Tom Curtis

If 23 years at the WPP agency weren’t enough, Tom accidentally gained a few hundred thousand followers on Instagram by doing the very simple thing of imagining a world in which the things kids draw are real. And then he had to keep it up.

Presentation Title 

Instagram Case Study: "8 and a half things marketers probably won’t do having heard this talk about 'brilliant ways to make social media work' for them, but almost certainly should. (You won’t believe number 7.)"

Tom is the dad behind the Instagram account @thingsihavedrawn, so if you’ve not heard of him, you’ve probably seen his pictures. And if you haven’t seen his pictures, perhaps you’ve seen some dodgy AI-generated knockoffs. And if you haven’t seen those either, don’t worry – he’ll definitely show you some.

But "Things I Have Drawn" isn’t Tom’s day job. Actually, he’s the Executive Creative Director at EssenceMediacom, one of the world’s largest communication agencies. And as a weird mash-up of Insta-creator and big agency exec, he’s got a few things to say about how to make social media advertising better. About 8 and a half of them, in fact.