who the hell does mark pool think he is?
He’s the curious bird who cannot be pigeonholed.
He’s the square peg in the round hole (or the round peg in the square recess. *)
He demurs when Nick Cage orders: “Put. The bunny. Back. In the box.”
*because there’s no such thing as a square hole
They say outsiders make the best artists. They see more with untainted eyes and trust the beat of untainted hearts. They’re uncorrupted by groupthink, norms or the status quo. And they’re often restless, rarely comfortable.
I’ve always been an outsider. I’m a multi-disciplinary creative with an unusual blend of skills across a broad range of disciplines – branding, marketing, television & film, design, fashion, PR & communications. I love collaborating and am a highly versatile thought partner.
the olden days
I grew up and went to university in Johannesburg, South Africa. After completing a Bachelor of Commerce I went to drama school part-time while doing a post-graduate legal degree. The creative side trumped the degrees, so much so that I didn’t attend my graduation from law school. I went to work as a writer and creative in the worlds of television, film and branding.
golden days
Then I became the creative outsider within a global multinational. An ex-client (EVP Corporate Affairs) hired me to join him at AngloGold Ashanti, one of the world’s biggest gold mining companies. I managed the global rebranding and relaunching of the company before moving to the marketing department. There I spent years creating groundbreaking and award-winning work as Creative Director of AuDITIONS, a gold couture brand I created to promote cutting-edge gold design around the world. I was instrumental in positioning and marketing AngloGold Ashanti as the only mining company to champion gold in all its gleaming splendour – as so much more than a mere commodity. I’m proud of the sheer range of brand creativity I was able to bring to a mining company, which truly set it apart from its peers.
the perspiring novelist
Next I moved to London to pursue my passion for writing. I wrote two novels. Our Stone is an ambitious book that tells the epic tale of a remarkable child who becomes a new messiah for today’s battered and divided world. The book was optioned and in development with Strange Charm, a London-based film company. My first novel Dining at the Table of Ludicrous Good Fortune is a satire that examines power, wealth and media-manipulation in the wild years before the 2008 market crash. Succession meets Wolf of Wall Street, this novel has generated adaptation interest in the film and advertising worlds. In lockdown I created and wrote a few instalments of School of Pool, a series of short books that address common mental health challenges in a novel way.
tv & film - writing for antsy eyeballs
How many people today know that a novel is more than shelf decoration or (in the case of War & Peace) a doorstop? And of the cognoscenti, how many have the retained the attention span to actually read one? It took a while for the bitter truth to sink its fangs into me, but comprehensively mauled I was, and so time for a shift into that collection of gifs and reels that that old people call television and film.
On screenwriting I collaborate with my dear old friend John Harris Dunning, a smashing graphic novel and comic writer. We’re represented by Independent Talent (Sarah Williams), and our manager in LA is Grace Ledding of Agile Entertainment. John and I learned to write together at university, and in the last few years we’ve created a dozen original TV concepts and seven pilot scripts across a variety of genres – psychological drama, science-fiction, comedy, animation, and literary adaptations. In short, buckets of big, juicy, highly original ideas and expansive world building. Our sci-fi TV show Analogue Sunset was in development with Constantin Film in Los Angeles, and our psychological drama show My Life as a Mask was optioned by Ruby Rock productions in London. New Sparta Productions optioned our film project Summer Shadows, an adaptation of one of John’s comics.
So what would you like to do with me ? Check out my offering:
Or lurch straight to my work as: