Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Nicholas McLean has been running communication strategy operations across the world since 1985. He has worked in such diverse markets as London, Oslo, Stockholm, Tokyo and New York in a range of high-level media, interactive, brand planning and creative positions.

During the start of his career in London, Nicholas was one of the Founding Directors of PhD and worked closely with many now legendary creative agencies including WCRS, Chiat Day, St. Luke’s, Bainsfair Sharkey Trott and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe.

After stints living and working in Stockholm and Oslo from 1994 onwards, a time that brought him into close contact with many of the innovative Scandinavian companies involved with the start of the online revolution, Nicholas was headhunted in 1999 to become Managing Partner of TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York. Nicholas put all that he had learnt about communications into the development of a new marketing discipline called Connections Planning and was soon promoted to TBWA\Worldwide and began working closely with the new CEO Jean Marie Dru to lead a global initiative called CONNECT\ONS. Nicholas went on to oversee the creation of a network of companies around the world named TBWA\CONNECT (offices were established in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Munich, Johannesburg and Sydney).

Whilst remaining responsible for the further development of CONNECT\ONS for TBWA\Worldwide, in early 2004 Nicholas was put in charge of the global Productivity and Innovation of one of Omnicom’s largest clients, the Japanese car brand Nissan. Based in Tokyo at TBWA\Hakuhodo, Nicholas oversaw the communication planning for Nissan’s marketing activity across the world and effectively put CONNECT\ONS into practice on a day-to-day basis.

At the end of 2004, Nicholas decided to leave TBWA in order to further develop his own form of communication planning by setting up his own company. In early 2005 as CEO and Co-Partner, he launched Strobe together with Jonas Hallberg as Creative Director and Co-Partner. Strobe was a Concept Company that created, designed and managed multi-dimensional brand/consumer experiences. These experiences were mutually beneficial to both marketing clients (by helping them achieve their marketing and business objectives) and consumers (by delivering added value experiences beneficial to their lives). Strobe provided an end-to-end service for clients incorporating ideation & design, logistical development, negotiation and executive production.

Although based in Stockholm, Sweden, Strobe was commissioned to create concepts for global brands based all over the world. Projects in 2005 included creating and producing concepts for the global marketing headquarters of Adidas in Amsterdam, BMW in Munich, Motorola in Chicago and Absolut in Stockholm.

Following the completion of several major projects for clients, Nicholas eventually decided to start creating innovative concepts for himself rather than for marketing clients. In November 2006, The Carbon Foundation was established as the holding company for a number of diverse ventures that so far include lifeiscarbon® (Publishing), carbonislife® (Retail), carbonphotography® (Photography) and ordinaryeverday® (Fashion).