WHY RIGHT NOW IS SO GODDAMM AWESOME

My father was in advertising.

And when my son Felix was born 14 years ago people asked me whether I wanted him to go into the same business too.

My answer at that time was ‘probably not’.

I didn’t want to appear churlish; I enjoyed what I was doing. It was very interesting.

It’s just that it didn’t look like it was going to get any more interesting than it already was.

We’d worked with the same tools for years: press, posters, TV cinema and radio. It felt like the future was going to be more of the same. That every ad had been done. And that we were simply rearranging Lego blocks to make slightly different objects.

Scarily too, the real innovation through that period was to be found in the research companies.

They’d spent their time building up a deep understanding of the consumer and a set of metrics that meant people felt they could use a formula to create ads to sell to them.

It seemed like this conventional wisdom would only ever lead to conventional work.

Then along came an oddly named company called Google.

And soon after that something called YouTube.

Then Facebook.

And Twitter.

These things were all awesome. But not really mainstream. 

At this time there was a sub culture of cool, ‘in the know’ technorati who inhabited this murky, other-world called ‘digital’ and who all understood what the majority didn’t. The early adopters.

And there were some incredibly enlightened people in advertising companies trying to explain to marketers how the world had changed and this new stuff was going to revolutionise everything.


But they were fighting a primarily uphill battle. In the margins. With only a sliver of a budget. 

Then the gods of technology gave us 3G!

And the iPhone.

And the app store.

And boom!

The ‘late adopters’ began to play with digital things.

And love the experience.

The marketers began to pull at their agencies rather than be pushed by them.

They began to insist on innovative, creative answers to their problems using new technologies and the behaviours associated with them.

Things that had never been done before.

Until now, every day sees new technologies and platforms that offer marketers and their communications partners new ways to flex their creative muscle and delight their users.

Indeed, they have to do that. Because their consumer is now a communications expert.

Everyone is. Everyone who has a smart phone. Or a computer.

Communications today is all pervasive.

It's so much more than advertising. 


It affects everything everyone does. 

It’s the one thing that connects the whole world. 

And it’s constantly changing.

And, ergo, changing the world.

So now, when people ask me if I would be happy if my kids to go into the same industry I’m in, guess what I say?

My biggest and most satisfying challenge at RKCR.

So, Friday was my last day at RKCR.

And when I reflect upon the four years I spent there, probably my biggest and most satisfying challenge during that time was not helping the agency win awards or new business.

It was something far more profound.

When I accepted the job I hadn’t set foot in the agency. I didn't feel I needed to. I’d met Richard Exon, the CEO, and liked him. We shared the same vision for the agency and agreed there was a huge amount of potential that needed to be tapped. That was all that really mattered.

When I turned up in January 2008 however one thing was blindingly obvious. Something needed to be done with the environment.

There were cubicles and corridors and offices and meeting rooms and little cut-off corner areas. On different floors.

And despite its bright primary colours and jaunty angled meeting room windows, it felt corporate and old fashioned.

Worse, the place encouraged segregation. Bigger offices for 'senior' staff making them appear more valued than others. Not good if you’re trying to build one big, powerful, conjoined team.

Also, rather tellingly, when I polled the staff, asking if the place inspired them and they felt proud to bring their mates or their mums into the office the answers weren't positive.

The first mountain to overcome was getting a budget.

The Finance Director went to work and after months of negotiating with head office managed to get a pot of money specifically for the refurb. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

We invited three architects to compete, eventually choosing Spacelab.

They understood the way space could and should be used in an office such as ours, offering opportunities for random encounters as well as space for concentrated thinking.

They also shared my feeling that we should bring back some of the original integrity of the building. It used to be The Black Cat cigarette factory (hence the two big, Egyptian style statues out the front). It was also the first reinforced concrete building in the country of its size with massive beams and uprights.

At my previous agency I’d experienced the benefits of open plan working both culturally as well as operationally.

No walls means no politics - no corner offices for the management; it speeds everything up - if you need to speak to someone you don’t need to get your PA to call their PA and arrange a time, you just stand up and walk over to them; and most importantly, open plan encourages chance encounters, helping make new friends and with them the possibility of fresh cross fertilizing of ideas – you can’t simply walk, head down, from the lift to your office door without bumping into people in the morning.

But… open plan working spaces do have a few issues. And if we wanted to take advantage of its good bits we needed to overcome these.

Open plan working. And the world's largest welcome mat?

Planners and creative people think for a living. And most of them like a bit of peace and quiet to do that. That’s why, traditionally they like offices with nice doors you can close to ward off unwanted visitors.

The truth is, of course, they don’t really spend every second of their day sitting in zen like contemplation.

Much of their time is spent in briefings, client meetings, presentations, reviews, edits, on shoots, paying bills, buying stuff on Amazon and ASOS, buggering about on Facebook, surfing YouTube, up-loading shit to Pinterest and chatting.

There are basically three types of work that planners and creatives do. I ended up created a traffic light system to help define the spaces they needed:

Pootling about on the internet, researching, paying bills, writing emails. Low pressure stuff. This required 'green space'.

Thinking. Discussing ideas. Concentrating. Writing. Meetings. These needed 'amber space'.

Action stations. “You’ve got an hour to crack this!” Total immersion. Do not disturb! 'Red space'.

If we were going to take away people’s walls we needed to provide everyone alternative spaces for these three types of working.

Green was easy. A section of desk and a chair.

To avoid corporate drone syndrome we went for a variety of surfaces, sizes and shapes: wood, steel and laminate, rectangular, round, six seater, 12 seater, 36 seater.

Amber spaces was where things started getting interesting.

We created various areas that could be used for informal meetings as well as places to sit alone and work.

These were:

Areas of the main ‘factory floor’ sprinkled with sofas, arm chairs and coffee tables.

A high level ‘kitchen counter’ to encourage drop-in chats.

A circular booth, furnished in red buttoned leatherette. (This quickly became known as the 'Strip Booth'. Don't know why.).

The Pit, a sunken amphitheatre, with bean-bags, grass carpet, projector and write-on walls.

But my favourite amber space ended up being The Club. A dark, sexy and surprising, wood floored antidote to the stark white and steel of the ‘factory floor’.

For cost reasons I'd been asked to choose from a selection of furnishings from via the 'preferred corporate suppliers'. But these weren't particularly nice, or particularly cheap. For the main space I'd sourced all the old Danish furniture myself from eBay etc, but for the club we needed something a little special.

We called on interior design firm White Linen to help us out. They designed bespoke sofas and chairs covered with lush, dark velvets and found some amazing wallpaper and curtain fabrics which finished the area off nicely.

The Club

The quiet working space, the red space, was the final, and possibly most critical challenge.

We designed banks of smallish work-pods, which ended up being known as Panic Rooms, that were big enough for two. Useful for creative teams who want to shut themselves away and talk the nonsense creative people need to talk with impunity.

Panic Rooms

For the planners, many of whom wanted total silence to operate, we created The Library. A silent space in which to really get down to some top level, high level musing.

The Library

The main works only took six months, but the ‘finalising' took a lot longer.

Magnetic paint, write on walls. Projectors to show stuff we found inspiring. Rugs. Light bulbs (don't get me started on light bulbs...).

Galvanised conduit baby, yeah.

The re-furb was basically a second job for over a year.

But it was worth it.

The new environment made staff proud to work there and clients enjoy being there.

Did it help make the work better?

Who knows?

Yes, it's true that soon after the office was finished the agency won a couple of BAFTAs, its first D&AD pencils, became the most awarded agency in the country and reached the top of the new business league.

But hey, that was probably just a coincidence.