Talk us through an average day in your role
One of the things I love about my role is that there’s so much variety, meaning an average day involves applying creativity in many ways. Formidable is a social-first creative agency with integrated content production, so typical problem-solving can range from coming up with big campaign ideas for clients to working out how to deliver those ideas on time and on budget. Social media is such a broad output from a production point of view, so one minute we might be discussing a shoot with a content creator on a smartphone and the next we’re planning a multi-cam live show. To do this successfully, we must be bespoke in our ways of working and draw from a variety of production disciplines; as creating content that thrives on social involves us blending the mindsets of entertainment, PR, and advertising.
My co-founder Pete and I tend to divide and conquer client-facing work between us. One of us will be accountable for every active project—providing strategic vision, technical experience and troubleshooting. We also need to lead all the other things in a typical founder’s role, such as finances, people and new business. So, an average day might see me switching hats frequently, but I love that challenge.
How did you get started in the media industry?
I started out via a typical route. Like many people leaving full-time education I still didn’t have a firm idea about what I wanted to do, so I gravitated towards trying what close family members were already into. My first role was in music PR at Rogers & Cowan, where I was very quickly thrust into solving production and broadcast-related problems. Some of my first jobs there included accrediting crews for the Grammy Awards, helping broadcasters with parking and cabling for the Academy of Country Music Awards, and running backstage media areas for the Soul Train Music Awards.
After these early stages of learning on the job I found myself with a valuable specialism in PR and content production logistics for live events. Part of it was acting as a useful bridge between the technical people, my colleagues, and our clients. During my 13 years at Freuds, that specialist knowledge gave me so many fun opportunities, including working on over 20 BAFTA Awards, Live8, the London Olympic Games, major hotel launches around the world, and more than 250 red carpet events. Following that, I decided to set up a new type of agency with one of my best mates. We both felt there was a place at the table for an agency that thinks social-first and produces content with social agility and flexibility.
What training did you have before entering the industry?
I didn’t have any training before entering the industry; it was all on the job and there were so many great people around that I could learn from. Everybody in the industry knows that if you ask an engineer a technical question then they’ll happily talk your ears off for hours, and I was one of the few PRs interested in learning something about that side of the work. Just being around experienced producers, camera ops, directors, photographers, and publicists, day after day and year after year, has been an opportunity to absorb knowledge, which continues to this day.
Why do you enjoy working in the industry?
I enjoy that it’s a mixture of the creative and the technical, and that we get to see tangible results from our hard work by producing content that people love to watch and interact with. Pete and I sometimes talk about how what matters more than working in a specific industry sector, or with particular clients, is the knowledge that there’s an audience to enjoy what we make. Whether the content was shot on a smartphone in five minutes, or over five days on location, feeling the positive response to our work is everything.
What piece of advice would you offer someone looking to explore a role similar to yours?
Do the boring. It’s a privilege to do the jobs we do, but it’s not all fun, even when you rise through the ranks to more senior roles. It’ll serve you well to do the boring and difficult stuff with as much energy as you do the fun stuff. There’s a lot to be learned doing it.
