2020 vision: Why launching an agency mid-pandemic was a good idea

Face masks? Keeping two metres apart? Staying at home to go to work? Grown adults bumping elbows? 2020 was the year none of us saw coming. 

Nobody foresaw any of that at the start of the year. Nor did I see myself co-founding a creative company that sounds like a 1950s hotel for motorists somewhere in the Nevada desert.

It’s been a terrible year in so many ways, but the upheaval brought an opportunity.

It’s been a terrible year in so many ways, but the upheaval brought an opportunity; it gave us time to stop running. For once, we could slow down, look around and think about what was important to us. That yoga class, that friend, that relative, that habit, that thing you’d always wanted to do… we thought about the things we wanted to keep, to leave behind and to start doing. And this included our work.

Above: Lee Tan, left, and Rob Smith, Motel Co-Founders.

Rob [Smith, Motel Co-Founder] and I have known each other for 20 years, and had been at the same agency for the last five of those. But, in that whole period, we hardly even had  time to stop for a coffee. It was lockdown that gave us the chance to meet up for a walk around the park. The walk lasted three hours.

Caffeinated drinks in hands, approximately six feet separating us, we talked about Farm, the agency Rob had started 20 years ago, when he tried to hire me. This got us talking about all the places we’d worked at - small boutiques, big global networks and everything in between. And yes, we talked about what we liked, what we’d leave behind and what we’d start doing if we had our own company.

We talked about what we liked, what we’d leave behind and what we’d start doing if we had our own company.

After more walks, it became clear we had very similar ideas about what that company would look like. What would we keep doing? That was a surprisingly short list: Make outstanding work that actually works. Have healthy client relationships. And just enjoy it. Not rocket science. Is there any other reason we’re in this industry? 

What we’d leave behind? With so many agency experiences to draw from, this was a longer list: The politics. The complication. The split between the real work and the awards work. The tensions between agency/client, agency/agency and agency/in-house department. The wasted energy. And, probably, quite a few more.

And what we’d start doing? Get back to basics. Build trusting client relationships. Create an environment for challenging ideas. Welcome those ideas wherever they come from. Strong culture. Flexible ways of working. A truly diverse team. Build something to last. 

Above: Remote working wasn't new to 2020, but it became the norm and, in many ways, pushed flexibility, diversity and creativity.

Our ideas about our new company could be put to the test right away because, during our walking phase, we were blessed to land a founding client, Klarna. They had a diversity brief for us, so, we had to be up and running in a matter of weeks. Some stuff just has to be done the good old way; register the company, get a bank account... but many others could be done entirely differently than we would’ve done them at the start of the year.

We had no office. In fact, we couldn’t have an office. So, when assembling a team, it didn’t matter whether they were actually here in London or half way across the world. A designer in Sao Paolo. A young creative in Mallorca. A finance person in Scotland. A creative director who wants to spend half her time on her directing career. A creative team in Australia who work while we sleep. A CFO and busy mum who works one day spread across the week. A strategist who is also launching an app business... 

Though most of us had never met in-person, it felt like we had. Oddly, it didn’t really matter anyway.

Remote working, international talent, flexible hours, outside projects, work/life balance, these weren’t new ideas, but we could now put them into practice immediately. We had to; to get the best talent, to lower our overheads, for our client and for how people increasingly want to live and work in 2020 and beyond. 

We had to get to a stand-out concept and quick. I’d always liked being with the team as we came up with ideas. Sticking stuff on a wall. Then sticking Post-It notes on the stuff we’d just stuck on a wall. I still miss that. But it was a revelation how well we could all work on video chat. And there’s something truly satisfying about seeing 10 people all working on a presentation simultaneously. This tech has been around for years, but now we were actually using it.