Creativity 50 2011: Nicolas Roope

For Nicolas Roope, who helped found London agency Poke, creativity is at the heart of everything, from building a corporate website for Skype to the agency's recruiting efforts -- its competition for a new copywriter cheekily suggested President Barack Obama "stole" the last one (who left to work on his campaign team).

As Poke's executive creative director, he is also behind ideas that other agencies reference. So if you see a brand encouraging fans to tag themselves in Facebook crowd shots, they're probably admirers of Poke's "Glastotag" work -- a Guinness World Record-breaker for mobile-phone network Orange that married Britain's biggest rock festival, Glastonbury, with Facebook's tagging mechanism.

Beyond Poke, Mr. Roope finds other outlets for his lateral abilities -- namely the Plumen energy-saving light bulb, made by his product-design company, Hulger, and designer Samuel Wilkinson. The Plumen 001 is the light bulb other creative directors will be installing in their Williamsburg lofts -- beautiful and functional, it was recently named the Brit Insurance Design of the Year.

"In a commercial context I can't separate creativity from effectiveness. Creativity that doesn't perform in this broader context is therefore of no interest to me," said Mr. Roope. "The best ideas aren't just fun, compelling and interesting, they deliver."