As a consumer, an idea should stop you dead in your tracks, spin your head around and compel you to act in the best interest of the brand it represents. As a brand, that same idea often makes you sweat, challenges your constitution and tempts you to search for the escape hatch. Donivan’s job is to see to it that that idea is found, nurtured and executed in a way that delivers on all counts.

Donivan will tell you himself that his most important contribution to any creative process is to help identify the right insight, the right strategy, the right team, and then step back and let them run. He’s been doing it for more years than he can count, for clients as diverse as P&G, Humana, Ashland, Long John Silvers, Pork. The Other White Meat and literally dozens more.

As for his embarrassingly long list of the industry’s most prestigious, self-congratulatory awards – One Show, Addys, Obies and Effies, etc. – he has ‘em, he’s just not that obsessed with them.