Creative Minds Podcast - Episode 4 - "Steal clients from previous agencies you've worked with"

one of the things that we did that was probably the best client win ever was we did a leaflet little flyer we were in I can't remember we were we were in shortage somewhere and we did a little fly advertising for a designer that we just printed and chucked around the local area and this was back in the day when Twitter had its first kind of UK office it was just opening a UK office and someone from the from there picked it up and went oh this looks cool got in touch with us and said oh do you want to work with us on some stuff so so that's how we picked up Twitter as a client wow and um because you were looking for a design we looking for a design and they just happened to be in a coffee shop so you know do that stuff get it out there and you know people may just happen upon it hello welcome to Creative Minds episode 4 I am joined by Ross popejoy who is going to talk to us about his life as a creative director welcome cross uh to kick things off what I'd love to start with is kind of just an overview of the kind of career today where did it start where are you now and then we can kind of dive into a few bits on the way yeah so it's been a bit of an more of an unusual kind of career path I would say so I kind of went through that typical thing at school where you know you were kind of okay at Art so it kind of Lent on all right okay well I mean that's the only thing you're kind of good at so maybe do that a little bit more so so that was kind of the pathway I went off and did a foundation course uh in art kind of like you know before the university thing um which was in bourneville in uh Birmingham the Chocolate Factory right which is amazing and then after that we kind of myself and a friend uh kind of did an accidental traveling experience around Asia and Australia why was it accidental well we meant to go for six weeks weeks and we ended up doing a year right so we just kind of kept on extending some some legal issues no just we got there and thought Oh this is it's actually quite nice isn't it like you know like the the commute to to to work was going like oh it's beautiful it was kind of banged up abroad situation there were we maybe not for this but like we'll have a conversation about some of that stuff afterwards yeah okay um when I was doing that I kind of I suppose got my one of my first uh commercial jobs doing a branding job for the company we were working for out there and and did a bit of that but also I kind of had that time to evaluate what was what was happening I was due to go back to leads met to do graphic design when we came back and I kind of got back and I can't really recall the reasons why but I decided not to do that and instead I went off I think I got worried and so I went off and did um a combined honors course in business and Computing okay instead a little bit left with art as kind of an attachment uh to it so it's all a little bit um a little bit different and I just thought that maybe that was a bit of a safer career bet for me um is that something you kind of thought or was there other parents or other yeah I think there's just a lot of environmental facts I think when you go through that traditional um education Journey you kind of go from one to the other and you know even if oh I did well in this GCS so I'll do that for my a levels not necessarily because I want to do that but I'm naturally better at itbe so I think there was just a moment of reflection maybe when we did that Australia um um year and it was kind of like okay is this the right kind of thing it was a very different time about this is like late 90s kind of stuff so it was a whole different scene I really wanted to do illustration but got told you just end the only job that you'll have out of this is children's books and there's loads of people doing that and that's it and then there was almost a boom in illustration in ad advertising like that came after that um so so yeah so I came back and thought right okay I'm going to do something that's a bit safer potentially and spread bet and maybe there's a bit of a theme throughout life about that kind of you know doing a bit of a spread bet on everything so I came back did that and then the other theme is is like kind of a serendipitous thing that happens so I ended up getting a job for a company called Triton who do who make showers like you know the they're like one of the biggest ring bell okay random but it was kind of in the Midlands where I was and my sister was there doing a grad scheme and I went in for some for a summer job there so went in there and kind of did some marketing work and kind of got offered a job at the end of the summer for once I'd finished um my uni degree to go back and just go in and be their marketing exec I got a bit of a baptis baptism of fire when I cuz I went oh yeah yeah great Wicked don't forget to an interview I just do that yeah was easy so I went and did that and like the first day was kind of like oh hey this is uh this is your boss um she's going on maternity leave so you need to understand her role and my I literally you know I was in my dad's Sue it was kind of like never written an email and uh and it was like okay you're you're going into the MD the sales director and the marketing director is your boss and I was like okay and it was like and you're in charge of the retail side of the business which is about 25 million PS Earth and I was like okay and the consumer advertising in the and I was like okay I like going you're very aware of just met University and they're like you'll be fine you've got a good support network so I did that while she was on maternity leave and it was intensely stressful but really but it exposed me to a lot of things like really quickly um and I remember like at the end of it um she came back and I basically handed my noticing going I'm so sorry what's happened and like this is this is and she she was amazing she just around and said look you've done the hard bit you know what you're doing now and so then she said Well what we'll do is we'll split the role and I'll support you on some accounts you take the lead on them and you do the same for me on some of the other accounts and I'll take that weight back off and she was incredible uh as a boss just learned so much uh from her and then the next serendipitous move was we had an advertising agency that was in the Midlands um called big and then we worked with them on our consumer campaigns and then they said oh you fancy coming and working for us so then I went over there as an account manager in the Ad Agency and then through a series of circumstances very quickly kind of got up to a group account director level in there and kind of reached a bit of a ceiling um so was that sound like it was quick and yeah easy it was pretty no no Talent I'm I'm sure that wasn't the case it was quite yeah again there was circumstances and stuff I I tended to find myself quite a lot of the time going in and doing a bit of firefighting on certain things as uh certain clients and stuff like that which is great I enjoyed that doing good work yeah I think so yeah there's there's um I have a big thing about people buying risk you know and I think that happens a lot in all Industries in particular ours you know there's a reason why a client will come to us or come to you because they see your body of work they believe that you're going to get it done there's less risk for them on any of those projects and that was kind of the the same in that agency it was kind of like oh maybe Ross is a bit of a safe Pair of Hands here or you can help kind of uh sort situations out right um so that was really great and it was really good work they they're the agency that did wkd Back in the Day created the brand wkd um well it's not around anymore well it is but it was that whole kind of there was a really category yeah cuz it was all bicardi Breezers and it was very targeted towards the female Market at that point and then they went actually let's switch this around and focus on the male audience cuz the female audience is just going to buy it anyway because they like the taste of it it's sugary it's alcohol so they actually did that that switch around and kind of in essence grew that brand from that positioning and were you involved in that account so yeah so we everyone would kind of like work across the different accounts uh depending on what was needed and and stuff as it kind of went through and they went on I wasn't involved in this but like they went on and did Domino's they did like the helicopter thing the first kind of drone delivery back in the day and stuff like that so they did really nice stuff for for kind of being an agency outside of London um so yeah so did that and I kind of got to a point where I was bit like okay where do I go here we've kind of stagnated a little bit um and this was kind of late 20s I suppose we were at this point and then myself and a friend from uni she was a graphic designer we were just like going oh should we go and set up a a thing so we're like yeah go on then so we had like kind of six weeks worth of money I suppose so we said okay let's move to London and see how we go we've got six weeks and if we' run out of money we need to go and get a job um so we did so we had an agency called The Late Night Salon Ty just just was there a what was the actual kind of tipping point of being like right this is the time we're going to go I set up our own thing so I always tended to when I was younger think in twoyear Cycles I suppose of anything of either well I do it in a one-year cycle of either I'm being promoted I'm getting a salary increase or it's time to leave because one of us is doing something wrong either the company I'm working for doesn't see me for the effort that I'm putting into this and doesn't value me or I'm not putting value into that company uh and either way that's not the right relationship so it's time to move on so there was always that kind of Drive I suppose within me to kind of keep moving and doing it and I think that's that kind of where that was the point with the Ad Agency where it was there was no room to go any further the positions above me were kind of were kind of taken you kind of go through some Cycles in agencies you'll know this yourself uh where it's kind of like oh this projects in you do it and then it kind of repeats the next year or it just changes a bit and once you've kind of gone through a psycle you kind of going oh yeah I've kind of done that I'm looking for something a bit different um so yeah so it was just kind of a a multitude of those different factors really and yeah just don't like staying in one place iir enough too long so yeah so then we just like moved to London and just like right who do we do we know anyone no not really I I left that Ad Agency with very much I don't want to take clients I always hated that Viewpoint I always feel that that kind of stuff does come back to it may have been the worst strategic decision I've ever made but but it was one of those things where it was kind of like just didn't feel right with me so we literally started from a clean break new city hey yeah cool do you want a business card designing kind of stuff or or do on a website and we'd we'd always kind of be doing to focus more on anything anything anyone had we were literally but like branding anything website we did early on we did um jackass was about and we did like some little um display ads interactive display ads for them we had no idea what we were doing really at that time but we just stayed up all night which is part of the reason it was called the late night Sal okay just going for it and seeing what happened um we kind of got into a bit of a gaming World off the back of that and did a little micro sites for games and stuff what at this time so the partner she was more design side well no at that point we kind of both did everything it was really lovely it was a really beautiful little world to be in we'd kind of wake up in the morning do a little bit of uh exercise whenever vis a social club it was like really cool super nice and then we would like basically just go right what needs to be done today and we'd both just divide up the work get on the tools and just do whatever needed to be done you know she was a lot more classically trained as a graphic designer because I had done something different at Uni so she'd take the lead on that kind of stuff and then I'd kind of amassed you know lots of Client Services strategy skills from my agency and also being client side has been like super valuable to me all the way through my career um so yeah but we there's two of us there was work to be done what skills do we need to do it let's just crack on and do it yeah did it feel like okay this is a business that we've started or did it feel you know we're a pair of creative guns for higher let's you know get the work in and do it or did it feel like you were trying to build something bigger so I would say that again like they're not taking clients with you think this is the second thing that we we should have had a vision and a strategy for why we existed and what we were going to do we didn't because it was all about can we pay our rent next month right what's available what's the lowest hanging fruit to allow us to do that so I think we were we'd always been a little bit bigger than just the two of us because actually a lot of the stuff that we started off doing is quite digital so we always needed devs involved and like more of a team of people which were all freelance but also a lot of the people that we knew at that time also had full-time jobs they were kind of doing it in their evenings as well so it was kind of like again adding to that kind of late night thing so yeah there was no thought into it there was definitely some drive and direction of what we wanted to achieve but without any real strategy of how we were going to get there I think yeah I don't think that's well just reflecting on you know my story of starting bad it's almost that's a bit of a luxury item isn't it it in terms of oh let's sit down and create a vision or a strategy just like got to pay the rent I think there's loads of things and I get it a lot when we go to different events and stuff and people kind of say things like you know just pick the client you want to work for only do the work that's true to you and all of these beautiful things and that is a that is a real gift to be able to do that you know to be able to stop think decide who you want to work for decide what kind of work you want to do then that's great but I feel that that is something that you know you have to work very very hard and then there's a moment in your career hopefully where you get that opportunity to do it but it's not as easy as saying that on day one no I think it's like you've got bills to pay right how do you do that if you're very lucky you've kind of come out of it with a very nice black booket or you know the right people in the right places and stuff but if you don't you've just got to you got to hustle a little bit you've kind of just got to see what's out there you know and hopefully kind of get those bills paid in the background and maybe think of those other things a little bit more were there any projects that you thought you know this definitely doesn't sit well I definitely don't want to be doing more like this yeah we did quite well we did quite a lot of projects that paid the bills I suppose um with that but we've always been in a lucky position where we've had clients that we really like personally and we I think the individuals rather than the brands yeah individuals and we get on really well with them um and they treat us as as partners like especially in the business now happy ending but even back then we we had that relationship we worked with a an energy drink called a merge which was we got involved in a digital pitch for it and they were it was that those times it's like I think we need a website we've got you know a few grand to make a website so we went above and beyond and went this is what we think they're like wow that's wicked and then I said to the it was a tiny little product that barely was was on their register and it was for a company who called cot who were like a big drinks manufacturer so they would make everyone else's drinks for them all the supermarket own label and stuff and they'd run into some little Brands themselves so their biggest one at the time was old Jamaica ginger beer and then they'd have a few other little Brands they would and a merge was a drink that they'd made for the co-op and then the co-op I'm pretty sure it was a go coop said oh yeah we don't want it anymore so okay we we just run it through the whole sale market and it would take along um and I think at the time it was was doing something like 3 million quid a year in sales so you know it was there but it wasn't really a player and we'd done this little web brief and then I said to them look what's your marketing budget and it was something horrendous like 10 grand or 20 grand or something like that uh for the year and I went okay give me that theoretically and then I'll come back to you and I'll tell you what I would do with that um so we did that and took them back a plan a strategy with you know and it kind of went all the way down through into the commer plan and the T itics and they were like okay yeah cool let's go and we used we used a series of different kind of strategies to kind of make us bigger than than we we actually were and the big thing behind that was to actually convince the malts the large uh supermarkets to trial the product because we knew that at its price point people would pick it up the demographic that we were targeting but it just needed exposure it needed to be on shelves um so we did a series of different things that allowed us to do that that would convince the mons to to take that on and then it kind of then it really took off and we took them through their first TV advertising sponsorship models who were the nem loads and all of these really wonderful things that really Amplified them as a brand and by the time we'd finished it had gone up to 30 million wow and it was literally from that I guess then became more than the 10 or 20 grand yeah exactly each year it kind of grew based on the sales of of the drink and stuff and then the other thing that I think is just like super important and what we try to take to everyone that we work with is overd delivering not at the point of like you know sacrificing doing stuff cheaply and stuff but more we get overly excited about stuff and it's and look at the opportunities going this you could do this you could do that and I feel that by doing that then we got opportunities on the other brands within there because they're kind of like oh look you've done this over here right what can you do over here and what can you do over here so we had uh we had a really great relationship with them doing everything from games conferences through to sampling we'd run sampling events for them and all sorts of yeah crazy things so you're I guess at when you're doing this you're wearing a lot of hats all of them like you're the account director everything account director strategy the now creative director the sometime designer illustrator Finance h are yeah and I guess you're what drawing up contracts on this side and then doing the creative work on the other side running a business paying Freelancers yes not easy no I had a conversation with someone yesterday actually that we share a studio with down in Cornwall and um they've got an agency up in London but there's three Partners there so they show this is so now it's just me that runs happy ending um and and they were kind of saying the same thing it's like do you do everything it's like yeah we don't have an account Handler every everyone so there's about 20 of us at the moment in the in the agency and pretty much everyone else is a creative in some way shape or form designer copywriter and then it's like yes and then I do the other bits yeah kind of okay we'll get to happy ending but that blows my mind a bit Yeah so so late night Sal so that was all great and we we ended up growing that business we've growing this business huge and we ended one of the fun things that um which kind of we'll come on to a little bit later as well is one of the things that we did that was probably the best client win ever was we did a um a leaflet little little flyer we were in I can't remember we were we were in shortage somewhere and we did a little fly advertising for a designer that we just printed and chucked around the local area and this was back in the day when Twitter had its first kind of UK office it was just opening a UK office and someone from the from there picked it up and went oh this looks cool got in touch with us and said oh do you want to work with us on some stuff so so that's how we picked up Twitter as a client wow and um because you were looking for a design we looking for a designer and they just happened to be in a coffee shop so you know do that stuff get it out there and you know people may just happen upon it um so yeah and we ended up doing all sorts for them we some beauty in in in getting Twitter on a on a real world exactly no digital at all yeah the power the power of print um so yeah and we grew then we did some really interesting projects with them we did one that was a um but back then they were a really small team so they had that kind of startup mentality which was which was brilliant um so they would look at stuff because obviously Twitter has a pretty heavy brand guidelines and it was no offense T it was pretty boring um but they would look at stuff that wasn't in there so they went well we don't have any guidelines around illustration so let's lean really heavily into that and then that gives us the opportunity so we made a strategy book for them that was going out to all the agencies and in essence it was called planning for the moment and it was about tning people that things come up but you know about them in advance so if you just plan for them then you can kind of pee you back onto those trends that are happening and it was pretty much all Illustrated apart from the body copy all the headlines were Illustrated it was all handdrawn kind of stuff so it was really really different to a lot of the other stuff they were putting out and um they and it's this is only because them as a client at that moment were okay with going look we'll ask for forgiveness later if people have got a problem with it and they took it into this huge meeting over in the states with all the big sea people and it was kind of like oh people are going to go what's this this is and then they went this is great let's do it in seven languages let's get it rolled out across the world and stuff and then we were like did we hand draw all of those titles oh my God and he was like oh no so yeah so projects like that were happening and we'd got to a point where this the agency had grown in size we were picking up clients like that there was a real mix of kind of the the hardcore kind of work that we were doing um and then also some really nice projects we did for Twitter we did some they had a an event on great easn Street and there was the three graffiti Wars under the tube Carriage okay I know what I mean yeah um and it was back in the day where you could graffiti the walls and we did three giant Don at symbols Donuts like made of donuts um and they had an event inside their village underground and is itage and then um throughout the week we would just eat the donuts so it's kind of like this living artwork thing and we did like tweet merch shops for them and design loads of cool merch for them and stuff like that that people could buy with tweets and stuff so that was a real some real fun projects that went on there so at that stage where were you in terms of kind of creative process you know you make it sound like it was all kind of we'd established we estblished some actual kind of process by that point I suppose just to manage some of the other clients that we had that were maybe a bit more traditional kind of kind of corporate sized clients and the emerge uh client started to get big so we needed proper account handlers in to manage that traditionally there was an awful lot of things happening loads of different projects happening across that so yeah so a lot more process came in Gone with the days of the when a Vista Social Club and working all night it was a bit more structured uh and there was we had our own in-house Dev team we had our own in-house graphic designers and stuff so yeah it was a much more kind of like traditional model right um and how was that for you so it was good it was very I then at that point I switched more over to like a CEO role just because the whole business had changed and there needed to be a lot more on that side of things sorry um where we needed to those kind of high level conversations with clients they needed it structured they wanted strategy behind it they wanted that that level of stuff rather than just creating um and that was okay but I felt like I started to miss the creative side so i' still input on um creative Direction and idea generation and stuff and I've always been really really keen on that um but I wouldn't be doing like graphic design where you know there was a team of people doing that and then my business partner Tor ISU would be heading up that um side of things um and then yeah we kind of did that for like seven years I think we were right and from a kind of sounds like you like some great work was coming out of the agency and then that was building the clients and the success of the clients so what you know brief comes in what what what does it look like it would land on your desk it typically land on my desk or if it was an existing client it would go through like the account management team and then yeah then we would like kind of run with it do the kind traditional stuff really kind of scope it out and do all of that kind of stuff and then yeah we'd feed it in into like a normal right it's going into the creative stage kind of do that kind of feedback loop through that and then if it needed to go into a production stage or we would you know if we were doing TV or something like that we'd kind of get production company in for us we do quite a lot of stuff ourself in in house and again that's always been something that's been an underlying thread and that probably came from us starting off without any money and going right we can't afford to Outsource this so we need to learn a new skill real quick and we'll nod to the client going yeah no problem at all we can sort this out for you oh my God how we do it um sounds like that was kind of in the that's in the DNA DNA of the agency yeah and we did a TV ad for um for emerging it was kind of a little stop motion thing of the cans come to life so it was it was born out of do you remember the dancing cans from the 9s or ' 80s '90s and we basically recreated them as a merge but we made it all ourselves like the prop building and stuff and had a couple of fishing wires with the little glasses on and stuff like that and green screen does exist some it does exist somewhere yeah and they were just dancing along kind of like whatever was going on so you singing so we literally yeah we literally did we literally did it all which is kind of crazy and back then we did for a merge I think we did one of the first I don't know for fact if it was um fmcg augmented reality experiences from they can and we' broken a deal with um um a partnership with Warner Brothers for a film called Pacific Rim which like big robots versus monsters kind kind of thing and um and we had their robots like smashing out of the C and then you could control them like a little mini game and stuff and like take photos and and and share them and stuff but that was like super early on um in any AR development um kind of stuff so we were doing some quite interesting stuff but again we would kind of keep that Dev in house or in a really small select and a lot of that was driven by um budget uh really and also our passion to understand how it works and you can't I can't sit in front of a client saying oh yeah this and without knowing the exact details of what's going to happen might not know it to the level of a Dev but I kind of understand the scope of it yeah and for me that's always been important so that I can really relay that and have those conversations with clients there's nothing worse and I would see it when in more traditional sized agencies where you'd have account handlers there going oh yeah cool we'll look at that and then they'll go back to base and they like right we we're going to do this it's like that's impossible like that's just not within SC you know you get it in your stuff I'm sure all the time it's like oh we'll sort that out in post but you're in a position go no that isn't something it's a lot easier and get in a lot of trouble when I say that on let's shoot that let's shoot that again now for five minutes rather than spend three weeks trying to do it and it will look terrible so so you think that you know I feel like a bit of a David and Goliath you've got traditional agencies but then you're bit more Scrappy just kind of killing it 100% that yeah we were Scrappy yeah what was the secret Source was it the structure was it the the passion was it the creativity it it was the it was the passion I think to to deliver and the passion to do something and considering we had absolutely no money at that time and we were literally like I remember crying on my best friend in the CH cuz I couldn't make rent that month and stuff like that it was like but we would nothing would stop us going we just need to make this different we need to make it the best it can possibly be for our client within their budget and we'll give as much as we can and then that would always take us to that next step where people would see that and go okay cool we're going to give you a bit more now um but yeah we just loved it and we still like I still get really excited about creative ideas bring them to life and hopefully the impact that they have as well so we're still in the midnight salon so yeah late night Salon late night Sal late night baby and then what what happened what where next so we sounds like it's all going well we it was going really well and then myself and the other business partner I think we'd a bit like a relationship it kind of had broken down we weren't maybe talking I think we had got roles that had kind of happened but maybe we hadn't started out from word go saying right this is what we're going to do and that lack of that vision and long-term strategy of actually what where we want to go had the two of you ever at this stage sat down and said what do we want from ourselves what do we want from the business where are we going yeah we had but I think it had been done quite lightly and then you kind of leave that meeting or wherever it is and kind of get on with the doing and then three months later you back in the weeds as well yeah let's go and have a little chat about this again oh nothing's changed and stuff like it genuinely is like a relationship yeah and then at the end of it you go right you know what maybe neither of us are really enjoying this that much you know we'd gotten into we'd shifted from that wonderful even though we're working incredibly hard kind of almost party atmosphere and the excitement of it when it first started to now kind of like ticking boxes we had a team they come with cost so then you have to do certain work to make sure that you're kind of getting that Revenue in and you kind of get into that place and it's kind of like okay cool just don't think we're enjoying this anymore and we just had a conversation about it and we told the team and everyone's going what do you mean and everyone else around going what do you mean like you're you're kind of flying you've just you've put all this work in and and you're just getting all these like big Rands and doing really stuff you had the conversation the outcome is we're breaking up calling it a day yeah and neither of us really had the money to kind of like buy the other one out that kind of thing so we just said look let's just we'll just shut it so we just we we kind of made sure that we stayed open long enough to make sure the clients that we did have were went elsewhere you know had a nice Handover with other people we made sure that everybody that worked for us we kept it going until they got new jobs in different places and stuff like that and then we just kind of closed it closed it down I mean how um so what year was that so that was um 2014 right and it had been going for seven years yes we started 2007 that's a long time yeah and I imagine you know that seven years of waking up every morning thinking about the business yeah the work yeah delivery and all those yeah we kind of matured quite a lot I would say in that seven years and had a lot of fun we used to when enemy was there we'd go to the awards ceremony and Dave Gro be like doing guitar solos on the table next to you and stuff like that it was like there was a lot of fun that we had in that time as well and I think yeah I suppose the more grownup it got and the more serious it got and there has to be an element of money that kind of comes into that to kind of keep it going it it lost its enjoyment yeah I mean it feels like an incredibly Brave decision like when you oh yeah look back on it now how do you reflect on it yeah I think it was part stupid part the right thing to do I think I just bought a house as well at that time like my first like house and stuff so probably very stupid um but there's no point carrying on if you both have kind of lost your heart because it's just going to go one way and I also think that's the same with a client uh agency relationship as well if there's a problem you've tried to fix it or you've tried to you know there's something that's not right if you just keep going it just gets worse it's much better to kind of go you know what we're just not right for each other at this time let's move away and we' kind of got to that point going look we're not enjoying this so let's just kind of call it a day before it gets bad yeah um so so yeah so we did that and then like but I had got to like really respect that because I I can imagine it would have been a very difficult decision you must feel you're carrying a lot in terms of employees and all these all these things to kind of call the whole thing up and for no other reason than the the two of us just yeah we just kind of ran it of course and we did we tried to put it back on track but you know now if I was the person I am now back then we probably would have tried some other things out and maybe took us out of the equation a little bit more okay brought in some other yeah brought in some more senior teams and stuff but there's always a finance balance with that stuff you know this as well right you kind of great we'll get some senior but they come with a hefty price tag so then you kind of back into right now we've kind of got to bring that Revenue back into to make sure we're covering that we was had a real long-term viewpoint on um salaries as well we was like lots in the business we were just overly cautious kind of like from those Scrappy first days and not being able to pay the rent we then became really like right we want to make sure we've got a long period just in case all of the work stops tomorrow we don't want to have to then tell people to go so the bigger that amount goes with those Senior People the scarier that is as well and yeah I think we just lost the love was the main thing yeah for it okay so new chapter new chap over the new Leaf mortgage payment comes in it's like what have we done this is ridiculously stupid why we do and on the personal side where so where are you up to so I just bought a house in East London um uh recently married okay going through that kind of Journey so yeah stupid time to do anything but I also think that those moments happen there's always you've probably had it yourself there's certain moments where those things are the point where it's kind of like oh right we're doing this so there's a big decision that happens at the same time because it's a big critical time in your life for Change and so they kind of probably married at the same time um so yeah so yeah so now it's kind of like okay cool well we had an agency last week we don't have one this week we've decided that we were going to let go of the clients you know and just make sure they were looked after but you know equally you know we probably weren't really going to continue with the work we stupidly said I don't know why we did this we weren't going to use any of the back the work that we created as well as a starting portfolio so like on the Monday I was like right I've got absolutely no work to show um I had no personal design work or anything because I'd gone off any of that kind of stuff so it was you can't really talk about strategy on a website or anything you can but it's not the most compelling thing in the world so then yeah so then it all started again basically from scratch um in 2014 for me um we called the agent happy ending so who's we so we is just how I describe the agency because I hate saying it's just a horrible thing you probably do all the time so uh so yeah so we called the agency happy ending which is a brilliant name let's hear the it's multifaceted I like to think so the giggles in the um it is one it is designed to uh create a bit of impact which we've seen and it happens you you say happy ending to somebody especially somebody in a big office or something and who's maybe a PA or somebody and passing a message on and it's like what someone got happy ending on the phone to you what's been going on um it even happened to my mortgage advisor recently which is quite funny um so so so there's an element of that and that that's just about kind of getting um that to stick right it kind of like hangs there and it's kind of uh it drives a bit deeper because it causes a conversation and then you're instill something extra so that's part of it the second part of it was around um client identification on a personal level so I'll say happy ending to some people like yourself and you may take it one way I'm not going to presume which way you take that um and then other people go oh wow that's so cute like fairy tales and stuff like that and then instantly I know what level I'm on with them I can kind of go okay cool I know where where we lie I get a snapshot of the person yeah instantly and then there was a serious reason behind it which I suppose it kind of stem from my client side stuff where it was around delivery and actually we worked with so many people who were so busy and they would do stuff and it would never get properly interrogated it would never get properly measured and decisions would then not come from that so it should be like we did this project did it work yes or no yes okay great so we should just amplify it right if you want to increase those results or no it didn't work okay what are the learnings from that okay let's make sure we don't do that and maybe we do a total juter position to what we were doing to see if then that works but it was trying to get across to clients it's really important to kind of have that feedback with the agency as well and to make some decisions about is this good work is this working work as opposed to just being pretty work yeah um and making sure that there was time in people's schedules to really do that rather than like oh yeah yeah but I've got another Brie for you so okay cool what happened with the last one did yeah we delivered it that's it right it's so much like yeah yeah yeah I mean some of the things that we've made and I I'm quite active on telling clients not to do work so a lot of the time I'll go I do not think you'll do I do not think you should do this I think you should save that budget put it on your Christmas party it will do much more for your business there and staff morale or bonuses or whatever you want to do to it than us making this video yeah that 30 people are going to watch I know they should probably do the video they should 100% do the video but we and then like you know Millions will watch it supposed to be um so yeah so there's so I'm a big big advocate of that and a lot of that is driven to that builds trust if you're yeah and it's just pointless not selling because it's the right thing to do the right outcome for the client then they're just like yeah and one of our in like is it a value I don't know one of one of the things that we kind of really focus on is to get our clients promoted so that's like a real Focus point for us because if we can get our client promoted they're doing well so if you can do some work that makes them look brilliant yeah it's good for everybody exactly it's good for it's good for the brand it's good for them personally it's then good for a broader ecosystem in that brand everyone hasing everybody gets a happy ending yeah so so yeah so we kind of tried to instill that and a lot of that will be around you know some results driven work doesn't have to be dry but it's just you know let's make sure we we're doing stuff that's act achieving a business objective yeah so yeah so there's the name So that's its kind of like uh its foundations so so Clos closed one Agency on the Monday yeah pretty much right job one I need a name yeah job one need a name register that okay job two call up some people yeah and see if anybody needs any work we did a lot of at that time we did a lot of work that was um that we would create without brief because we didn't have any and we'd kind of persective stuff yeah lots of spec work just going look we did this we thought you might like it what do you think 98% of that stuff doesn't work or land um one of the times that it did land was we did some with a friend of ours called DOI who's an incredible illustrator and we worked together to try and get this off the ground where um he did some posters around planet Earth too when that was out yeah and they were really nice and then I just presented them to the ecd of BBC at the time how did you get that meeting I just found him on the internet and just basically called messaged him and said made these think they're nice what you reckon just attached to an email basically what do you think Y and he went yeah I like him uh and he's the only person since done this to me he said make the logo smaller though it detracts from the illustration I was like sweet and he goes we'll run him and I was like okay sweet so that was how we kind of got BBC uh as a client yeah I think that's the only time that's maybe but um uh yeah so we were doing quite a lot of that kind of work we were doing quite a lot of film stuff like film postery work and and stuff at that time so why did you decide if you'd gone doing spective stuff I mean obviously BBC Stella a client to work with yeah what was it that you thought y planet Earth to that's that one was me and to were having a conversation he was just watching it and he was just starting to sketch and I was like cool let's make this something and let me try and get it get it in yeah um for that so sometimes it's pure creative idea Le stuff and it's like that's a nice thought let's try and get it live and then sometimes it will be contacts and it's like I know somebody at here let's think about what might work for them and let's just get it as a to we don't have a brief right so we know we don't know the ecosystem we don't know all the other things that a brief does um but what we do know is what the world is seeing and we can also interpret that and show look we think we know your brand from an outward perspective we' love to know it from an inward perspective and take it Forward I guess from the back catalog of work and understanding how clients and businesses work you can probably fill in a few blanks of a brief it's not I think it's it's good advice to people to you know do something effectively have a go create something for a brand you like you know whether it's a little ad or a uh a poster for a film whatever I think there is I think it's good it's good advice to kind of challenge people to do that what they might not have is that experience of I want the inherent experience of what does this thing then need to actually do yeah um and I guess although you're doing it Specta you kind of must have known like imagine this is what the BBC need this thing to do yeah and and we would always kind of then go on and I I would naturally kind of go okay then then you do this with this then you do this with this and then there's some opportunities over here to be able to do this so it's not like just here's a thing it's like how does that run yeah yeah how does that how is that campaign how does that kind of come to life in other places how does that create headlines for you how I'm assuming that these might be some objectives that you're trying to do and this is how I would see this piece of activity delivering on those objectives um so yeah I would always and that is from that client side experience that advertising agency kind of experience kind of coming into that and understanding what people need as well and also how it gets Justified from a budget point of view as well um yeah but that that feels like you know maybe superpow slightly overselling it but that that experience on the creative side the account management side strategy thrown in like that is a very strong asset that you within you isn't it yeah and I think I've I've always been that kind of person and even now you know it's we'll have a tomorrow at the studio we've got you know the seniors um and we're having a creative brainstorm around something and then we're doing a strategy meeting but I'll be the one that will be in both of those Le for the same same brand different project so for the same brand and internal stuff as well then different people will kind of come in depending on what their superpowers are I suppose you know and it's kind of like yeah being able to think in that business analytical mind and what we're trying to do and trying to achieve but then also with the creative idea concept and even delivery is a really handy tool to have I used to go into client meetings and I'd present work and sometimes you get it where they're like no yeah no no we're not feeling that and I'll be like okay cool and you know it's the traditional you go through the teams and do all that and you're like Tada and they're like no don't think that's right I think you've got that wrong and we're like going okay but then I would be there going right okay how about this and I would Scamp stuff and do idea generation on the spot and that I think for me at that moment that's what they love they were like great Ross you can do this and you can do that so that's what we want we want it here and we want it now and idea generation happening rather than okay let me take it back brief it back in go through traffic put it through the creative teams who would too overloaded anyway and then I'll bring it back to you in a week and it may or may not be right because they AR picking up the nuances of that little meeting or you know the tiny little things whereas I'm kind of like I know your business I speak to you every day I understand little bits that aren't in the brief that you've told me you know over time and and I can also like generate ideas and Scamp them up for you as well so it was kind of like yeah that was that in that particular moment in time was uh definitely like a superpower to be able to do that yeah um and weirdly back in that agency time I almost got treated like a little sbu within the agency and it's just like okay cool these are your numbers like a little business unit okay within it and it's like there're your numbers make your numbers we'll leave you alone kind of stuff so it's like great let's let's make that happen so yeah and then that's kind of always been the the DNA I spos of where we are now um as as happy ending in terms of the work that we do we love working with the BBC we've got a really strong relationship ship with them now and we've grown from doing like a little poster to we just did their visual Identity Design system tv ads for the cricket amazing work which was great and fun quite intense but and that was our first kind of job across editorial and marketing for the BBC I it looks it looks amazing yeah it was really really cool but a pure collaborative approach one of those dreams where you've just got an amazing client you're both kind of adding value to it and it's moving at a pace they always move at quite a pace because they've got so they got really tight deadlines on stuff so what that's the in-house creative that's BBC creative yeah and like there's editorial team marketing teams everybody kind of chipped in when they needed to so just so we're you know that was eight nine years ago yeah the the kind of beginning of happy ending we're now today yeah just jumping those years to um and I know A lot's happened um including a move from London down to cornall and we're get we're talk about that but just whil that BBC job has come up I'd love to just hear you talk about your the agency's process of okay guys we got a brief what how what are we what are we going to do for this one so typically so typically kind of like when we get a brief in I suppose you there's a variety of different briefs that you get so so you work with the BBC was it competitive did you did they come to you they wanted to work with you or was it out for a bit of a tender pitch with the cricket stuff yeah so no that was we've built a well we've built a kind of a reputation within that within that team so we do the six nations for them each year now with their TVC stuff and art direction we built some art direction for them around the American Football when they were covering uh that the NFL um stuff the London games that they were doing so we've kind of got a bit of a history along with that they came to us originally with um with us to make a TVC for them for the cricket that was the original ask and we'd we' threw a few Roots um at them they picked the one that it was and then it actually then went oh actually we think this can be a full identity like for Cricket for the next few years so can you do that now so we were kind of then like managing both of those at the same time just back a step you said you so you kind of threw a few ideas for that ad so what what what does that process look like so we'll kind of get a brief in from from those guys they'll then we it depends sometimes they'll be kind of going this is what we think it should be from an art Direction point of view and or they might just go look this is the brief this is what we're trying to achieve audience wise and and all of that kind of stuff what do you think and then we'll kind of get okay cool we'll go off do our research um around it we'll kind of so for Cricket it was one of those where there's a real traditional audience in there you know you can imagine them yeah um and then but they were gentlemen exactly of a certain year um very traditional very into it kind of stuff you know they they'll bleed Cricket kind of people but their part of their remit being a broadcaster public service broadcaster is to kind of make sure it's open for everyone so they're like we want to try and kind of encourage you know that younger demographic maybe to try it out and showcase it to them as well and that's kind of so in that particular route that's what we were trying to balance so loud bright RGB color palette um with this quite aggressive um kind of styling lots of mono type in there but then at its heart and within it DNA is this Cricket scoring system for the die hards and it's like really I don't know if you know Cricket it's quite a complicated yeah scoring system so that was for them you know they're going to watch it anyway but if they do see this and they see those little icons going around they would be like oh yes I know that's my world I know that that younger audience won't it would just be a graphical element to them but they'll be a lot more attracted to its pace and the animation style and the other graphical element to it as well so that how did you arrive at that as a creative route so for us we kind of then drill down I we we'll always start with audience and we'll always start with um having a strong DNA we aren't nothing we do I hope is just this looks nice it will always have a purpose to be in there so we'll always work off a DNA core and then we'll build on top of that and um we sometimes have clients who just want something and they're just like oh just do this for us and it's kind of okay cool but we can't do that because we need to take it a step back and build some DNA into this and the main reason for that is it just makes everything else a lot easier so that you can if it's once you've cracked that once you've cracked that you can do outdoor you can do socials easily you can actually and it moves it away from the graphical language to kind of you know other things you know whether it's written word or or lots of other kind of areas it's not just a print it's like if you do a logo for someone it's a stamp but it's like if there isn't an essence of something in there then it's really hard to build out an additional language Beyond it and if you can't build out that additional language you're just left with a stamp on stuff that doesn't resonate with anyone at all and it actually makes it really hard to do other things like oh now we need to do on packaging it's like we got a stamp in a corner but because it's just a little graphy thing it doesn't have any Essence to it there's no DNA in there it makes the next bit really really hard whereas if it's got some DNA in it then it's kind of okay cool it triggers thought processes they go oh we could do this or this or this this is over here but that still links back to that and it gives you a world to play with rather than just a tiny little object it sounds like there's always you know you're always thinking always ticking over when there is a a block creative block yeah have you got like what's your what's your kind of solution for that I just kind of get really into the cre creative again so like for example now I hav't you force yourself to yeah and I just try to immerse myself more in the world so a lot of the time especially at the moment I'm here there everywhere having all sorts of conversations and stuff but I will then try and go right okay I really need to open up procreate Photoshop illustrator or whatever and almost just sit there and whether I focus on something specific or I just play then then I kind of get back into it and I suppose my always my ideas happen in the shower and bedtime kind of stuff the tube's really good for me as well um where you can kind of um there something about the shower you just Zone everything gets zoned out and it just you just let it kind of go and I'll always have little things in there as thought starters and I've got a ream of notes and notes of just Little like tiny little ideas some are really like executional some are like deep strategy kind of Big World kind of things um and I just yeah kind of play with them I suppose a lot in my head and then physically um you know from Design Elements and stuff we've got one really nice thing that we try to do so our logo is a smile and a full stop like happy ending that's as basic as I could get it you know stripped back from everything else um but because they're quite simplistic shapes they allow us to play with them so we do quite a lot internally for you know t-shirt graphics utilizing them or or we might Chuck some stuff in Cinema 4D or we use it as a poster brief and stuff like that and just being able to almost forget about anything bigger then allows your brain to relax a little bit and you just kind of just go with it and then you know accidents happen or you do something that's quite nice and then that could be the thought of something further down the line or it might work in something right now so yeah just kind of giving your your brain that space not to think and what about like giving that giving the team's brain space is that something that you know you're you're running a business it needs to be commercial you can't have people sat around you can't and playing but it's an important part of yeah being creative yeah how do you balance that so it's so it's a it's a bit of a fine line but we we try to so a lot of the times that's so we'll use this happy-ending kind of logo as a bit of a cool and it might just be an R&D thing it's like cool this is someone seen something in go this is cool like for instance recently the new procreate animation software has been announced dreams I think it is and like you know all of our whatsapps and everything like whoa this looks fun so I don't know what that is sounds like I should do so it's like you know procreate no oh so procreates like a drawing application on the iPad right and they've created their launch launching an animation version of that next month that's there to like really help like cell frame animation and stuff so our WhatsApp lights up and everyone's kind of like this is so cool this is cool so that will be like cool we need to find a reason to play with this I see yeah for that and that'll be across everyone we used to have a thing called creative Fridays and depending on how busy we get depends on whether they happen or not we did one the other day actually which is nice and we kind of have a time limit and again there's a I find there's a huge thing especially with some of the your creatives coming in around that commerciality and the timing it's like oh cool you have three months to do a nice visual idenity it's like no we got three weeks and actually getting people up to speed on that is super important um and being a it's not the right way to work but it's the way that the world is so then it's kind of trying to understand and some of those things like that DNA Foundation is kind of like right don't don't just go off and create stuff and go oh this was quite nice and then this if you don't have that CU that should inform that and that also means that we can go back and say is this good because if this is good then this stuff should be good and then or that one's good that one's maybe going in the wrong direction but you can always kind of come back to that so there's little things like that that will always that will help people get there quicker um whereas I think if you're left just to play too much it never ends right because it's never finished yeah and you can go down rabbit total rabbit holes and days later so I didn't really do anything but been looking at loads of stuff and like okay cool well no one's won there um so we were like even if we're doing these little sprints on the creative Fridays it be like cool you've got a day to make a poster this is the brief you've got this much flexibility in it but we do want to see a finish piece by the end of the day crack on if you need help we're here shout we if you're struggling with something then we can give you a little bit of a thought starter or something to kind and that'll be on the senior team um for that but I'll always say as well um it's always my fault it's I'm it right I'm the kind of reason if we fail on a job because I've either you know I'm working with the wrong people for that job or I'm not supporting them enough or I haven't given them the right brief you know it's always the book stops with me so yeah I don't think I would ever put pressure on any of our creatives to perform to a thing um and the other thing that we tend to do is always over uh resource again not great business strategy on a project just to give us that flexibility if someone's not having a great day head's not in it or whatever you're not creating a stress point at the end of it so like say we got three days to do three roots or whatever for for a job that kind of comes in I'll put a few designers on it just in you never know what's happening with people uh you know so yeah and then that means that no one's under horrendous pressure right or and then you can combine and then we'll kind of go through and go okay this these are the ones that we're going to put put forward for yeah yeah it's always a challenge when you're when the agency's busy but then you've got to kind of come up with you know answer a brief work on a pitch no one's got the time and you can you know right you're the least busy you do this but you might not be the right for it yeah yeah might not be the best person perhaps needs a bit of collaboration and then perhaps if the output isn't very good you think oh we're probably not going to win this because we've not been able to put everything into it yeah what was the point in trying yeah it's a it's a difficult one isn't it to get that balance of resource right yeah versus you know do we go all in because we want it and perhaps have to sacrifice something else or let's just focus on what we've got here and then we're not focusing on the new business yeah and we don't we don't do new business as a thing again maybe not a great love that so just so we have all of our focus on our existing clients and again having worked in agencies is where there's that cycle where do new business come from Pitch teams from recommendations from our existing clients typically cuz the happy ending website yeah doesn't exist really doesn't exist does it no because we don't have time to yeah make one I found an old Blackboard from about seven years ago the other day we do website and a few other things on it that still haven't happened so yeah so that's because you haven't got time to do it yeah or is it cuz I was like I wonder why Ross has done that maybe it's kind of bit of elusive quite mysterious like I know they do good work yeah but this this isn't telling me anything I've Googled happy ending and I've G in a and I've got into a total different yeah yeah but that would be aome like we should do a website oh why don't we do a fake brothel website that would be fun and then you kind like okay cool and but yeah so no we just don't have time for that at the moment um we very very much focus on working with our clients delivering for them and typically and yeah this is something that you'll know like working with larger clients there's lots of other opportunity so we work with Adobe a lot on on a lot of their stuff but once you deliver for one team in there then you naturally get an introduction into another team because you've been shared internally or the work's been shared internally so we'd much prefer to be putting that effort in and it's the same with the BBC stuff so we were working with the BBC creative team got a great relationship with them and then that's now cross into the editorial team so it's just that natural sharing internally with those guys um and then equally we'll get yeah we get recommendations from our clients to their network if someone says oh we're looking for a new agency to do this or do that then that's typically where our work comes from we don't do any do you find that you've got to a nice sweet spot in terms of you know there's enough work coming in through the referrals but yet you're not having having and you've you know got the team in place to service it and to be you know doing good interesting work but you've not got a horrendous pressure of oh we've got these Ms to feed and we've got to there's we got to Churn it yeah we're in a lucky position on some of our work at the moment that it's kind of a bit more long term whereas typically our stuff will be really shortterm I think you know the agency model has changed quite a lot especially in our world maybe less so in yours but a lot of our stuff would be you know you could get a retainer down for a year and have a commitment of some Finance for it and how that kind of gets diced up throughout the year is you know you kind of do that as you go but that would be cool we know that we've got a Year's worth of money coming in that's going to look after everyone's salaries in essence where that's kind of stopped and now it's very much Project based um kind of work that we will do so I think there's always that worry and I think when you've started something there's always a worry that it's going to end next month and it's like oh my God so there's always that fear of not saying yes to everything but equally that gets you into trouble sometimes as well so being able to step away from some stuff and go do you know what I just think we're going to overstretch ourselves here we want to keep talking to you but we want to add value to your business not add stress and there may be someone else that can do that for us for you at this moment I think is likely important but again it is privilege it is because you have the ability to say no to some work instead of going we need that money in to pay for the office space this month or something so yeah we're in a we're in a lucky position at the moment that we've got a bit of that privilege to be able to make those decisions and I do think that when you've got that then better things come from that but it's taken us a long time to yeah what's really nice to us it feels that and I know we've not really talked about the move from London to Colmore um but it feels that you've kind of got this or the agency's got a confidence that is you know a passion for the work doing good work and a just a sort of confid confidence in yourself with that and I guess in a way that that's reassuring to clients you're not pedling stuff just for the sake of it giving them value and advice and also great work yeah first time's like I think nice place to be and we and we also like to do it to other agencies and people as well like we've got we got some friends who were running an agency and I saw one of their um TV spots come up and then something else happened and I was like oh that's quite a nice idea so I just messaged him and said mate I've seen this you know love what you did with it oh I just saw this I think this could be a cute idea and I'd send that to them I don't care you know it's their gig and then they tried to kind of get that agreed with the client and stuff like that so I think yeah if you kind of got that passion and the ideas drive your creative good stuff will come they'll send me something in the future I like to think well whatever you know something will happen that kind of makes that work the creative Karma yeah a little bit of creative Karma yeah absolutely um and I think if you're doing if you've got the ability to do that for clients it's not just about we want to earn money off you and there are agencies out there that are doing that whether that's out of design or because they're owned by a bigger company or they're listed or whatever you know there's sometimes always that fun Finance pressure that's not us we want to make enough money so that we can live kind of stuff you know um but equally we just want to make the right thing for them because that's the only way we'll kind of get a second job with them in reality and we want to keep doing that and you know if we've got an idea we want to make sure that it's fulfilled properly and if that means we have to do a bit more work then we're prepared to do that good for you right I think that's probably our time Ross yeah yeah um I feel like I've not asked any questions at all quick fire short answers only best piece of advice you've been given steal clients from the previous agency that you worked for although I didn't take that but yeah I would say best piece of advice you you'd give depends on who it's to if it's someone looking to start their own thing I would say I don't know it's a really hard journey maybe look for someone else to kind of take some of that burden as well whether that's an investor someone who's seasoned in in the field or a business partner where'd you go for inspiration outside whether it's in London in the countryside now typically what you're most proud of that you've done I really like the BBC cricket stuff that we did recently and the reason why is because I had very little to do with it so it was like one of the first projects where some of our senior creatives had just kind of run with it and I'd had the confidence and comfort in myself to not be too involved in it great so that makes me feel did the interview for design week though yeah interview for I did all of that yeah yeah it's basically my idea I drew the little squares and everything yeah yeah yeah um yeah but I think that that was a real nice moment there but I think also anytime that we get a for me anytime that we get a big client on board then I kind of feel proud again of the agency because it's like oh cool they trust us there must be they must be seeing something within us that kind of does that so I think that's a really nice place to be okay final question best piece of work that you pitched that never got made oh loads of these um one of them changing Twitter to titter for breast cancer awareness I think would just have been like you wouldn't even have to have changed Twitter because you don't ever see the word Twitter anywhere it's just a concept thing um anything that's kind of got a really simplistic idea I would say from that right that is it amazing Ros you've been brilliant thank you very much for coming on um sharing all your insights and hopefully the conversation will inspire some people to start their own yeah abut Journey just be brave have lots of energy about it and kind of do all the things for the right reasons I suppose and overd deliver overd deliver value yourself as well at the same time however that sits great I've got one more question okay quick fire worst piece of clown feedback you've ever received can you make the white whiter I think it's probably up there some right on that note cat thank you very much can is that a real one yeah yeah the white