Dropped out of school at age 9, left home at 15, and fired by McDonald’s a year later. If failure is the route to success, Will Rust got off to a good start.
After discovering his true passion—anthropology and creativity—he embarked on a 25-year career in the advertising industry, starting as a designer and culminating in a 15-year tenure at Ogilvy & Mather as ECD in London, Prague, Kyiv, Budapest, Dubai, and sunny Copenhagen.
Every agency he led in those markets topped their national creative rankings and won multiple "Agency of the Year" titles. He also helped Ogilvy Ukraine become the "Most Effective Agency in Europe," according to the 2012 Effie Global Index.
He has won accolades at every major creative award show, including Cannes, D&AD, Clio, Red Dot, and One Show, for clients as diverse as NASA, Lenovo, Commerzbank, Tuborg, Intersport, SABMiller, Nestlé, and UNHCR.
In January 2019 he took the helm at Pandora's HQ as Global Director of Brand Design, redesigning their logo, creating a bespoke original typeface and revamping their global brand visual identity. His team fed over 100 markets with original design and creative for the legendary Danish brand.
After a brief period consulting for brands and agencies as both a creative and strategist, he accepted the Head of Brand role at Nordic unicorn fintech Lunar. It was a wild, record-breaking ride that took Lunar from low-key influencer endorsements to a complete brand strategy overhaul, a redesign, and the acquisition of Will Ferrell as both a shareholder and the face of a multi-million-pound advertising campaign. Before Will joined, Lunar had 200,000 customers; when he left, they had over 500,000 and had achieved unicorn status, growing in value from roughly 500 million to over 2.3 billion USD. The campaign with Will Ferrell was awarded "Best Celebrity Ad of 2022" by AdAge.
In late 2022, he joined Edisen, a creative technology company. By merging human creativity with artificial intelligence—channelled through their proprietary platform—Edisen helps brands and media companies create better content, with clients such as Polestar, Netflix, Paramount, PBS, Lego, FIFA, and Rémy Cointreau, to name a few. Will helps develop both creative campaigns and creative content technology, managing collaboration between creative teams, engineers, and third-party integrations.
His abilities segue creativity, anthropology, and behavioural science, as he believes that the best ideas come from a deep understanding of the human psyche combined with playful, surprising creativity that sparks emotions and changes behaviour.
He also believes that creative people must think like children to be great. And if you don’t agree with that, then you’re a big, smelly elephant.