Liam was born and raised in Brisbane but escaped the oppressive heat to live in London and Hong Kong (and then found it again in Guam) for seven years.

Now back in his hometown, he carries with him the secrets of a journey well-travelled—from paying his way through uni as a roadie for ska band The Furious Turtles, to winning Australian and international advertising and production copywriting awards throughout his career.

We’re sure we can thank his time on the road—it's classified but imaginably riddled with life-altering stories—for the effortless creativity he brings day to day. Second to that, maybe also his time at industry-renowned AWARD School.

Speaking of formative experiences, Liam’s gruff exterior was carefully constructed back in his boarding school days, when he was an easy target as the only soft city kid among a sea of tough country kids.

He quickly discovered that no amount of skiing holidays or golfing hole-in-ones (current tally: zero from 50,000 attempts) could win the respect of teenage bogans. A lesson in humility for Liam, perhaps—we’ve all been there at some point.

Despite his otherwise bourgeois-sounding life where the (golfing) green is grassier, Liam actually knows all about the importance of sacrifice.

After all, he cooks his famous garlic prawns every year for his family Christmas (and last year for the NWO Christmas) despite his drastic, ironic and tragic crustacean allergy. When he defeats the prawns, they defeat him right back.

You can actually cook the dish yourself following his not-so-secret recipe here. It’s delicious—you can’t take Liam’s word for it, of course, but you can take ours.

He has cooking all locked down, but he’ll be the first to tell you cleaning isn’t his area of expertise. We can’t have everything. No reason to fret, though—isn’t that what kids are for? And he’s got four of them, so he’s very good at delegating.

A of couple residents in his household live it lush and chore-free, though: his 50kg Irish Wolfhound, Luna, and his 8kg Cavoodle, Rusty. In fact, they’ve delegated to Liam the chore of walking them every morning.

Those gorgeous dogs are part of what we love about Liam, along with his dry sense of humour, his endless creative expertise and his penchant for telling a good story—whether it’s through an ad script, or just a weekend anecdote.

She makes a splash in the NWO studio, but the real party starts when Kimi gets home.

With a glass of natural wine in hand, she relaxes to the sweet symphony of her sewing machine and the Real Housewives of wherever. She’ll proudly tell you she’s seen every episode.

In her heart, she’s a rich housewife. But in her clever brain, she’s an ambitious, talented entrepreneur.

As a side hustle, she sews and sells custom leather bags, purses and earrings. She stocks them at Forge Forward in Fortitude Valley and the Home of the Arts in the Gold Coast (so go check ‘em out).

The biz was even featured in Frankie Magazine—who absolutely frothed over her two-toned, gold snake tote bag.

The next enterprise ambition on Kimi’s list is a doggy day-care. She lives and breathes for animals of all kinds.

She says could fall in love with an earthworm, although she’d probably feed it to her budgies if they asked her to. Kimi is loyal to Patsy and Tina before anything else.

Named after Patsy Cline and Tina Arena, her babies represent just a smidge of Kimi’s music taste, which she describes as ‘dad music’.

To stick with the household theme, Kimi’s partner Levi decided to pursue a career as a drummer, composer and music mix engineer. Sometimes he sings backup to Kimi’s karaoke rendition of Private Dancer.

Kimi’s custom illustration is one of the things that make our work really special. She’s an amazing problem solver and collaborator, and her favourite part of the job is illustrating video storyboards that our animators bring to life.

Rather than ‘designer’, Kimi’s most well-known around the office as ‘Lady President of the Social Committee’. She makes sure we have cake and sparkling wine on birthdays, takeout lunch on Fridays and the trendiest Christmas venue booked by September every year.

NWO’s social scene would truly be lost without Kimi.

There’s so much more to Marnie than just her role at NWO.

To start with, Marnie’s our personal photographer for many of our staff headshots. It’s an equal trade because we let her put her four years of art school to good use—never mind that she already does that with her side hustle photography business.

Actually, there are many ways art school shaped her into the artist she is today. It taught her that there’s art in absolutely everything. It’s where she discovered wine. And for her Honours project, she explored how the innocence of childlike expression unlocks free creativity—a sentiment that inspired her ‘teenage’ rap band, Origami Girls. Their music video for hit single 'Rapp' is one of our all-time favourites.

But two-and-a-half years ago, Alma took over the role of childlike expression—and he’s got it down pat. Marnie says her toddler runs her world and is the centre of her purpose. As far as bosses go, he’s a pretty cute one.

If Alma is Marnie’s boss, Mark is her partner in crime. It was love at first sight when they rocked up to their first date eight years ago and discovered they both owned convertibles. The adventurous pair climbed more than 4km above sea level on Manaslu for Marnie’s 30th—just the next step up from her 18th birthday skydiving trip.

Of all the musical talent we have rocking here at NWO, Marnie’s probably takes the cake.

It all started with a pair of drumsticks, dreams of an all-girl band and a healthy crush on Zac Hanson. In high school, Marnie fantasised about opening for Zac on tour before riding off into the moonlight with him.

But the reality was a little less dreamy and a whole lot louder: a decade spent playing for an improvised noise band in warehouses and DIY festivals. And improvised noise was only the beginning of her music career.

Now, Marnie’s checked off all the genres: from emo and garage to bubble gum rock. In the spare time she can’t possibly have, she’s captured every era of her music over the past decade through her video production business, Bare Pictures.

Beyond the creative vision we see in her music videos, Marnie has extensive experience producing TVCs for big biz dogs like the NRL, Samsung and Australian Ballet.

Marnie’s blue-sky ideas and energetic enthusiasm for our projects challenge the rest of us to do and be better—and we just love her for it.

It’s clear to us that William was custom-built for his role as account manager (business growth), but there’s a lot more to him than WIP reports and BD timelines.

Like his first love: music.

From building music festival sets for global icons like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande—good mates of his, apparently—to running his own music biz where he managed local artists, William is what we would call ‘the artsy type’.

But despite his natural talents on guitar and piano, rumour has it he can’t even read sheet music. Didn’t bode well for the paperwork. Maybe that’s why he swapped his Yamaha keyboard for a wireless Apple one.

And so, music’s loss became advertising’s gain.

William’s young looks belie a wealth of industry experience. While he co-ran a creative agency, he stocked his blazer sleeves with some tricks that have majorly delighted us at NWO.

In return for choccy treats during our fortnightly client services meeting, William uses his top-notch strategy brain to challenge our discovery process and contribute invaluable insight into our projects.

He won’t compromise on meeting his clients’ deadlines—the guy is dedicated, what can we say? But we hear he’s actually pretty flexible on the balance beam, thanks to years of gymnastics training.

His impressive sense of balance comes in handy every now and then when he’s across the globe shredding the ski slopes (his happy place, if the cheesy photographed grins are any indication).

When he started with us, we immediately got him on the tools. And by the tools, we obviously mean the coffee machine. Lately, we’ve been lost without an office barista, so he couldn’t have joined us at a better time.

Strategy and marketing have always come naturally to Greg. He is both fluent in ‘marketing speak’ and impressively able to communicate with non-marketing natives. But there’s much more to uncover beyond his business acumen.

Greg’s our resident Kiwi, bringing with him stories of the beautiful Aotearoa landscape and all the silly adrenaline pursuits that come with it—like his (potentially mid-life crisis-inspired) 50th birthday skydiving adventure.

The thrill seeking continued beyond New Zealand. His move to Australia was bracketed by swims with whale sharks in Mexico, shivery fishing in the Arctic Circle and months of backpacking through the Middle East. Although, he hasn’t yet made his way to India, which is rich with his family history—but it’s on the bucket list.

Greg’s family is his world. While Greg is a natural leader in the workplace, he’s married to a Leo (his wife Jo), who was destined to wear the proverbial pants in their household. He’s immensely proud of his son, Daniel, who inherited Greg’s football stardom and carries the torch since Greg’s body decided his glory days are long over. Greg is now coach to Daniel, to cope with his retirement from playing football and tennis. His golf glory days are still alive and well.

Greg is a fan of many thought-provoking quotes, such as: “hope is not a strategy”, “good is the enemy of great” and “hot chips taste better when they belong to someone else”. His seagull tendencies make lunch with Greg a high-stakes experience.

A big believer that humour can lighten even the most challenging of situations, Greg is always earning laughs around the office—making him the perfect new addition to the team.

Tim joined the NWO team last year and since then we have unearthed a plethora of interesting snippets about the life of Tim. Now it’s time to share that with the outside world.

For example, although born in Brisbane, Tim grew up on the island of Borneo in Malaysia before moving back to Brisbane at age 16 and attending boarding school. Sorry, but all boarding school stories remain classified.

With that cultural background, Tim is fortunate enough to speak three languages—English, Bahasa Melayu and Hakka, a Chinese dialect. Actually, he speaks a few Chinese dialects so calling Tim trilingual might actually be selling him short.

When he was younger, he was quite the tennis player and travelled extensively around south-east Asia for tournaments. Luckily for Rafa and Roger, he decided to swap the racquet for a MacBook and pursued his career in advertising.

Regrets, he’s had a few. Like being a guinea pig in clinical trials in exchange for a few bucks. Or the free tattoo of a hotel safe code he got as a dare. Many expensive laser sessions later, it turns out it wasn’t a ‘free’ tattoo at all.

He has been on road trips around Iceland in winter, adds salt to Coke, is a mad Manchester United fan and a former cover band lead singer. He really rocks it on karaoke nights.

Despite all these interesting tidbits, Tim is most well-known for his sneaker collection, admitting to ownership of more than 100 pairs. But we suspect the number is way higher. Rarely a week goes by at NWO HQ without a couple of shoe-box-sized deliveries arriving for Mr Kho.

Tim is happily married (well, he’s happy at least) and can sniff a good lunch from five desks away. As his clients will attest, Tim is full of energy and curiosity and that makes him a great member of the NWO family.