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The CEO Who Wouldn't Put His Name on the Door · GOOD CEOs

• Ollie Scott: Hello there and welcome back to season two, episode one of Good CEOs. This is the season where we're focusing on creativity meeting capital. You hear me speak a lot about the GDP, the global GDP doubling from 5 % to 10 % in the next five years. So who did we invite on as our first guest? Of course, it was the wonderful man, James Greenfield. James Greenfield is the co-founder of Koto and the CEO of Koto. James Greenfield, founder and CEO of Koto. Thank you so much for joining me today. ⁓ Thank you. ⁓ James Greenfield: Nice to be here. Thank you, Ollie. Ollie Scott: You're our first guest of season two on Good CEOs. There's a reason, a real reason behind that. And that is because this season we're focused all around creativity and capital. There is a stat that I speak about quite a lot, which is that the creative economy is going to go from being 5 % global GDP into being 10 % in five years. Whoa, mental. What does that mean? and his co-founders recently took private equity investment from a company Westbridge. and we get straight into that and straight understanding why ⁓ equity, why is private equity interested in the creative economy? What does that mean? What the options a founder has? ⁓ What to look out for in a bad or private equity investor? for people like you who are founders and CEOs of independent or financially backed agencies. And what does that mean you can do and what possibilities are open to other founders and leaders that might be considering being a founder of an agency themselves? You are of the only design in the world, branding agencies, creative companies in the world that has private equity investment. And what other things you consider doing because it's not as clean cut as just taking an investment like a bank loan and then scaling the business. So we do that, we dive in, we speak about James's background with Koto, and then we move into his predictions, which are very, very interesting. I'm intrigued to hear if everyone is going to agree with some of James's controversial predictions. There's a very, very small handful of companies that exist that I imagine that you compete with that have managed to get to this point. I've been quite close to you in ⁓ this process ⁓ with Chairman's searches and everything else. the purpose getting you on here today is to understand why ⁓ and understand what does it to private equity ⁓ as creative company? ⁓ B, and it's more of a subtle I... I really think that there is a negative view on capital and money in the creative economy cohort. ⁓ And then ⁓ obviously, once you've digested and gone through all of that wonderful stuff, we're going to move into your And I asked him for his favourite quote that guided his life. we actually get two, so stay tuned until the very end to hear that. All right, let's get into it. three predictions for the creative economy. So I'm excited. But before we do all of that, I want people that don't know who you are to understand who you are. And so I formed two very easy questions for you to answer. my first question is, James, What is the one piece of work that you're most proud of that have produced personally? James Greenfield: I've produced personally, it probably has to be Airbnb, just because it was a seismic moment in my career and then I was really lucky enough to work with, now there's a brand all the way from when they were just about 500 person startup all the way through to their S1 and their listing. and it's, you know a big chunk of time, did that for five or six years and it's a piece of work that stood the test of time as well. Ollie Scott: Is that your go-to measurement? So when you say like, obviously Airbnb has been a phenomenal company, how do you measure, design that went into that was a commercial success? And ⁓ what led to you feeling proud about that? James Greenfield: we can a of work can be created and it speaks to us in that moment and it's whether it grabs a zeitgeist or it's a brand that's on the way up or it captures like a sporting moment or whatever and we can love it and then maybe in five years time you look at an old awards annual or you know some repository of work or you're looking for something else and you see it and you can still recognize those qualities and recognize that but you understand that actually it belonged to something that was happening at that moment in time or it just felt fresh or it had some attributes to it. I personally have always liked to think about the work that when I was a creative director I wanted it to a bit more elongated than that. I was lucky enough to work ⁓ brand and so therefore longer term was more of a vision. ⁓ wasn't trying to do ⁓ campaign for this, that or whatever. I was trying to create something that stood the test of time. so ⁓ I've always said to the clients, particularly the and the very senior people that the organizations I've worked with is want the fundamentals of this to be in place in a decade's time because you don't want to completely reintroduce yourself to your customers or your potential customers ⁓ your audiences again and again and again. ⁓ want to be building this relationship with them. ⁓ is a pretty one-off company ⁓ ⁓ transcended itself out of the travel... ⁓ domain which I think a lot of travel brands, it's not an area that's particularly well known for strong brand creation. Yeah, there's some beautiful smaller brands and there's some really interesting stuff but my personal theory because... holidays and vacations are so evocative and you've got a load of amazing photography is that that's always the hardest working part of every travel brand. But what actually happens is airlines aside, it all ends up being quite generic. And so therefore Airbnb, we wanted to And there's an argument, is it a tech company? it a hospitality business? My argument these days would be it's more of a hospitality business than a tech business. ⁓ that's probably a little bit controversial. ⁓ for me, think I stand on from that piece of work 13 years on now. it still feels fresh it still does everything that we intended it to. Has it evolved a bit? Yeah of course it has because everything has to evolve in that time and things change and things move on ⁓ ⁓ To me, it's that longevity is strength in it. And, you know, I always come back to this idea that everybody deserves good design. ⁓ that my boss used to say many years ago to me, it's absolutely stuck with me. ⁓ no reason why everything around us shouldn't be ⁓ considered joyful, et cetera. It's just, unfortunately, we are surrounded at times by mediocrity and we have to ⁓ up with it. You know, I stood this morning at my local train station to get my train here and there was five adverts on the other platform staring back at me. All of them were terrible. This is a classic example of we just put up with mediocrity, just like average crap that I could have come up with in an hour. I don't want to be either individually or collectively responsible for doing that. Ollie Scott: So 13 years ago and then three years after then you launched Koto. We're gonna skip ahead. I know it's probably quite painful to do, but 10 years. It was easy. You you launched this thing, you became international, over a hundred people globally, huge brands from Microsoft to, can I say other ones? I'm gonna maybe say Amazon here as well. I'm allowed to say Amazon. that 10 years, this is going to be harder to answer, I think, because you're going to have people that are responsible for doing the work. What is the one piece of work that Koto has produced that has made you go, that is why we did this? James Greenfield: So there's two things that stand out, it's kind of like double the answer. The first thing is... We did the Amazon rebrand two years ago and that's probably the most high profile piece of work that's been done, particularly in the brand consultancy space in recent times. And we managed to land a very effective, cohesive piece of work which you can see in terms of how that brand executes itself day in, day out has been seismic to evolve that and bring that to a place. They're heavy spenders on marketing. They've got a very strong digital presence. I'm a high frequency user. I probably see it a lot and I think it does everything. It's a rare example I think where I think back to moments where we were cracking ⁓ creatively ⁓ made it onto the streets globally, has made it onto the vans, has made it onto the boxes, ⁓ made it onto TV. And so for me, ⁓ one thing come up with a creative vision. It's another thing to then deliver that creative vision through. ⁓ second thing is, ⁓ I can't say too much about this, but we were lucky enough to ⁓ partially involved in LA 28 recently and that's you an absolute bucket. list to be able to be involved in the Olympic Games. we'll be able to tell you more about that as time comes on. Ollie Scott: So that's more one that's in the hopper that's going to be coming out that you're equally proud of as you're a sports fan, also because of the prestige of doing an Olympics logo or branding. James Greenfield: Well yeah, as a kind of early 20s designer who had lots of books and had posters on his wall and all this kind of stuff, know, the Olympic identities were always the pinnacle. Ollie Scott: OK. We're going to move straight into my third question here, which is centered around P.E. And it's quite a broad question, but I'm hoping you can help me answer it. Why do you think private equity is interested in the creative economy? James Greenfield: Because of the quote that you said at beginning of this podcast it's you know a growing share of ⁓ and I think the smart brands are investing in creativity and understanding it as a differentiating I think this isn't the question you asked but my build upon it is we're about to see the floor raised in terms of capability that AI is going to enable brands to do this kind of minimum viable brand a lot quicker a lot easier. companies that want to stand out, that want to be successful are going to have to differentiate themselves even further and so I actually think the creative spend is going to increase at the medium and the bigger size companies that are aware to this and understand that they need to do that. There's that piece which is do you look at the floor or do you look at the ceiling? I think what AI does is it raises the floor. What creativity does is it raises the ceiling I think it's going to be able to allow brands to do that. ⁓ So to come back to the question you asked, PE is interested because they are understanding that it's an increasing importance of spend and so therefore they want to be where people are spending money. Ollie Scott: just on that, it's going to be impossible not to cover AI. I think we're going move on to it at the end. there was a school of thought which was, when all this came out, its possibility of producing what an agency could produce. And I wrote an article recently which was maximizers or replacers, which camp are you sitting in? And actually, in a way, I kind of half stole that from one of your James Greenfield: Thank Ollie Scott: One of the things that you used to say when it first came out is the rising tide on the iceberg thing, right? And I remember saying, you know, even then, that was two or three years ago now. In fact, it was our first ever good CEO session. And you had said, you know, look, if you're freelance copywriter, freelance, you know, you're doing things that are kind of at the other end of the execution scale, it is time to start probably thinking. James Greenfield: Yeah. Ollie Scott: my days might be quite numbered. Whereas, you know, as that ties rising, the higher and closer you are to strategic consultancy and advisory, you might be safer for a while. would you change anything about that school of thought now you've seen AI out in the wild or even clients demanding that you're using it? by that? James Greenfield: No because I think complexity of the task you request from someone defines how well... you have the capability to deliver that with AI. So if I own a hotel and I need to put some local area information to encourage people to come and stay at my hotel because I want them to explore a castle, some gardens, some other stuff, previously I probably would have paid a copywriter to draft some information that would go on the about the local area section on my website. If you're not copywriting minded but you're the marketing manager of that hotel, you can now use AI to do as good a job as that person sat in their barn in Norfolk could have done writing that copy. Now, if you own an international hotel group and you want to create cohesion around the brand of 200 properties you've got, which encourages people to choose that over any of the other numerous places we can spend our hospitality money, what's the problem? that you put into Claude or ChatGPT or whatever your model of choice is that says, how am going to get more people to spend more money in my residences and consider us over the options? Now, if you put that in today, however good your prompt is, you're going to get some standard boilerplate. You should consider doing this, this and this, but everybody has the access to that information. And so therefore, what you do need to do is if you don't have the answer yourself or you don't have a feeling of the answer yourself, is you need to hire consultancy services that are going to help you elevate the experience, whether that's on property, off property, brand, whatever it is. So in a way, if I'm the commissioner of that information through AI, if I fully understand it and I've got the answer, I just can't necessarily make it myself, then I think AI will give you a reasonable answer. That said, if people are choosing hotels based upon the local area guide and everyone's local area guide looks exactly the same, then yet again, the differentiation piece comes in. so no, my position on it is no different than it was previously before. I am massively skeptical about this idea of... AGI and I just don't think we are where people say we are. Yes, it can code but it's coding within an existing frame of something that someone else has created. When it comes to creativity We've all worked with somebody who had that creative breakthrough moment, who said that thing, who did that thing, and it's very hard to pinpoint where that comes from. AI is based upon consensus, bringing many things together, and so therefore all it's gonna do is it's gonna make you a middle point of many things. That's fine if you're naming the features within your dog care app. it'll probably do a pretty good job of that. But if you want to do something that's truly different and truly standing out and truly has something to it, the way I always go back to it is someone was asking me from the advertising background and I was like, if I think of the world's greatest adverts that I personally think of, like my favorite ever is Guinness Surfers, no AI platform in the world is gonna go, yeah, we need to sell this drink from Ireland that has all of these cultural caches and all these things. What we're gonna do is we're gonna do this crazy black and white film with these guys surfing. Ollie Scott: Thank James Greenfield: Guinness isn't even a beer that people associate with drinking at the beach. doesn't make, it's no logical sense and so AI is not going to come to that solution and so therefore no, my position maintains the same. Ollie Scott: Yeah. I always kind of say strategic consultancies one end, through to influencer right at other end. If you were to point at one part of the industry where you'd say, would be trying to evolve quicker, perhaps than either end of those scales, is there a part where you can see it could be under more threat because of AI? James Greenfield: I don't think that I can claim to be an expert in the full gamut of the creative industries and so therefore I think it's quite a hard question for me to answer because I would be putting personal kind of, I guess, preference over things. That said, think anybody that is involved in strategy that already exists that's been set by another partner that is in the facilitation of that execution who is in versioning or anything like that then obviously that is going to be the piece that's going to be under some kind of threat of change but that said if every advertiser in the world has the capability to make multitude of different versions of their marketing assets Ollie Scott: Hmm. James Greenfield: The answer to that is that I'm not, as an advertiser, gonna see an increase of spend with my brand over another brand because everyone has exactly the same opportunities. think actually what it looks the same, this all feels the same, it's all saying the same, I'm actually going to tap out. I saw a graph in the Financial Times recently which had age groups of 15 to 23 off the top of my head and then through every age group and you can see in 2024 mobile use tapped out across every age group. The challenge is not going to be I'm the best on your device, the challenge is going to be getting me onto my device. Ollie Scott: Yeah, this is why we can see a huge rise in experiential. the growth, I know it's revenue because it's very project based. But the growth that we're seeing in experiential, particularly sports, ⁓ US, in that vertical ⁓ is entertainment is up and it's not just entertainment on my phone. It's I want to experience live events and be in real life because I'm so, this thing, this phone is so highly optimized for my attention. ⁓ And no matter how well you optimize that attention and whatever you do, that people still feel drained from being on their mobile phone. So I can only desire for more IRL. ⁓ James Greenfield: This is this podcast because we're recording it the day after Arsenal Premier League in London and ⁓ whether you believe ⁓ one side or other, it's anything between 600,000 and over a million people turned up. ⁓ All of those aren't hardcore Arsenal fans. ⁓ A lot of people want to be there because it's a real life experience, carnival, ⁓ it's being part something. Ollie Scott: up the gunners. No. James Greenfield: That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. I've been a football fan long enough to know that, it's not just because Arsenal haven't won the league for 22 years or whatever, ⁓ because ⁓ a ⁓ digital access world where we can see absolutely everything we want at the drop of the hat, ⁓ no longer got any value to us. ⁓ so therefore we are looking at something Ollie Scott: Hmm. Okay, we're ⁓ gonna move into private equity. did you private equity? James Greenfield: you come back a question, why did I seek investment? ⁓ So I Ollie Scott: Yeah. James Greenfield: Koto and, know, I've said this many times before, but Koto isn't called Greenfield, Matthews and Roden for a reason. I didn't want our name above the door. I want to be associated. ⁓ I if you go to the 20th century, ⁓ the was for creatives of kind of stature was ⁓ there a figurehead and then there was a supporting cast and it was very much, you know, the kind of Picasso or whoever else model. ⁓ And I think ⁓ the industries followed that. you know, and so there's all these famous... ⁓ advertising or design or creative agencies who had surnames above the door and they were forever synonymous with the people that started those agencies. you know, many of the agencies of scale of today still legacy have those names even though many of those people are long gone. I never wanted that personally because I've always believed that creativity is a team game. You know, it's the idea that Johnny Ive single-handedly designed the iPhone. He didn't, you know. He was very influential in it, but there were hundreds, if not thousands of people that designed that device at every moment and everything makes it the ubiquitous thing that we all use every day, But we, the tells this this narrative that exists, which is one person does this because it's easy for us to comprehend this idea of single genius. It's, ⁓ you know, it's ⁓ that kind of statistical quirk, which know, unfortunately if four people die in house fire we can really really associate that with empathetic because there's four people we understand what four people looks like we understand four people's feelings if 10,000 people die in a tragedy we can't comprehend it we almost find it impossible to get our heads around so this idea that hundreds and thousands of people that make something it just it just doesn't sit with us we have to have this idea because that's the narrative that we've had for hundreds of years now and this idea of this person did this or this person did this and you you know you can go back to you know, Christopher Wren doing St. Paul's. Of course he didn't. There was artisans and all these other people. But anyway, so I think why did I take investment? Because I wanted to be true to the history of this company, which was I always wanted it to be more than the three founders. And so the primary concern I had at that moment in time was there was many people that had worked at Koto a long time, in many cases, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, who I thought deserved to be shareholders and to stay around and to kind of continue would have this benefit. The second component was I don't think many agencies or many agency founders are never very good at thinking about tomorrow. I think we're so used to solving our clients needs today which is phone rings, email pings, I've got this ⁓ and then you into kind of ⁓ response mode and creative and you fix it and sometimes it takes two weeks, sometimes it takes six months, sometimes it takes two years ⁓ and you're so in what does today hold. But they're not thinking my agency in five years, my agency in 10 years? ⁓ And I was always of mind that I wanted to be a little bit more strategic about ⁓ an agency and that if you wanted to keep teams together and you wanted to ⁓ have people that ⁓ really how to work together in an effective way, ⁓ you had to make them to be of something. And the first thing I did was I went out and for ⁓ with my co-founders for ⁓ suitable ways which could mean that we could create a wider shareholding. And I met 40 plus different founders who had all been through some kind of change and that's everything from an EOT through to full sales, through to strategic, through to partnership and all pieces. And what I found in private ⁓ yeah I found in private equity was ⁓ almost felt that it had ended up being what they thought it would be like. And to me, I liked the fact that it was quite, and always quite no nonsense as a person, know me reasonably well, I'm very honest, I don't really... pretend otherwise. And so I liked the idea that I knew what the downsides are, but I also knew what the upsides were. And so therefore from this point of view, the feeling for us was this would allow us to create 16 new shareholders. And so therefore we spread the base and it would allow us to achieve some of the thoughts we had about the future of creative group, creative network, however you describe it and how we better serve our clients in that environment. And so therefore, weighing it all up, PE was the right answer for us as long as it was the right PE partner. Ollie Scott: And I want to get into that before we do. It's important to weigh up ⁓ or identify what you weighing up. I mean, for me, you mentioned EOT, employee owned trust. A famous, think John Lewis is in or you've got these big employee owned trusts, callously speaking, very good usually for founder because they get tax free money ⁓ and they sell their shares back to the business. on the whole, much harder for the business and the employees to then get to the the value or the enterprise value that the founder has been valued at. what I've seen, they get quite a bad name for themselves. I know they work in some cases. ⁓ one. ⁓ James Greenfield: Well think just to interject there I think the reason they don't work is because you're trying to take something from somewhere to somewhere else that is so fundamentally different to what it was previously and so therefore I think that's one of the things that people really need to bear in mind when they're looking at acquisition investment or whatever is that you've only gone one way the whole time now you've had ups and downs and lefts and rights and scales but you have really gone one way and suddenly you're telling me that you're going to do 90 degrees and go the other way and you expect nothing to be affected. Ollie Scott: Mm. The second trade, I mean, classic Publicis recently acquired fabric. mean, you could there's loads of different versions of ⁓ trade, but essentially how WPP Omnicom or any of them have grown ⁓ a trade sale. There's also that one in between, which is. know, a private equity backed independent group, there's quite few of now looking at the likes of residents you tempted to consider that as well? James Greenfield: we decided that we'd rather do that ourselves ⁓ and I think the for that is... If you become one asset amongst many, which is totally right for some people, you have to understand how aligned you are with what all of those assets want And in our case, I think when we looked at those... ⁓ you know, in some cases we would be less than 10 % of the overall organisation ⁓ you know, what's governance structure? What's the regulatory structure? ⁓ How is this ⁓ How is this All of those elements had to be considered. And we didn't find example we were happy with the answer to all of those questions. Ollie Scott: I did a thing recently, which is like founder sorry, PE icks and ticks. I didn't really give a chance to do much on the other side, which is founder icks and ticks of okay, go out you're this kind of roadshow numbers are strong, ⁓ you're feeling confident you know that have something that is of value. Companies are potentially offering you things in businesses that you respect. Then you start to open up the private equity channel of conversation. did you pick up on this part of the journey? And I'd love to know like, for the person that's listening to this right now, they're probably a founder that maybe they're considering doing a PE deal at the moment. What did you learn on that journey? And did you pick up any icks? And I you're gonna tell us about some of the ticks that you got from Westbridge. James Greenfield: I think one of the things that is challenging for anyone that's investing in the creative economy is to really understand what we do. I think it is not easy to understand from the outside, particularly some areas. ⁓ think ⁓ you're an advertising agency, ⁓ can point to the outcome ⁓ say there's a TV advert, there's a poster, I think if you exist in more strategic areas or you exist in a world that is a little bit more complex or a little bit broad that can be really tough and so one of the things that I was keen to try and get to was a partner that had the beginning of an understanding of the product and you know that could be that they maybe looked at consulting in a broader sense It could be that they had service industry experience. It could be, you know, any way in. But what I wasn't particularly interested in was someone that the rest of their portfolio was old people's homes, garages, know, stuff that's very structured. And, you know, and it's repeatable. And, you know, ⁓ got a spring factory. I've worked out the optimization for how I can ⁓ 20 % more springs by doing X, Y and Z. And it's a playbook. And I do it again and again. Like part of creative industry is just Ollie Scott: logistical, yeah. James Greenfield: not that in the slightest and now I meet too many people like that because we had good advisors and they didn't bring us... to kiss. I in terms of the ticks, I think it was understanding that ultimately creativity are people-based businesses ⁓ and therefore what you really need to do is be aware of the balance between the people and the product you sell ⁓ and ⁓ people those. Now I've worked in agencies where the product was everything and it didn't matter whether people came and went. It's like as long as the product's great nothing else matters. ⁓ That I think is crazy and the fact that companies like that still exist is of a large mystery to me, but I also think it's a massive limiting factor. Whereas because we had longevity of service, because we had long client relationships, because we were a people first organization, I think a lot of the PE firms realized that that made us very investable. And from my point of view, I wanted people to understand that and recognize that. What you want to hear is when someone goes, what we like about you is X, Y and Z and you go, oh, that's the same things that I, they're the things I set out to do. They're the things I intended or we intended to do. And so therefore that's good because there's a resonance here. It works on that front. so for me, what I was looking for was the questions they were asking. Were they the questions that I think they should be asking or were they going after questions that I was like, I don't know why you're asking that. That's completely irrelevant. Ollie Scott: How much of a bullshit detector do you need? Because surely these guys see when it starts to get really interesting and they're going, okay, wow, this actually is a really attractive business, we want to invest in them. because if you're working in PE, I'm sure they're convincing, they can know the right questions to ask to help you believe that they are of the same kind of value set as you are. Did you find that there was a way of identifying whether they were real or not? James Greenfield: My experience is most people that work in PE have got an accountancy background and so they're not necessarily as smooth or salesy as you would expect them to be. It's really not that environment and so therefore you don't really have such a bullshit detector because it's maths, it's either right or wrong, it's binary. And so therefore don't see that in the same way that you do see in other industries. And so therefore I actually found it was reasonably... Ollie Scott: Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. And what about areas of subjectivity where there is value but they don't understand James Greenfield: they employ advisors and if they've the right advisors then those right advisors know your industry inside and out and they can be like asset A, asset B, asset C in terms of the valuation or whatever. ⁓ Because ultimately from a founder POV what you don't want is a PE firm that goes, oh, this is brilliant. We're going to turn this over for a 20 X multiple and you know, go actually 20 X is absolutely impossible in our industry. No one's ever got that. And the only way to do that is we'd have to break and destroy everything. so therefore you actually want that kind of connective honesty at the beginning because the journey you're going to go on to get the, you you're putting somebody from an investor in your life that is going to be there for three years minimum, more like five years probably. And in some cases there's plenty of agencies out there that are six or seven years into their PE investment. The thing is... that's something that people really underestimate which is this is not borrowing money from a bank. ⁓ It all depends how started their agency whether they ⁓ did it themselves, whether had a silent partner, what happens in most of cases is ⁓ you're given some money and allowed to get on with running the agency. That isn't the situation in a PE investment and so to my point earlier you're not going to change 90 degrees but you are going to change course a bit ⁓ and you need to be and ⁓ open to that because if you're not then you're to crash into each other. Ollie Scott: Okay. And then what do you want to happen? So three to years time from now. James Greenfield: ⁓ So the first thing I want to happen is I want to be able to have more of the team be able to have ownership. 16 at the moment, yeah. Because there'll be people that will have been there for five years in between, so that gives them a chance to do that. second thing I want to happen is I want us to broaden our ⁓ and products because I think that that's what we need to do to continue to be successful ⁓ so if I back to something I said earlier about this idea only about thinking about today if you only think about today you keep on going until you can no longer go and one day the phone stops ringing and people go like ⁓ that's weird the phone stopped ringing and it's like well yeah because you didn't move with the market you just kept on being the same. expecting stuff to come to you. We can see the markets moving around as I can see from the appointments that people are making, from the work that people are putting out. It's just like you just, you know, I'm always gobsmacked when I speak to other agency owners and I say, oh, did you see that piece of work? Did you see that so and so? they're like, oh no, I don't look at any, but what anyone else does, I just focus on my own stuff. It's like, you don't want to be competitor obsessed, but you've got to be competitor aware. It's like, you know, owning any brand in any industry and saying, oh, I've got no idea what my competitors do. basic, ⁓ red flag. ⁓ creative people for whatever reason seem to be ⁓ way inclined a bit sometimes. ⁓ so think that growth is really to us, like growth of services, growth of understanding ⁓ that and that comes from. And then the thing I wanna happen is I want us to... Ollie Scott: Pro Flag. James Greenfield: we continue to grow our awareness because I think that's our biggest challenge as an agency is that we are still in the relative small side of things. And therefore, know, and it lags as well. There's people that have a perception of us that's three years old because that's what they know or what they read or what they see. And so therefore, think. ⁓ Ollie Scott: Hmm. James Greenfield: Scale brings awareness, scale brings opportunity, scale brings that because ultimately if it all add us up to the thing that exists at the top is it's the pursuit of excellence which is our vision as an agency. You can only be excellent if people can allow you to be excellent so there's been a couple of big opportunities that have gone to market recently for big US headquartered brands that I would have loved for our team to work on and in two cases I was told subsequently ⁓ we've never heard of you and so it's really important to understand that it doesn't matter whether you've Ollie Scott: Wow. James Greenfield: it doesn't matter if you work with Google and Microsoft and everyone else ⁓ are still a lot of people that have never heard of us and aren't considering us for anything at the moment ⁓ so therefore ⁓ the journey we're on. Ollie Scott: so I guess one way of doing it, which is getting there via scale and awareness and you could acquire an asset potentially that's perhaps very well known. ⁓ The other is, do know any agencies that brand and market themselves so everyone is aware constantly of what they're doing? James Greenfield: I consistency is the hardest thing in agency marketing. I think some agencies you see do this amazing quarter or two quarters and it's like content consistent and it's out and then they struggle to keep up with the momentum and so I think my rule has always been when it comes to marketing is only do what we can survive otherwise what's happening is you're like sprinting for the first 5-10k of a marathon and yeah you're out front it's brilliant look you're so far ahead from everyone else but then you've got nothing left in the tank and everyone catches you up and you just end up back with everyone else I think you know agency is tough no playbook that ⁓ tells you how to do it no like ⁓ shortcuts and the business of today gets in the way. Ollie Scott: Yeah. I always think you kind of set out with really ambitious goals. Like we're going to start our own X format podcast newsletter, And yeah, you're right. It always goes well for the first four weeks. And then ⁓ either the system set up wasn't good enough or something's dried off or even the motivation to do it. Cause it sucks. Like ⁓ take it from that's. Yeah. James Greenfield: or it won them a massive piece of work and it's brilliant, it won them a massive piece of work but now they've got the UK's biggest supermarket as their number one client and is giving them absolutely tons of work and they're like, ⁓ but they can't do the thing anymore. Ollie Scott: Yeah. Turn that tap off. I want to move into independence because ⁓ you are still independent. guess you're taking your money either way makes you an independent business. do you think now is a chance? What do you think's happening in the world that means being an independent founder or being within an independent company is a better idea than perhaps the more well trodden path into an Omnicom IPG X holding company here? James Greenfield: I don't think analysts of networked firms ⁓ understand the of those businesses well enough ⁓ and so what happens is those businesses end up indexing for ⁓ shareholder value is driven by sentiment. ⁓ and are no longer client-centric. And so therefore the clients can feel that because they're like, this whole thing is about trying to prop up that share price in a world where all networks are under share price scrutiny. And if you read the investor piece, whether it's the FD or whatever else about, pick your network. All of the things they're talking about are all the things that don't matter. know, they're talking about AI spend and this and everything like that. Where are we talking about client satisfaction? Where are we talking about creative quality? Where are we talking about people retention? We're not talking about any of those things. Whereas I know as an agency founder and someone that's worked in creative agencies for 25 years, if you hold onto people and you do great work, they're the two things that will make your clients happy because clients like consistency. and the clients like creativity and nothing that you will ever read about any of the networks about those two things. And so therefore they are optimized for all the wrong things. It's like having a sports team and everyone's obsessed with not what their nutrition is, not where they're conditioning, not who their coach is. They're worried about the stadium they play in or like some other arbitrary stuff. It's like, and so therefore they can't win. And what happens is we end up in this world now where what's the thing that's really broken is Ollie Scott: Yeah. James Greenfield: the clients, not all, but in many cases have gone, I no longer need to buy from a network. I can buy from an independent and I'm actually gonna get just as good great stuff because we've passed that point where enough companies have gone and bought their services from great independent shops and so therefore it's not this kind of status quo that exists anymore. And so that's why we find ourselves in a good opportunity. Ollie Scott: I wonder if the nobody gets fired for hiring IBM line is now going to become irrelevant. Perhaps you do. ⁓ you do get fired for hiring a holding company instead of the ⁓ better, way more ⁓ in independent business. And again, are we because holding companies are relatively new terms of how an industry has been formed. Is this just a cycle? Did this happen before where were desperate for independent businesses? and then something like an AI meteor happens or digital or social media happens and suddenly go, ⁓ God, get the specialist back because they know these guys can't move fast enough. James Greenfield: I think networks ⁓ manage to do a smashing job, stay private and break forward, then think you might start to see more of that consolidation. Ollie Scott: Yeah, agreed. The thing I keep on hearing about is the adoption of AI being so slow. And when they have finally got it through procurement at a large holding company, the efficiency is lost. And so they're in this constant cycle of, we've just signed on OpenAI. We've just signed, we made our own proprietary IP, which is now crapper than the thing in Claude that they've just launched. So it's so hard to get ahead and then build a pricing model around that when AI is just appearing in different ways the whole time. James Greenfield: Well, know, timing is right? We all know that timing is one of the most important things. ⁓ I think a of the ⁓ proprietary AI IP had a lot of money spent on it was too early, And ⁓ it was You read, I reading a couple of them and I was like, ⁓ well, if they pull that off, that's very impressive piece of stuff. ⁓ Didn't pull it off necessarily to the level, from what I understand. ⁓ Ollie Scott: Yeah, I agree. James Greenfield: And yet again, not client centric, it's indicating to the ⁓ versus indicating to the clients. ⁓ so therefore it's like, ⁓ they know they have to do it because otherwise share price gets tanked and CEO is ⁓ the hook for the share price, not anything else. Yeah, ⁓ the challenge. ⁓ Ollie Scott: Yes. Yes. Okay, rise of independence. Lastly, and we kind of covered this, but in case you had anything on your mind, I wanted to cover AI. have you seen that is in the land of AI? And because no one has managed to tell this yet. Kind of half had this answered, but everything I've heard so far about AI has been bottom line. Generative it's been reducing costs and efficiencies. I haven't heard or seen anything that's been top-line generative or producing things and generating more Value for their clients or value for the agency Have you seen anything yet that has made you go that is that's gonna help everything grow and get better James Greenfield: Yeah, yeah, all the time. We use it all the time in that way. We just did a big campaign for an American brand and all the imagery throughout the whole thing is ⁓ AI generated. The timeline of it was such that we would never have been able to go and shoot the creative idea and so we would have ended up with either a watered down creative idea because that's all we could shoot or we would have ended up with stock imagery which would have been like trying to force something into that. You know, one thing dies ⁓ the near future, it's going to be stock imagery and no one will be crying. ⁓ know, it's not been a loved resource for years. I us do outcomes ⁓ week without failure. We're doing this for this bank at the moment and ⁓ we've been using AI to help us about the physical manifestation of how ⁓ customers can interact with their account from a security POV and the stuff that the team are making using AI to be able to envision these ideas without giving too much away. We wouldn't have been able to do it before. It have been impossible. what we're heading towards ⁓ and at the beginning of is ⁓ the freedom ⁓ for a creative embraces it be able to ⁓ 10x their ideas and their outcome their possible ideas. And so therefore ⁓ I see that, ⁓ you know, every month when I look at the work I see it through that lens and it coming through that way so yeah I see it all the time and you know we're all seeing amazing creative outcomes whether it's on social media or wherever else that people are bringing together so yeah no I'm not seeing it as a kind of automation there is that element to it and of course that's going to be great and you know agentic layer and all that kind of stuff is definitely going to be in place though I think we are going to have a really interesting challenge in the coming ⁓ or two or maybe a little bit longer which is I've spent all this money on AI what's my ROI on it and that's the next phase that we're about to come through Ollie Scott: Hmm. There's a big article that's come out from Gartner on that. And again, I love what you said about spreadsheets and accountants. When the spreadsheet arrived, yes, that was the end of the bookkeeper, but then the rise of the accountant. I think, I'm hoping that this is gonna lead to the rise of the creative or the rise of the design-led person, because there's nothing can't do with this thing. I'm accepting of that. I've also been invited on to speak about this on a panel and I feel a little bit of an imposter because I know nothing about actual tools. I can speak about value. I'll message you privately to get some more lines from you. Thank you so much. ⁓ James Greenfield: You can come over and I'll put one of the teams through your bootcamp. Ollie Scott: Yeah, thank you. Okay, we're now moving into your prediction, So I want to get into what are you predicting? What are your three predictions for the creative economy? Going ahead. James Greenfield: The first one which you've kind of alluded to a bit already is but I think the increasing importance of experience. I think in a world where the flaws risen and anyone can put a passable brand out in the world actually is going to actually stop you finding customers in the same way. think if you go back I don't know five years if you were a DTC startup and you struck upon a good product and you hired the right creative team you could find a lot of customers online very quickly and that buzz product would come up and we saw those buzz products get sold to multinationals very quickly whether it was razors, sneakers, whatever else. will continue to happen but I don't think you'll get to the heights in the same way. There'll be the odd occasion where that happens. And so I think if brands want to break through and really stand out on that front then I think it becomes about experience. And you can see that in the way like running brands are thinking about how they turn up at mass running events. There's that crazy stat recently that 1.8 % of the UK population has applied to run the London Marathon next year. You know that's a place where if you're a running brand you need to in that event in a meaningful way and what that means is and this is no disrespect to anyone that works experiential right now but it's not a production problem that's a creativity problem it's a creativity problem to be like you know we saw Nike get on the wrong side of that with parkrun recently and really like pick the the wrong side of the tracks when they were the way that they should they should think about that and and I think you can think about that across you know all of the brands you know and so that so my first prediction there is Ollie Scott: Hmm. Yes. James Greenfield: I think what an experience agency is is going to change massively in the next three to five years because I think it's going to be all about the how do I grab people either where they are or where they want to be in a way which is not possible or is going to increasingly be not possible on my digital device. Ollie Scott: There are a few agencies that can do digital experience all the way through to physical because they are such different propositions. One is it production led and these people that are more conceptual and creative when they think of an experiential event they can go wild with their thinking but the realities of making that thing happen are very different. So like you've never really seen those two worlds come together properly. James Greenfield: And I think, well, the one example that sticks out in my mind is there's very little about Las Vegas that makes me want to go there, but I have a deep held want to go in the sphere, which I've not managed to achieve yet. And it's based upon the fact that I've seen a few clips of amazing stuff in the sphere, which I just think looks absolutely stunning. That is the ability to drag you somewhere. Ollie Scott: Yeah. James Greenfield: I took my kids to Legoland recently and I was really struck with how they still haven't properly used digital to make that come alive. We've all got amazing personal computers in our pockets. Augmented reality exists. Kids are pretty digitally literate but there's none of that there because they obviously aren't motivated by it. But I think the people that get that right are going to see an amazing amount of creativity and amazing kind of outcome and people are going to see high value in it. Ollie Scott: Yeah. Like that. Rise of experience. Okay, what is prediction number two? James Greenfield: I think we're going to see channel mix change massively in terms of how people spend their money and where people spend their money. I think advertising is in an absolute death spiral and unless someone sorts out the creative standard and brings that floor up I think it might die or have to be really, really have drastic surgery. And I think on that front, it's going to be really interesting to see whether people manage to achieve that or not. And we all know that... Social is grabbing massively increasing amounts of what was standard marketing budget that was allocated but you know we're in the nicotine nicotine patch phase where people are buying physical devices to stop them going on their phones you know whether that's a brick or whatever else it is know ⁓ For many years, people smoked happily and it was brilliant and everyone loved it. Now we've decided that a lot of our social apps that we're addicted to are akin to smoking and so therefore we're trying to nicotine patch ourselves away from it, whether that's screen limits, whatever. And so therefore I think... Okay, if I'm wanting to spend less time on my device, which we all read in people's like New Year's wishes, etc. Doesn't matter if marketing is putting its money in that way, then what's going to happen in the places where I have no choice whether I see that or not, which is physical advertising in space or advertising around shared moments, etc. So I think that's going to become under increasing scrutiny, which is I'm hopeful that clients are going to say, actually, I'm not willing for that to just be dialed in anymore. I want to actually see some true standout creativity. because I think a lot of the stuff that's happening in social when it stands out is really interesting and people are doing different stuff. I think it's time that that goes back to more traditional campaign. Ollie Scott: I wonder what a traditional campaign will be in five years time because it won't be what we have today. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so that's channel allocation or like money distribution changing. James Greenfield: I guess the way you could say that in a different way is a CMO will think about how to spend their money in a much less big, small, small way. Ollie Scott: Yeah, there's a lot of talk about the CMO, that role being entirely different now and moving more into a CEO-y kind of type position. But I think that's because of the media tools that they've had at their disposal. It's gone from relatively hunch-based decision-making and focus groups and things that weren't really true representations of how a campaign is going to do to immediate... I can tell you right now how that campaign is doing and what it's probably going to do. And I think you're right. We're sort of coming. You can't do that anymore if people are on the apps less, engaging less, blocking the things, downloading apps to come off the apps. So then how are we going to track the ROI of... James Greenfield: I think it's also about the mental position you take into it. Two of the best bits of advertising I've seen recently are for Anthropic and OpenAI and I think it's in both cases they chose... good creative firms who had a good free rein and in both cases, like one's based in comedy and the other one's based in beauty and like life affirming. I think you can tell that they at the moment of commission were both confident companies that were strong in their position about where they were and where they found themselves. And so therefore you can feel that in the commissioning and the creativity versus I think some of the other brands that you would expect great marketing come from are probably having a harder time of it and so therefore they're not so confident in their creativity and so you can feel it in the brief, in the outcome, in the agency choice, you can just feel it all the way through. Ollie Scott: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. Okay, last prediction. Third prediction, please. James Greenfield: think we're ⁓ not more than six to months out from AI being less noisy. I feel like we... Ollie Scott: ⁓ James Greenfield: are you know the models are amazing it's very easy to forget what the model before and the model before was like hallucination rates are dropping it can do amazing sophisticated stuff those that should are using it with working out how to integrate it into our workflows it's different depending on who you are and what your role is etc etc But I think we're going to get to a point where less people are searching for what is this thing? How does it fit in kind of like alert mode and actually more like, yeah, I use that. I've used it for ages. This is how it does. And actually will be, there'll be something else that takes the news cycle. I think we live in the big thing news cycle at the moment, you know, and yet again, I'm going to date this podcast, but last week it was the Ferrari, you know, electric Ferrari. Before that, it was the Jaguar talking about cars, but you there is always something that takes the news at the moment, a large amount of that new cycle and LinkedIn post stuff is about AI. It will be about AI, but it will be about a specific aspect within AI versus AI as a whole and this kind of big scary thing that everyone's kind of navigating themselves around at the moment. Ollie Scott: It's like you were saying before, four people in our house fire and 10,000 in a tragic event. When it is everywhere, like electricity, you can't address it as one thing anymore. And so it will just be the supporting act to the thing that you are talking about and the value that that thing is creating versus this big, scary, impossible to understand the complexities of thing. And it's not new anymore. I always compare AI to electricity because I just think... It's like the companies that have put dot AI. think unless you are an AI business like Anthropic or OpenAI, don't put dot AI in the company. It's going to be like dot electricity. And that's a dangerous thing to be building your moat around. James Greenfield: But that's the classic mistake that so many companies make, which is they're so obsessed with raising money from VCs or whoever that they go after the stuff that they need. And so a .ai URL or whatever, whereas actually if you're customer centric, your customer is interested in your AI, but they're actually hopefully interested in a lot more of it unless you are an AI company. And so therefore that will definitely see something with past. We're going to have the whole scandal of is it okay for a bipedal robot to be your studio manager or not. We've got that to come yeah. Ollie Scott: I mean, yeah, Christ. I hope that's not going to be like within the next five. That will be like big news moment if we're bringing these dudes in, you know, physically into our clique. James Greenfield: ⁓ yeah, but to warn you, there's two robots on That's what the receptionist will be robots in like, you know. Ollie Scott: What do you mean? yeah, maybe it'll be different ⁓ to not have a robot on reception. ⁓ old school, 18. Yeah, ⁓ wow, Okay, my question. Thank you, by the way, it's been brilliant. This is a nice one, it's more of a philosophical question, but what is the one quote that has guided you throughout all these years? James Greenfield: Imagine the of hammering about that. Ollie Scott: That's a pain, I'm sorry. I'm not giving you a chance to think about that one either, so this has to be gut. James Greenfield: ⁓ man there are so many that like I come back to again and again ⁓ from the kind of super cliche ones through to ones that are more recent Ollie Scott: can give me ones that you repeat a lot, then you can then if that then prompts ⁓ one of like, well, this one has never not been true, then. James Greenfield: someone listening to this will be like ⁓ my god I can't believe you didn't say X because he always says that but I'll give you like some recency bias but one that like absolutely stopped me in my tracks recently is from Albert Camus book The Plague where he very glibly says that the first half of man's life is ascent and the second half of man's life is descent and I Ollie Scott: Yeah. James Greenfield: apply that to agencies because I think so many agencies go up and then they never see the top and before they know it they're on the way down and trying to reverse that is really really hard and so I read that recently on an aeroplane and I was like ⁓ my god that's shook me to my core. Ollie Scott: It shook it, it's definitely shaking. I wouldn't say that's necessarily a motivational quote. I can't see that on a mug anytime soon. James Greenfield: No, it's no Mayor Angelo, you know, it's like, it's, but the one that I have thought about, which I've kind of alluded to already is my old boss used to say everybody deserves good design and that, there's not a week goes by where I don't think about that as a universal truth. Ollie Scott: Yeah. That is absolutely James Greenfield, Tombstone, Abel. I can see that, it makes sense. a forever thing. James Greenfield: 100 % yeah. Doesn't matter what change it doesn't matter whether we've got bipedal robots on reception or whatever it's like everybody deserves good design. Ollie Scott: Yeah, I love that. I love that. James, thank you so much. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. We're going to digest all of this and we're going to put it into a stunning newsletter and make you sound and look like the legend that you actually are. James Greenfield: No worries.