I like it. Leave it with me.

At the start of my professional career, I found myself working at a startup called State, run by Alex Assaily, previously the co-founder of Jawbone. Through a series of random events, I'd landed at State and ended up working with an experienced advertising copywriter called William Fowler. I didn't understand the incentives for working in startups back then, and I was being paid a measly day rate to work on a product that I wasn't in love with. My dream at the time was to be an Art Director in advertising, and to try and make that a reality; I'd come up with ideas for all kinds of things.

One day after work, I sat down with Will, and we discussed some of my ideas. He felt one chair concept I had for Coke was particularly good. It wasn't even advertising, but he recommended I reach out to Graham Fink, the Global Creative Chief of Ogilvy, who had Coke as a client.

The year prior, Graham had taken the work of a young student and won every advertising award imaginable. The thought was that I could be the second. So I cold emailed him. Graham replied quickly, saying he liked my idea and agreed to meet me the next time he was in London.

A few weeks later, I was en route to the meeting, and a cancelled train had me running late. I frantically jumped into a black cab and told the driver the hotel's name. Oooh Fancy! He said. Is it? I replied. I had no idea. That's the swankiest hotel in London, he informed me. My palms began to sweat.

When I frantically bumbled into the hotel lobby, about 15 minutes late, I had to briefly convince the receptionist that I wasn't a lunatic before descending an impractically small spiral staircase into a dimly lit bar/seating area, where, in the middle of the empty room, Graham sat, leg cocked, plucking at olives with a toothpick, which I considered to be posh at the time and had never eaten.

I slumped down in front of him, slightly dishevelled, and began pulling out plastic models I'd made from coke bottles. I had a few other ideas, but I'd come primarily to sell my coke chair idea.

I'll never forget what he said to me that day. 'This is probably the one opportunity you will ever have to sit with me, and you've brought one idea'. He was right. Thankfully, he liked my hustle and agreed to send me briefs to work on, unpaid, of course!

A few weeks later, I'd landed an internship Art Director role at AKQA by piggybacking off an introduction Will had also introduced me to. When I finished working at around 8 or 9 pm I would stay at the office for another two to three hours a night, studying D&AD annuals and churning out ideas for Gramham on what could only be considered the shittest briefs I've ever worked on.

He was the global creative chief based in Shanghai, so all the briefs were for an Asian market that I didn't fully understand. I sat in the office at 11 pm watching commercials for Pulpy Orange Juice in Chinese and trying to figure out what the hell was going on or what I would do instead. Every idea I sent to Graham came back the same way... No good; keep trying.

One night, I was still at the office at 1 am. I'd decided enough was enough for the briefs Graham was sending me, so I decided to have another crack at coming up with a coke idea.

To inspire myself, I placed an empty coke can from the trash on the table in front of me. It was late in the year, and the large floor-to-ceiling glass windows revealed the cold winter of London outside. I began to contemplate returning home over Christmas, and I was just about to leave the office when the idea for Coke Santa hit me.

I knew I was onto something, so I roughly compiled the idea and emailed it to Graham. He replied instantly. I like it, leave it with me.

A week later, I got an email from Graham. 'They like it, but they are worried about some of the connotations of Santa being 'large' and too closely linking that to Coke. So they won't let us run it worldwide, but I will run it on the biggest billboard I can find. Which happens to be a 35-meter high billboard in the centre of downtown Manila.' That works for me, I replied. A few months later, just as my internship at AKQA was ending, I sat at my computer and refreshed my browser to discover I'd won a Clio award, which I could never claim because I couldn't afford to travel to New York.

But that, along with the $5K Ogilvy gave me for coming up with the concept, kicked off my career, and I've never looked back.