Page 80 - AdNews Magazine Nov-Dec 2020

The Profile
Career Highlights
Jan 2010 - Dec 2010
Jan 2011 - Nov 2012
Nov 2012 - June 2015
2013
2014
June 2015 - Nov 2016
Feb 2014 - June 2015
2015
Nov 2016 – Nov 2018
Nov 2018 - current
digital planner
OMD Australia
digital account manager Ignite Media Brands
co-creation strategy manager Mindshare
Mindshare
Sydney Rising Star Award
National Cannes Young Lions winner
partner, associate director of invention studio Mindshare USA
chairperson Sydney NGEN committee
Festival of Media Asia Pacific Rising Star
on the flight and I looked up at where you usually see your flight number show up, and it said the AIME plane taking off,” Maggs tells AdNews. “That moment was by far and away the proudest I've felt in my career. I get chills thinking about it now. It was a beautiful moment.
“It's funny that the most challenging things you persevere and get through, when you find success on the other end, they automatically become the most rewarding.”
Maggs’s career, which spans more than a decade, started in Queensland, his home state. Born in Cairns to two generations of carpenters on his father’s side, the sports enthusiast found he had no real skill for handy work and turned to university as an alterative path. His love of sport led him to start a physiotherapy degree at the University of Queensland. However, Maggs quickly lost interest and switched to the Queensland University of Technology to study advertising and film after developing a passion for filmmaking when his father gave him a camera in high school.
“I loved being in the editing crew,” he says. “It was one of those things in school where I could just sit down for hours and hours and hours at a time and it was as if time didn't exist.
“I picked that up pretty quickly and really enjoyed it. It was the only thing outside of sports I was super passionate about at school. Coming out of school and trying to make that pivot at university, I was racking my brain as to what I wanted to do in the future, and I thought I may as well do something I actually really love and enjoy.”
Two years into his degree, Maggs’s career received a kickstart after a girl he was dating at the time connected him with her mother, the managing director of OMD Brisbane. Maggs began an internship at the media agency in 2010, walking in on his first day with a Mad Men idea of the industry and no real understanding of what a media agency does.
VP, director of strategy Initiative USA
global head of good, senior director of strategy Initiative Australia
(L-R) Jason Maggs during
his footy days, Jason Maggs’ first day of work in New York, Jason and Jasmine Maggs on their wedding day