12 Feb 2013
Staff Writer
Tim Cato / Senior Staff Writer
Many words describe Graham Douglas: identical twin, creative director, UNT alumnus, winner of the 2012 Cannes Grand Prix for Good award, and most recently, a member of the Forbes 30 under 30 club.
Douglas, a 2005 UNT summa cum laude graduate, was a member of the Marketing and Advertising list when the 2013 Forbes 30 under 30 was released on Jan. 23.
“It’s a huge honor,” Douglas said. “Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are on that list. It’s an honor to be on the same piece of paper with those people, much less be mentioned in the same sentence.”
Forbes had a method in selection candidates that Douglas was able to qualify, said Jennifer Rooney, editor of the Forbes chief marketing officer network.
“Our marching orders are to find and identify 30 people under age 30 who are really disrupting their industries doing incredibly innovative work and are really upending the way business is done in their selective categories,” Rooney said. “Graham is definitely doing that.”
Working for an independent advertising firm called Droga5 for the past two and a half years, Douglas’ title of creative director embodies many activities.
“Creative director can mean a lot depending on where you’re at, but in advertising it means I wear a lot of hats,” Douglas said.
Douglas has had his hand in plenty of campaigns. He assisted the in United Nation Children’s Fund’s Tap Project, the rebranding of Prudential Insurance, and several advertisement campaigns for Boost Mobile, Adidas, Activision/Tony Hawk and Sony.
In addition to making the Forbes list, Graham was named one of the “World’s 50 Most Creative People” by Creativity and was recognized with the Cannes award for his most personal project, “Help I Want to Save a Life.”
For the project, Douglas partnered with Help Remedies Inc. bandages and the National Marrow Registry to create the “Help I cut myself & want to save a life” bandages. Douglas’ twin brother Britton was diagnosed with leukemia, but survived after receiving a life-saving bone marrow transplant.
Although his brother found a donor, many of the patients do not because the registry is underpopulated.
Douglas’ idea was to combine a marrow registry kit inside of the Help bandages box to make registering convenient. This way, an already bleeding user can swab blood and send in a pre-paid envelope to the registry.
Interim chair of the Department of Strategic Communications Sheri Broyles taught Douglas in several classes and attributes some of his success to his UNT education.
“There should be confidence in that, that if you get through these classes you can conquer the world,” Broyles said. “And Graham has. I’m very proud of him. I feel like a proud mom.”
