creative Directors in the world by both Creativity Magazine and the Big Won Report on multiple occasions. In 2011, Finance Week awarded him Achiever of Year in South Africa. He’s had a variety of short stories published as well as articles for various magazines and writes a blog called damonsbrain.com. It is stuff he thinks about instead of world domination.

Damon also went to sixteen schools as a child and was only expelled twice. He received no reward for this achievement. This still bugs him.