As he departs McCann’s Global Creative Community to join By The Network as creative chair, John Mescall shares the story of his life and career so far. John Mescall on his career Born in Australia, Mescall was always the type of kid who loved daydreaming, coming up with stories and reading but in a weird twist found himself studying economics at university instead of pursuing a more creative subject. Initially, he had considered advertising, but his parents didn’t quite believe it was a real job.
The realization soon hit that he just wasn’t good enough at math to be an economist, but there was one piece of information he took away from the course that stuck with him: most purchasing decisions that people make are based on emotion, not logic. Humans can be a little irrational, after all. “I had this sort of mini-crisis, where it was like, Oh, my God, you know, what am I going to do,” he recalls.
“And then I remembered advertising. So I kind of went back to that. I hadn't studied it, I just started to write to agencies trying to get a gig.
It's not a great way to do it. I didn't have a book or anything. I came into it sideways and it took me a while to get established.
” Mescall began his career as a writer at a small B2B agency in Melbourne, where he stayed for two years before moving to JWT. He was partnered with an art director and says that back then, junior creatives even had their own offices – which might blow people’s minds nowadays. “It was fun becau.