We’re at the start line and we’re so happy to be here!
Like any good game, there's been a lot of prep that has gone into getting Play Creative off the ground.
Play Creative started pretty organically really. If you haven’t already guessed yet, Dan and I are not only business partners, but we’re also partners in life too! Pretty early on in the relationship we would find ourselves having in-depth discussions on athlete communications and media, finding we had two unique but complimentary perspectives on the topic.
Dan comes from the athlete side, as a New Zealand High Performance BMX athlete. Dan was the New Zealand reserve for the London 2012 Olympics, and finished 10th at the 2013 BMX World Championships – so he’s been involved with high performance sport for some time. During his career he’s managed his own social media and communications, and has built up quite the following over the past few years. Dan’s passion for producing his own short video edits of his riding has lead him to study a Bachelor of Media and Creative Technologies at Waikato University, which he’s completing part time which allows him to continue competing.
I come from a strong sporting background as well, having competed to a high level in Equestrian Eventing, however my Bachelor of Communications degree and experience working within NZ sporting organisations gives a different perspective. I’ve worked as the Marketing manager for the Avantidrome in Cambridge, and then as the New Zealand Eventing Sport Manager. I LOVE communications, particularly social media, and have always fallen into an advisory role for our athlete friends, offering ideas on creative communications.
I always joke that I’m the only one who’s NOT an athlete, as I seem to always be surrounded by them! My sister (Samantha Felton) is a very successful Equestrian eventer, her partner (Brayden Lissington) is a hugely successful footsal player – such a power couple, I know! We also happen to live with 5 New Zealand Rowers, 3 of which attended the Rio Olympics. So yea, it’s safe to say we’re surrounded by sport 24/7!
We began doing little projects for friends and family, whether it be logos, videos or photos. We quickly realised we really enjoyed working together on these projects, and that our ability to understand where other small business/brand owners needs made us really good at what we did.
Then we made the biggest investment of our lives so far and bought a camera, a.k.a 'our child'.
So here we are… Starting our own creative agency! We’ve been working with a bunch of clients for the past few months so we put our own branding on the side line for a wee while, but we’ve got our act together and have made it to the launch.
We can’t wait to see how this all plays out. Stay tuned for our next move. (…see what we did there?)