Sam Stuchbury
Founder & Executive Creative Director, Motion Sickness
Last updated 2 June 2026
Sam Stuchbury is a New Zealand creative entrepreneur, film director and founder and executive creative director of Motion Sickness, one of the country’s most recognised independent creative agencies.
Stuchbury started Motion Sickness in 2014 during his final year studying design and marketing at the University of Otago, conceiving the business in an old wooden flat in North Dunedin alongside fellow alumni Alex McManus and Jono De Alwis. What began as a student-flat side project has grown into a 25-person agency based in Grey Lynn, Auckland, with a client list that includes Tourism New Zealand, DB Breweries, Jaguar Land Rover and Restaurant Brands.
From Motion Sickness, Stuchbury co-founded The Social Club, which became Australasia’s largest influencer marketing platform, connecting more than 3,500 influencers with 350 brands and reaching a global audience of 17.5 million people.
Stuchbury’s creative work has earned international recognition. His “Keep It Real Online” campaign for the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, featuring porn actors arriving at a family’s doorstep to promote internet safety, went globally viral with more than 35 million views, coverage from the BBC and The Guardian and a Silver Screen Young Director Award at Cannes. In 2025, Motion Sickness won two Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards for “The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes,” a campaign for the New Zealand Herpes Foundation featuring Sir Graham Henry and Sir Wayne Shelford.
In 2018, Stuchbury was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list for media, marketing and advertising, the only New Zealander on that year’s list. He is also a published author, with Hideaways (Penguin NZ, 2017), a photography book celebrating New Zealand’s mountain huts, coastal baches and riverside cribs.
Stuchbury’s profile is noteworthy because he built a globally awarded creative agency from a student flat in Dunedin, proving that New Zealand’s creative industries can produce work that competes with and beats: the world’s biggest agencies on the biggest stages.
Sources: NZ Herald · Campaign Brief · University of Otago
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