SPEAKER_01 0:00

We say no to more clients than we say yes to. When British Airways came along and said we'd like to have a chat, we literally did say, are you sure? Because we really don't want to waste our time. It's mildly terrifying when you're turning down potentially really lucrative pieces of business, but you have to build a brand in the same way as you tell your clients they're not for everyone. We're not for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You've had a very impressive career. You went from leading Grey London to starting Uncommon in 2017. What was the pivotal moment that made you decide to go out and start something new?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

My partners, Natalie Graham and Nils Leonard, we always had a vision of we want to build brands, not just do advertising. But when you're within a holding company, they just want you to do that slither. And that was increasingly frustrating. And so we retired.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

What is it you wanted to do differently?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

We had that sense of we wanted to build brands that we thought deserved to exist in the world. And then we really wanted to.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

If today in 2025 you were starting uncommon from scratch, how would you do things differently?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I think I would be looking very carefully at how I was building AI into the process. It terrifies me on one hand. On the other hand, I look at it as an incredible tool.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

When you talk about a lot of time and money, how much are you spending on a pitch like that? What is the success rate?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Generally, the conversion rates are terrible in the industry. Ours is Lucy.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Welcome to Agency Giants. Thanks very much for having me. You've had a very impressive career. You went from leading Grey London to now starting Uncommon in 2017. What was the pivotal moment that made you decide to go out and start something new?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

There are quite a few things that actually led up to it. I'd actually been asked to do startups two or three times before, and it had never felt like the right time or the right people. At Gray, I worked with my partners now, both Natalie Graham and Nils Leonard, and we got along well, and there was a good chemistry, and we're all very different, but you know, we clicked. And I think just increasingly we got annoyed or sort of worried about two or three things. Firstly, we wanted to be able to pick and choose which clients we wanted to work with and who we were going to spend our time making them famous, building their brands for them, rather than just, you know, inheriting whoever you've you've kind of been sent by the network. So that was a really important thing. Second, we'd done something called Volvo Life Paint, which was a piece of work we did for Volvo where we created uh a paint that lit up in headlights and it was for cycle safety, and it was to really talk about, spark a conversation about Volvo's safety credentials. And that had taken us about 18 months to get off the ground, and we'd had to have lots of discussions because instead of being paid for our time, we wanted to take a pound for every can sold. Um, and trying to get that through the holding company system was almost impossible. And we were like, we really want to see if we can do more of that kind of work. And then again, when you're sitting within a holding company, we always had a vision of we want to build brands, not just do advertising. So whether that's design, events, experiences, CX, advertising, any of it. But when you're within a holding company, they just want you to do that slither because there's somebody else doing all of that stuff. And that was increasingly frustrating. So we were sitting there going, we want to be able to choose which clients we want to work with. We think we could do more, look at it in a different way. We think there's probably lots of different business models we haven't explored, and that just became increasingly difficult in that system. And so at some point you've got to back yourselves. Um, and so yeah, we resigned. In fact, we resigned the week after Cannes, and it was that Cannes was the week of the Brexit referendum result. So our timing was horrific. Uh, it was quite a scary time to think, oh my god, we're gonna be starting an agency in a time of economic turmoil.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

But it went well and it all paid off. So when you just started the three of you and you came together and you presumably strategized on the brand identity for Uncommon and how you wanted to be perceived in the marketplace, what is it you wanted to do differently?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Um well, I mean, right from the very beginning, we actually wanted to build a brand for ourselves rather than just be a B2B brand and and use our surnames. And, you know, we have a logo, we have an actual I, we designed it, we have a name that that means something. Um and that's quite rare in in the advertising world. So I think we had that sense of we wanted to build brands that we thought deserved to exist in the world. So that was about picking the people we wanted to work with, and we wanted to see if we could build some of our own brands. So, you know, we built a brand called Halo, which was the world's first fully compostable coffee brand, um, and tried a few other things and eventually ended up actually investing in an accelerator program called Unrest, which is dedicated to impact-led startups and to closing the funding gap for you know female and minority founders. And there's been 70 companies that have gone through that now. So I think we wanted to build our own brand, choose which brands we thought deserved to exist and make them great. Um and then we really wanted to try and actually build some of those brands from scratch, all of which I think we've we've done to a degree. Yeah. So there were quite a lot of big reasons why we wanted to do it, not just think about advertising.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Whatever your your original strategy was clearly worked very well for you because you managed to scale up very quickly and you've now got over 150 team members, probably an awful lot more than that now. Over 300. Over 300. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, across London, New York, and Stockholm.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Amazing. Yeah. What was the driving force behind that quick growth? Because many agencies try and don't achieve that.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Um, I think probably three things. One, we had a real clarity of vision. Um, so we knew exactly what we did want to do, and that was to build brands, not just, you know, do ads. Um, two, uh, Nils, my business partner, is phenomenally good at PR. Um and, you know, we wanted to go out and tell that story. Um three, I think we'd all worked together before. So quite often you see uh agencies coming together where maybe two of the three or some of them have worked before. We all had worked together before. Uh, we'd been around the block before, we'd built a lot of global brands, you know, been in the industry quite a long time, knew a lot of people, uh, had quite a lot of clients who, you know, were keen to kind of go, okay, I think you guys are good at some point. I'd love to work with you. So we had all of that going for us. Um, and then I think we also got lucky. So our first client, which was Ovo Energy, we did a load of work with them actually to think about what they could say, because they'd been a challenger brand which had never really cut through as much before. And we talked to them about the fact that they should be focusing on renewable energy. And that was something I certainly felt quite passionate about. They didn't just sell renewable energy, but they did have a really good renewable tariff and had higher proportions, all of that sort of good stuff. And we did an ad that really sort of announced very loudly who they were, um, and you know, talked about renewable as unstoppable and getting people to really get mad, get angry, and actually do something and switch to renewable. And it was, you know, with a thrash metal track, very noisy. It worked phenomenally well. And I think people went, oh, okay, these guys are absolutely determined to do what they've said they're gonna do. And so we were lucky that, and I guess disciplined, that the vision we'd set out, our first piece of work absolutely delivered on.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

And then how do you leverage that as an agency? You get like a home run piece that works really well. How do you, in a tangible sense, leverage those results to bring in new clients and say, hey, we really are doing well?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Well, I think we'd we'd already had quite a few clients, you know, say, look, we'd love to be your, you know, work with you, but quite a few of them were sitting within very large organisations. Uh large businesses don't like taking a risk until something is proven. I think as soon as that piece of work came out, and it worked really hard for that client. I mean, the results were phenomenal. You could literally see the kind of uh, you know, hits on the website, the conversions, the switching going up straight away. Um, I think they were able to go, these guys are really good. They've got a track record, here's their first bit of work. I talked to you about them before, but now I can actually get them through maybe a big procurement system within a big organization like a, you know, a Google or a whatever. So those sort of things started to happen, those clients that we'd been talking to for a while. And then we got really lucky again, actually. Um, somebody I knew a bit from strategy circles called me up and said, Oh, I think I've got an interesting brief on ITV. It's a bit of a brand strategy project. Would you be up for it? And we went in and met everyone, and we met Dame Carolyn McCall, who was the new CEO of ITV, and she was marketing savvy and could see the potential of, okay, these guys seem good, and actually having somebody who's new and hungry might be of real value to us. And so they were our first really big corporate clients. And again, we did really interesting work for them. We did some lovely, you know, brand work and promos, and then we helped them launch what's called Britain Get Talking, which is the biggest mental health initiative in the UK and has been ever since, actually. Um, and we paused live TV, did a silent ad break, turned Britain's Got Talent into Britain Got Talking, and told people, you know, maybe take a break and actually talk to the people in your in your you know living room while you're watching telly and reconnect, because that's the single best thing you can do for your mental health. Sounds like really obvious stuff, but back in 2018, pre-pandemic, no one was talking about mental health in the UK. So again, I think you know, that was our first big corporate client, and somebody great took a risk on us, you know. Rufus, Claire, Carolyn were phenomenal clients. Um so I I think it is that steady thing each time you kind of go, right, okay, but then we did a retailer B and Q, so you've shown you can do the engine of a big retail client. Then we started to do some global work, and then it it ticks up. But you we every year we'd start because it's largely a project-based business, uh at least to begin with. You start with a hit list, you start with thinking about who you'd like to work with, how you could help, why you might be able to do something different than anyone else out there.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Has it always been a natural progression in unlocking the next tier of client in the sense that the opportunity has just come around at the right time? Or are you, when you talk about that hit list, like approaching from like an ABM perspective as well and proactively trying to secure brands that that you want to work with?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah, we're quite intentional about it. We don't always know, and lots of stuff comes along that you, you know, when British Airways came along and and said, you know, we'd like to have a chat, we were like, Are you sure? Because, you know, we'd seen those pitches go round and they usually went to a big holding company, not to an independent agency. Um, and again, we were quite punchy with them. Uh we literally did say, Are you sure? Because we really don't want to waste our time if you're just going to want to have a big, long-drawn-out pitch that is going to spend an enormous amount of time and money. Um, and you're only ever going to work with a big holding company because you need all of that infrastructure. Um, but they were a dream client because it's, you know, it's flying the flag. They're the British flag carrier. So you get to have a point of view not just on them, but on how we all want Britain to be perceived around the world, which is just like a brilliant brief if you can land it right. So, yeah, we we were quite intentional about stuff and also quite deliberate. We'd say no to as many clients, more clients than we say yes to, which I think is really rare. Um, but yeah, that takes a lot of confidence and it's mildly terrifying quite often when you're turning down potentially really lucrative pieces of business. But it, you know, you have to build a brand in the same way as you tell your clients they're not for everyone, we're not for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah, it's really important. We've got a wide variety of watches from kind of agencies at all stages, and people that haven't yet started an agency, even people that are kind of at mid-level, much fewer agencies who are at the corporate level. And I think it's always I think it'd be very interesting for people to understand um what the pitch format looks like on going for, let's say a project like BA, like how long did that take to come into fruition? And when you talk about a lot of time and money, like how much are you spending on a pitch like that? And not getting ahead, but beyond that as well, what is the success rate? So, like how much are you willing to put yourself on the line from a time and financial perspective to maybe not even get in the return?

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah. Um well, I mean, generally the conversion rates are terrible in the industry. Um, ours is way above average. And I think it is because we're very intentional about those. And we are also quite punchy with the clients to begin with. You know, like we will say, but are you sure? We're not sure this is a good fit, um, right from the very first meeting. Whereas I think a lot of people are will just, you know, want to take in anything. Um, and that I think also changes the power dynamics with those kind of things. But you know, I think the average hit rate is, I don't know, 20% or something. Ours is much, much higher than that, has varied between, I guess, 75 and 90, 200, you know, literally. We also have a lot of people who approach us directly without a pitch. But a pitch like BA, I think we felt it was a bit stopstart because it was during the pandemic and you know, there were various exercises. So some of it was actually very quick. Um, I think we met them at a chemistry meeting and did a fair bit of work before that, you know, but in a very quick, like 10-day turnaround. And then there was a period where I think, you know, they had to go round the houses and then shortlist. And then there was sort of another couple of stages. So, all in all, it probably took nearly a year, but it wasn't um, it wasn't like we were working flat out for that year. There were sort of short chunks of quite kind of um concentrated work. You're not necessarily spending that much in hard costs, but the opportunity costs of the most senior people in the business spending a lot of time on something is what really counts. Um, and so you do spend a lot of time. Um, and and that is, you know, it's a big it's a big financial commitment, a really large one on something like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

If you were to speculate on days or hours on how much time went into that from the understanding.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

We did do the analysis ages ago. It's a lot. I mean, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I mean, speculate just to give a visualization.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

God, I mean, you know, 50 grand, a hundred grand, I don't know, in terms of time cost.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Time cost. Time cost. And but days or or weeks worth of time.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

A week's worth of time. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

I just think that'll be very interesting for people to hear.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And then that process looks like what? An initial strategy build that you're essentially coming, you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

It's a chemistry meeting, it's unpaid, you, you know, they may sort of say, What do you think we should do? But they'll give you broad questions, you show what you think are relevant case studies, and then give them a perspective from the outside. Sometimes they set you a detail brief, sometimes it's uh just a tell us what you think. I think what's unusual about us is we are very, very fast. And we, I think, came back very quickly. I can't, I don't think it was in the initial chemistry, but it wasn't far off it with three routes. And I don't think anybody else had even started uh putting pen to paper. We'd already come back with three, of which one ended up being the platform we've actually run with a British original, which um which uh so and then I think what we also are very good at is we think about it absolutely as a brand, not as a piece of advertising. So can you define that? So, right, what might the email from a CEO look like that would be different once you had this platform? How might it affect the in-flight experience? You will see a British original menus, you will see on the IFE the in-flight entertainment, they now have a British original section where you can watch original British content. Um, it might impact how you feel about the lounge, what you might want to create as an experience in there, um, what you might do for internal awards, uh any of that stuff, as well as here's how it might show up in persuading people to take a flight to the UK, choose a sale, da la. So there will absolutely be that hardworking kind of commercial stuff too. I think we came back with some commercial ideas about how you might think about sale differently as a result of that, too. So it will be right across everything rather than just a piece of advertising.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

It must be very exciting and enjoyable projects to work on. Well, they're fab.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

I mean, there is nothing more fun than reimagining a brand and a brand that you think can make a real difference. And, you know, there are those. We've just started working with BT, British Telecom, and again, it's another national treasure. And how we feel about those brands is a reflection of how we feel about everything in the country at the moment. Um, and so they are they're really exciting to work on those kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Do you have to get deeply involved in data and understanding or surveying people to understand their perspective? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Varies across, but yes, we will look at, you know, a real mix, everything from qual research to quant to you know getting somebody to look at all the Reddit comments on customer service of a particular brand or whatever it might be, uh social listening, all of that stuff. Um, so yes, you will do it. I mean, for for BA, uh, we looked at what the perceptions of Britain were around the world. Um, and originality is one of the things that's attributed to Britishness. You know, we've got an incredible track record of you know artists, musicians, whether it is you know, Bowie to the Beatles, Stormsea to Shakespeare, you know what I mean? That there's a lot of originality and wanting to kind of feel like that could show up in the brand. So it'll be different. And then, you know, for a brand like JD. Sports and all the youth culture brands, they'll be much more looking at right, what's the opportunity? You know, Gen Z are really, and young kids are very often kind of badly stereotyped in the media. How do we show that they're really not what you think they are? And getting that right for a brand like JD and thinking about what Christmas might mean and how there might be a completely different view of that and showing that audience is uh in a in a really positive light, different opportunity, but equally important.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

What's the hit rate like for a campaign of that size? Like I'm because you and the brands are taking on immense risk in in getting involved in some of these projects. Do you find that there is a risk of a negative hit rate? And can you think to a project that you felt maybe was a little bit risky that actually ended up pulling off well?

SPEAKER_01 22:53

I mean, we always go into things uh having done our due diligence. You know, we'll have done our research, we'll have done all of that kind of stuff. Um, but the opportunity cost, I think, of not doing something provocative, different that's going to show up is much, much higher because you're just pouring cash down the drain. Um, there's a guy called Adam Morgan who's done a lot of work with Peter Field on the cost of dull. Um, and they estimate it's sort of like 10 million pounds, is what on average it will cost a brand who is boring in that in their advertising versus a brand who does something interesting, it will cost them 10 million pounds less. And that's a sort of average in the UK from all the data they've looked at. So I think the cost of not doing something good is actually high. You've got to spend a lot more to cut through. It is hard though, when you're going to ITV, look, we're gonna be out there talking about mental health and asking people to, you know, pause live TV, get Anton Deck, telling people to have a you know, we're gonna be silent so that you can talk to those people. Oh, that's a big risky thing to do. Um, but again, we work with charities, we work with Mind and Young Minds, and we did a lot of due diligence before we went out and did that. Um, we did a big campaign with Google where we we were talking about British identity just after the pandemic, and we had Marcus Rashford in that, and positioning Google search as a safe space to ask those kind of questions that you might not be necessarily comfortable asking everybody, but you know, you can ask in search. Those sort of things, again, you know, people might think what right does Google to have to do that? But actually, that is one of the massive benefits of a search engine. You can kind of discreetly ask those questions you maybe feel like you should know the answer to, but you don't. Um so yeah, they are, but the risk of not doing something that's going to get noticed is far higher.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Do you so you're initially getting involved in brand strategy? And really what I find so interesting about this is so many agencies stay very surface level on just building on top of something that already exists. Let's create some great creative that fits to this existing narrative and so on. And so I love how deep you're getting involved in it. I I read somewhere that you created a fragrance in lockdown that was like a can you talk on that quickly?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah. Um was a collab with um the Earl of East to make candles and stuff like that. Um and um, you know, we'd spotted that uh a lot of people in hospitality were losing their jobs. Um and so we created uh candles, a range of candles that smelt like the things you couldn't do. Festivals, pubs, cinema. Um so they all had a slight twist, like smell of shimmering portaloo in the kind of festival one and slight smell of weed, whatever else, you know, popcorn smell for the cinema, that kind of stuff. And and then the money, um, the money from the profit of that went to hospitality trust, um, which is a charity in that space. So it's about sort of, you know, thinking creatively about what we could do, what how can we use our skills um in that kind of world and that environment. And I just think that is that kind of thing of we always talk about clients come to us, and most of our clients come in a moment of change. We're not just selling them a 2% better ad campaign, we're helping them reimagine how that brand might matter, what it could be that it would really people would start to love it again. And so you can't do that with just some ads. I mean, ads are a really important bit of it, don't get me wrong. They're the the way people get to learn about this stuff. But if it's just at that surface level, it's not going to make the change you need.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

If people coming in for that transformation, does it make it difficult for retention? Do you find that most projects end up being short to midterm rather than um we've got a real mix.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So, you know, we've worked with ITV for years and years and years. That was a kind of you know, 2019, I think the first work launched there. Uh we've been working with BA now since the pandemic, so middle of the pandemic, so that's quite a long time. JD Sports, we've been working with for a number of years, EA, we've been working with for a number of years. Then we've got what we would call repeat offenders, um, who, you know, will come to us for a big project when they need it, and then they'll come back again in 18 months' time. Um, but they don't necessarily need us all the time. Um, you know, we've just done a big campaign for Google, which was launching AI mode search um uh AI overviews rather, and um that idea of you can search like never before, because the ways you can search on Google have changed radically. We hadn't worked with them for about two years, but you know, then there was a kind of pick-up call, actually, now's an interesting time for us to be working together again. So I think we have quite a lot of clients like that as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Do you find that some clients you're created a fantastic initiative for? And then there is a disconnect on when you then hand over the torch and then maintaining that new kind of brand purpose and not not massively, because I think on both sides it's a real commitment to do something in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

And so you know them pretty well, you've got quite senior relationships with them, and and they kind of know why we're working together. And so it's in their interest to then, whether it's you know their internal studios or whatever it might be, to um to keep using that. Um and I think we all know that the you know, the data again around consistency, whether it's in advertising using the same distinctive brand assets, whether it's you know, Monzo using, you know, the coral colour or whatever it might be, there is a real value, proven value in sticking to those things.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

It's very clear that you and your fellow co-founders have a very strong ethos on how you want to tackle the agency world and the kind of clients you want to work with and the and the service you want to bring. How have you managed to distill that across the entire team from like a cultural perspective?

SPEAKER_01 29:45

One of the hardest, it's one of the hardest things. Um I mean, I think uh we're because we're very clear about what we want to do and um what good looks like, I think that does mean that people who are attracted to come to work for us are clear about why they're coming to work for us. So I think that does make it easier, and because the kind of work you you look at what the work we've done is and it does align with what we talk about. And so I I do think people know what they're coming in for, but it's hard. You you always get that sense of um, I think people almost have to deprogram a little bit when they arrive. Uh, it is fast and furious, it's much blurrier because it might show up as a design project, it might show up as a CX project. We do all the BA and IAGL, CRM, you know, we just help do the new visual identity for the exec club, which has been rebranded as the BA Club. So projects can really morph and shape, and I think you have to have people who are very confident in their abilities because they don't necessarily know what they're going to be chucked at the next day, but they've got to be able to be really confident in applying those first principles, and you know, it'll work. Um, so I I think it's one of the hardest things, but we always say to people, they will not, you know, such an important thing. We're not here for that long. We don't necessarily work for, you know, we work for a a lot of years and we spend a lot of time at work. Um, and so you want to make sure that people are doing the kind of best work of their careers, and that's probably why they come to us.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

What are your main culture pillars?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

We have what we call our cheat codes. Um, so we have kind of documented them through. Uh, you know, I think we talk a lot about sense of ownership. Um, you know, that it is on it's sort of on all of us to drive it through. You've got to imagine and treat that brand, that project as if it was yours. Um, we talk a lot about, you know, that kind of audacity. We talk about as a woman I think is amazing, Caudez Devlin, who's a set designer and a design, everything from working on the royal court theatre to stage sets for Kanye and Stormsey, and and she talks about in any brief, there's always a constraint. Yeah, with Royal Court Theatre, it's got they've got £100, they haven't got any money. Uh, with somebody like uh Kanye or a Stormsey, it's the fact you're gonna have to pack that stage set onto a bunch of trucks, truck it around the world, and then set it up again. She talks about you have to be pushing everything, dancing on the edge of what is possible, doing something that hasn't been done before, otherwise it's just gonna be familiar and forgettable. And so we are always talking to people about right, how can we push this to be something people haven't seen before? So they're gonna notice it, remember it, feel it. It's gonna mean something to them. And that is really hard because you're asking our people and our clients to be pushing on the edge of what is possible. Um, so you know, we expect a lot of people, but the benefit of that is you're gonna produce something that people are gonna love. So it's sort of, I think it's being eyes wide open that that is what our culture is. We'll push really hard. Um, you need to have that sense of ownership, you need to feel comfortable with that ambiguity of a project might start over here and end over here. Um, so yeah, but I think it's clear.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah, nice. So creativity is obviously embedded throughout the entire business. You mentioned a project with um Google relating to AI to some degree. How do you feel about AI and creativity and what that does for humans?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not gonna lie, it terrifies me on one hand, and I worry about you know, my daughter's generation and whether or not they'll all be on UBI or you know, whatever. On the other hand, I look at it as an incredible tool. Um, I mean, I see what AI is not gonna be able to do, at least not in the the very, you know, near or midterm future. It can take what already exists and help churn out more of the same. But we are talking about moments of change for clients and helping them reimagine what a brand might look like. AI is not good at that. And we're also talking about the fact that we want to create experiences. Now, that could be a piece of advertising, it could be a lounge, it could be an experience or an event, it could be an installation. We're talking about trying to create stuff people love right across the board. And again, AI might be able to help you churn out, and we use it, by the way, on a client like BA to suck from their dynamic pricing, make sure that we're using AI to serve out all their, say, a lads so that the right people get at the right time, the right pricing. We are absolutely, that makes sense. No one wants to do that kind of process manually, it would be nuts. Um, so it's incredibly useful, but it's not going to help us reimagine that brand. It's not going to help you think what a lounge experience might be that's really memorable, or how you create an event or a safety video. It's just not there yet.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

I wonder if, with the data that you have across all the clients that you've worked with, though, you would be in a unique position to be able to enable AI to be able to come up with some pretty good ideas because you can demonstrate to a model a level of creativity that maybe it doesn't know itself.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yeah, I we haven't seen it yet. We are constantly running tests and and you know, regularly we will kind of do all of those things like write us a slogan on dot dot dot. And you know, it's almost for us, that's almost a benchmark of then don't do it because that is average. Uh actually, System One have done a really interesting piece of work where they sucked in all the pizza ads and got AI to create a pizza ad. And what they found was no great surprise, that ad performed dead on the average performance of every single pizza ad. That is how AI works. Um, so if you want average, you want to do something really cheaply and you don't care if it's average, yeah, knock yourself out, go use AI. But if you want to produce something that absolutely people are gonna love, it's gonna stand out, it's gonna be way better than average, that's when you need to come to greater people. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

For you personally, what has been your most rewarding part of the journey with Uncommon so far?

SPEAKER_01 37:05

I mean, I I look at I just love a lot of the work we've done. I still get excited about creative work. So every time there's a new campaign that comes out that's a different shape or size or does something different. Um, you know, we did something for Ecover, which was a reware chair that won various prizes in Dutch Design Week. Ecova is a you know um environmentally friendly laundry cleaner, and they are amazing as clients. They kind of want that message to be out there: don't wash your clothes as much, because washing them too much means they end up in landfill sooner than they should. And so we made a chair to dramatise the fact that I think pretty much everyone has, I certainly do, in my house a chair in my bedroom where I dump the clothes that I've worn, don't put them back in the cupboard, but I know I could wear again, if that makes sense. And so we designed a chair that literally helps you do that. So it's got kind of um things that tip up that you could hang lots and lots of clothes on so you re-wear your clothes rather than them sitting in a pile or or getting rewashed. So things like that are just I've never done that. I don't know how to design a chair. Um, I I love that that when the studio produces stuff we've never done before, and I get to learn things. And we've just hired a new global head of design, Lisa Smith, who's amazing, who's done like some of the best rebranding work for people like Burger King and Chabani and stuff like that. And our design practice is super interesting because that takes you into a world where we're starting to do not just, you know, pack design or visual identity for brands, but we've just been looking at flagship store designs for the ordinary. Um, and there's a really interesting space there where, again, what's the stuff people love? It's probably not advertising. It is probably what it's like to go into a store an amazing experience or an event or stuff like that. And I think there's huge growth actually as we get more inundated with digital slop. I think people run towards things like the reware chair physical thing or a store or that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

When you're saying that, I'm just seeing in my head so many different subsections of the business being tapped into on a specific project. Structurally, how are you managing that? Do you work on like pod systems where an individual pod is allocated to a specific client, or uh is our are time and resources shared across everybody in the teams? How how how does let's say a company like The Ordinary, who eventually there ends up being some kind of a uh like a store design, and presumably there's all many other elements to that project as well? How do you allocate that across the company?

SPEAKER_01 40:03

So there's a core, I mean, we call ourselves a studio, not an agency for a reason, and that is because we like to make a lot of stuff, and we have a much more fluid model. So um we will have a core team, which will be strategy creative, business management and production on any account, but then you know, depending on what shape that project takes, you will get that kind of flexing up and down according to the studio model. So, you know, the ordinary we did a we've done a number of campaigns, each one challenging one of the flaws of the beauty industry. The last one was kind of challenging why, you know, they all use celeb so much and the cost that that builds into the product. So we did a thing in in New York and uh filled a store in New York with money, and it was to dramatize the amount of money that goes on pointless celebrity endorsements. We got people into the store, the physical store. So it was a it was a you know installation that ran for a week. Um, and people came in, got a dollar each, and experienced sort of uh some of the ordinary projects. But I mean they had people queuing round the block all day, every day while it was open uh in Soho. And that again was yeah, that core team who've done traditional advertising posters, who've done um, you know, stunts like that, and who've done retail design, that core team doesn't change. But then the production people and the design people or the creatives involved will flex beyond that core team.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

That makes sense. So, but the core team, there's not duplications of the core team, the core team are the core team and they work on all projects?

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Core team, you know, for any particular client, they'll probably work on two or three different clients, but core team and then everybody else flexes. And that'll be true in British Airways, the core team is bigger, obviously, because that's a massive global client. Uh, but again, it will flex up and down if we're doing a design project for them, if we're doing more of a CRM bit. And so through the year, depending on what sort of stuff we're doing, the kind of outside of that team will flex quite differently.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

That makes sense. And are you to let's say there's a core team over here? Are they is this one team that's being allocated to one account, or is this a team that's being segmented by, you know, a specific type of business that they're working with or a type of initiative?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

We generally like people to not just work on one thing because I don't think it's particularly healthy. Um, I think one of the reasons you come into our business is because you actually like seeing different sectors and doing different kinds of work. Um, and also it's good to work with different people. So the combination of that core, you know, three or four people will sometimes you'll have them working on something and then one of them will be part of another core team, and the other one will be part of another core team. Um, so yeah, they'll they'll be working usually on, you know, maybe one big one and then a couple of other smaller ones, something like that. So you're you know, one of the benefits of us versus like big consultancies like an Accenture or whatever, they have very vertical, you know, you become a media and telco expert, and that's all you ever work in. We get to go, oh, interesting. Airlines do it like this. Beauty industry does it like this. Why is that? What can they both learn from each other? And you spot different kinds of patterns and interesting things, which I think is. Super helpful for clients and for us.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

From like a project management perspective, what do you use?

SPEAKER_01 44:08

We do have, I mean, we have Float and various other things. Float is a project management tool. It's a well, it's a resource allocation tool, those sort of things. We have project directors, account men who organise all of that stuff. Sounds like something you stay away from. Where I can, I stay away from that. Stay creative. Well, I'm strategy by background. So yeah, that is definitely not my strong suit. But yes, we do use all of that, and resource management is one of the trickiest bits because actually the casting of those teams, that's about chemistry, not just about resource allocation, and people forget that at their peril. Those core teams just have to gel. And that's, you know, that's people, that's alchemy. That can't be done by, oh, it needs to be 5% of this person to be the most efficient. It has to be done by hand. Do this crew get on well? Are they we find a lot of ours? It's a the best ones are slightly weird in that they don't necessarily, you don't think, oh, they would be a natural fit. But there's just something magical that comes from that.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

That's amazing. Does the core team get incentivized on project success?

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Um, to a degree, in that, you know, we obviously overall as a studio, we have bonus pots and stuff like that. So, but it's not, you know, we're not incentivising people in terms of, you know, like a commission or whatever. But there is a sense of, yeah, there's a there's an ability for that to to kind of come out in the wash at the end of the year. If we've had a good year collectively as a business and certain people have done really well, then that is when we'll use our bonus part.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Makes sense. We're getting slightly nitty there from a selfish perspective because I'm educating myself. Um but zooming out uh a bit and thinking like, okay, if today in 2025 you were starting Uncommon from Scratch or starting an agency from scratch, how would you do things differently maybe today than how you did things originally?

SPEAKER_01 46:25

I think it'd be really hard actually starting today in the UK. I don't think the UK economy is in a in a great place. Um it's probably lowest confidence I think it's been at for a while. Which sometimes is a good thing because clients are looking to save money, and small startups are very often a great way to save money because you've got a bunch of highly motivated people who are desperate to make a name for themselves. Um, I think I would be looking really very carefully at how I was building AI into the process, because there is no doubt that you know there is a huge amount of benefit, whether it is prototyping ideas, uh, whether it is doing your background research, that kind of stuff, um, whether it is efficient production delivery. I mean, we use it right the way through the mix. Um, but that is hard because it's quite a big investment. Um, and so I think that's that's tough. I I genuinely, if I was starting up now, I think I'd be starting a slightly different shaped agency where I would be much more looking at design, events, experiential things that AI can't create rather than the sort of you know, the digital performance end of the advertising business. That is where AI is going to kind of just go vroof because that is the stuff, you know. Once you've set a template, it can run and run and run. Um, whereas I I don't think it can create uh, you know, something like we relaunched EA when it split from FIFA as EAFC and did a brand new visual identity for that. And to launch it, we did the clubhouse where we got journos, developers, gamers, footballers, all to experience the new brand. And it was this idea of for the fans. So it had the control triangle symbol that was at the heart of the game, became the heart of the new visual identity, showing that you know, as we split from FIFA, we were giving control back to the fans. Um, and obviously, if you've got an idea like that, you need a clubhouse that can bring all the fans together, and that's what that kind of experience was. And so I think I would be focusing on more stuff like that. Um, because I I sort of think that is what people are looking for in a world of you know, digital crap, those sort of experiences where you get to come together and belong and share stuff. I think that's really important.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Yeah, I love that. What's the long-term vision now for Uncommon?

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Well, we've only been going in the US for 18 months and Stockholm for about the same. Actually, a bit more than 18 months in New York and Stockholm more like 18 months. Those businesses are already growing a lot, but they're much, you know, we're eight years old, they're two years old, sort of thing. So they've got a big growth trajectory. I think doubling down on uh all of that stuff, building out of our design practice gets me very excited. And we do look at that interesting space. What became apparent, I think, when we started to do a bit of things like retail store design or looking at how we might help uh talk about how a brand might show up in a lounge experience for BA or stuff like that. A lot of those practices, like whether it's architecture or interior design, they're brilliant at what they do, but they don't necessarily understand brand. We're really good at figuring out how to leverage those two things together. Uh, and I think that is quite unusual. Um, so I think we'd love to do more of that kind of work. I get very excited about that as well because it's new to me and new to us, and we find brilliant collaborators to do stuff with. Um, but it it means we're all learning new things. So I think there's a you know, there's a massive area to grow into there, which is different and exciting. And I don't think anyone is doing it particularly well right now. But I think that is true when you look at what does a flagship store look like today. You know, yeah, there's Apple everyone talks about, but who else is doing that, interestingly? What's the role of a store today? Those sort of things are really fascinating questions that I think when you bring something like architecture together with brand, that's really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Is there any motive to be acquired?

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Well, we already took some investment. So two years ago we sold a chunk of our business to Havas to fund our expansion to the US and to Stockholm. Because we did the numbers and looked at it and went, oh my god, we would be putting our entire business at risk in starting in the US if we didn't take investment. So we did that then.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

We've got some quick fire questions. First one is what brand would you love uncommon to work with that you haven't?

SPEAKER_01 51:52

I'm unusual in that I would really love uh I like a what I'd call a kind of a Phoenix brand or a dusty brand, a brand that you wouldn't expect to turn around those kind of brands is really, really fun. Um, so you know, actually I'm just overjoyed we're getting to work with British Telecom BT because that brand's, you know, been sort of under the radar for the last couple of years, and to bring back that is a kind of exciting. I get very excited about those kind of things. I think there's probably quite a few in the dusty retail category that I would love to bring back because you look at the British High Street and it's um it's maybe not the who's who's who's looking particularly dusty that you're you're you'd love to blow off. Um I mean, look, I'd love to have a go at sort of one of those brands like a John Lewis or someone like that, but it's I don't think it's been as loved as it maybe. It's a great national treasure, those kind of things. But you know, there are quite a lot across the I would say the retail space that I'd love to work on.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Only so many years you can uh rely on the annual Christmas advert.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Yeah, and I just think the high street is a kind of you know, it's a bit of a tragic place at the moment. Um, I'd love to work on actually Brand Britain, to be quite honest as well. I think we need uh an injection of energy and creativity and positivity in the UK. Um that would be amazing, uh selfishly. I'd love to have a go at that. Um there's honestly, there are so many I'd like to, but I think those are interesting. We've just started working with car brands. That's a category that used to do the most interesting advertising. I worked on Volkswagen a bit when it was in its heyday at BMP, DDB. When was the last time you remembered a decent car ad? Um, that is an advertising-y type thing, but again, what's that? You know, dealerships are dusty, awful places as well. So it just feels like there are lots of places where people have sort of either gone a bit global and forgotten to think about why something's relevant here and how you could matter here. Um so yeah, I I mean lots of so many opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

Um one book that you would say has had the biggest impact on your career?

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Oh god. Oh, um, good question. Uh I mean, I I think I can limit it to one. I read all the time. I read lots of business books, lots of, you know, just wonderful books about novels, whatever it might be. Um, and all of them impact how I think about things. I mean, I'm a nerdy strategist, so it'll probably be a collection of, you know, stuff like the IPA effectiveness books or something like that, you know, all of those case studies which show how brands work, how advertising drives growth, that kind of stuff. Um, the work that Les Binett did in the long and short of it, showing that fame and emotion are the biggest drivers of growth for brands. Is that probably one of the most impactful books? And then I guess I'd go Daniel Kahneman, um, his work obviously on how the brain works, neuroscience. Uh, again, really powerful in shaping how he thinks about brands and creativity.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Amazing. The most underrated skill as an agency founder.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

I'm not sure it's underrated, really, but uh, I mean, I I think quite kind of slightly deluded vision for thinking, I think this is what we could create, doesn't exist at the moment. Fuck it, let's give it a go and see if we can do it. I think you need that. Um, but to be honest, I think the most powerful thing, I don't know how those people do it on their own. It's the chemistry between the three of us that works incredibly powerfully because we all bring different skills that actually we argue a lot. I mean, people in the in our business laugh about the oh my god, mum and dad are arguing. But it's really important because actually, out of that and being very public and very open about it, we argue out a position and get somewhere stronger. Um, whether that is about a piece of creative work, whether it's about a vision for where we want things to go, maybe that's the most underrated thing is how to have a proper argument about something without it being personal or angry or any of those things, but the ability to disagree and get somewhere better. I think too many people put that in a box. And if you do that as founders, it festers and it's toxic. So maybe the ability to argue respectfully and um from a place of, yeah, I absolutely value your opinion, but I think you're fucking wrong on this case, and this is why. And usually we'll get somewhere better as a result of it. I think that may be that may be the most underrated quality.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

My friend Lucas owns an agency called Hambi Media and a creative agency in London, and he calls that kind candor in the company and just that ability to give that feedback to each other and take feedback and be direct with that.

SPEAKER_01 57:56

It's one of our cheat codes is candor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Eve you weren't running uncommon at all. So you woke up tomorrow and the agency didn't exist, what would you be doing?

SPEAKER_01 58:07

I mean, when it I it was funny, when I was uh we when we were thinking about um setting up Uncommon, I'd been offered one job which was to to um take the next step up within grey and and run Europe. They were asking me if I was interested in doing that. Um and then I'd been talking to a client who was retiring and was interested in, you know, would I like to maybe think about going client side and and take a global CMO type role? Um my gut instinct is I'd probably like to have gone client side actually and see what that was like um in a big business. Uh I think holding companies are a tough place to be right now. Um so I think maybe that you know, I when I was young, I secretly sort of thought I'd like to have done architecture, but the closer to that world I get, the more I sort of think actually those projects last for ten years. Yes, you get to create something of lasting legacy that might be there in a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years. But I know I'm a butterfly brain and I love that ability to work on five different things. Um I think I'd get bored sitting on one project for that length of time. I'm not enough, I don't have the patience for it, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

My final question is somewhat answers itself, um, which is one word that sums up Uncommon's mission.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

One word, well, uncommon.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

I would say uncommon, but I'd let's say you cannot use the word uncommon.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

Okay. Well, I mean, I I honestly I feel like our job is putting creativity back into uh into a business that is supposed to be about creativity, but has increasingly just talked about selling capabilities. Um and they're not the same thing. Uh creativity is the thing that it's the only thing that you can actually create something out of nothing. Um and I think people have forgotten that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

Amazing. Lucy, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.