Michael Hart

I studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art, became and practised as an architect, then decided to pursue a different dream.

I’d always wanted to write. I’d written plenty of satirical pieces for the university newsletter but it wasn’t until I won a writing competition for The List magazine and ended up on the Perrier Panel at the Edinburgh Fringe that the obsession took hold. That single event led to me abandoning architecture and pursuing a career in advertising. I got a job as a copywriter and I started to write comedy too, penning sketches for Bruce Morton, The Ferguson Theory amongst others.

Over the years advertising has helped hone my writing skills, teaching me the discipline of writing for different media and how to tell a story as succinctly as possible. Telling stories, that is what we do. Stories that provoke, entertain, shock, educate but always, always elicit a response. Whether it’s for small budgets or gargantuan public bodies the stories we tell transform businesses and change behaviours. Long may it continue.

I joined The Union one year after it started, as a Copywriter. I was promoted to Deputy Creative Director in 2008, then Creative Director in 2012. I joined the Board in 2012.

Battenberg is my favourite cake.