Oil-laden overalls aren’t typically part of an advertising creative’s career path. However, before switching to agency casual attire as a copywriter, Nate Houseley “liked cars a lot” and spent three years as an apprentice mechanic for a Honda Canada dealership, joking that he “lived out his childhood dream for a bit.”

Houseley admits he “kinda fell into” advertising, landing at OneMethod in 2019 as an intern. He eventually moved over to sister shop Bensimon Byrne, allowing him to apply knowledge from his previous job and eventually help organize the world’s largest amateur golf tournament, dubbed the Quattro Escape, for client Audi in 2023.

For someone whose vocational dreams originally lay elsewhere, he’s certainly thriving in advertising. Joseph Bonnici, chief creative officer of Bensimon Byrne and OneMethod parent Tadiem, says that he has seen Houseley’s innovative approach to advertising design and communication “time and time again.” 

His “Receats” campaign for Good Fortune – a pro bono project that saw the restaurant disguise its menu as office supplies on UberEats and DoorDash so people could sneakily expense their food during the pandemic – won 47 awards internationally. This included wins at Cannes, D&AD, the One Show and more. 

Bonnici says Houseley is “a rare young creative who can adapt to any type of work, including very complex industries, like financial and automotive.” For instance, after his three-month internship, the creative was tasked with rewriting the entire Tangerine Banking app for Canada. “This saw him write 812 different screens to give people smiles while they saved, resulting in a client conversion rate that doubled,” says Bonnici.

And when Houseley was tasked with handling the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) account for the agency, he took a very “structured” approach toward the technical project, with a heavy focus on research and reading, including frequently going down Reddit rabbit holes. 

“At face value, CIRO can seem like this boring regulatory investment thing, but on the Reddit threads, people are really passionate about money,” he says. Reading people’s opinions and questions about finances on the platform inspired his approach in helping CIRO (which oversees investment and mutual fund dealers) with its brand positioning when it formed following the merger of IIROC and MFDA. His role was to bring the new brand to Canadians, and help them understand what it does.

Similarly, Casey House – a specialty hospital that cares for people living with and at risk of HIV – sits in a sector that’s also quite nuanced and, arguably, limited when it comes to storytelling. However, agency partners Bensimon Byrne, Narrative and OneMethod have consistently taken a radical approach to its “Smash Stigma” creative, in one instance, re-editing episodes of popular comedies Friends and The Office to share the serious message behind HIV transmission. For Casey House’s latest “Smash Stigma” effort, Houseley is currently in the process of creating the nonprofit’s fifth iteration, which Bonnici says “will be highly compelling and set a new bar.” 

Houseley has “huge range” and an “ability to adapt his voice seamlessly” to all kinds of work, says Bonnici, which is why the copywriter “freely floats” across the three agencies, including Tadiem’s newly launched financial services consultancy, HiFi. “[Floating] is typically not an endearing term,” Houseley jokes, but he says it’s apropos as he’s interested “in a lot of different things.” 

The plaudits don’t end there: Bonnici believes that, one day, Houseley will helm his own agency. “That’s really nice to hear,” says Houseley, who won an Applied Arts Young Blood award in 2022. “I like advertising a lot… leading an agency one day would definitely be really cool.”