Max Ottignon of Ragged Edge

[Music] Hello and welcome to the My Life and Design podcast brought to you by the Design Community Hub and designed focus PR agency for Ed Setter. I'm Claire Blive, co-founder of Ed Setter and series one and speaking to 10 people who are shaping the world of design. What first inspired them, how they got started and then different ways of informing their career. [Music] Max Ottingon is the co-founder of Branding Consultancy Rackety Edge. Rackety Edge worked globally with change makers. They've created brand for the likes of mindful chef, Bob, Papier, East London liquor company, amongst many many others. Max, welcome to My Life and Design. Great, thanks Claire, happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell me a bit more about how you started Rackety Edge in the first place? Have you always wanted to be a designer? No, I haven't always wanted to be a designer. So I always knew that my biggest challenge was probably in the creative world. But I had no real sense of where they would be best directed or measured. Absolutely directed. I did a philosophy degree and then stumbled into a job in advertising as a accounting exec. Couldn't I say, well, I like the sort of philosophy angle I'm going to advertising. It wasn't particularly strategic. I've got degree in biology and then I have to be off of design agencies, so not the most two degree, but I think philosophy and advertising would certainly move into brand to conflose pretty well. Yeah, it actually really helped. Actually, the principles of philosophy, I kind of use every day because philosophy teaches you how to argue and say much of brand and particularly brand and strategy is making it a sensible logical argument. So it doesn't expect to get out, but it did. So what did you go to university? Where was it? I went to Nottingham. Oh, OK. Did you have friends that were doing design courses there or anything? Or you just decided? No, so when I applied to university, I had no real concept of that you could go and study design. I think when I came out of the other end, I was probably still relatively underwise. So, yeah, it just wasn't the past I was aware of at the time. I think that's a common problem. I think it's something that I'd really like to try and solve or encourage trying to start to solve. Just the lack of awareness of what design is. Yes. And so it's quite a big thing. It would never have entered my head when I was 15, 16 to go into a career in design. I thought design was just making things look better. Same. Yeah. Which obviously, yeah, is not the case. So, tell me about your move into advertising. What was that like? It was great. Very sort of luckily managed to get some work experience by sending out loads and loads of CVs and things like that. That they did it. Very short CVs at that point. That's what you did. You just fired out as many CVs as possible to anyone within advertising. It was very unstrategic and very, very hard-pasted. But eventually, I managed to pick up, yeah, literally a couple of weeks work experience for a London, kind of advertising, but really more of a below-the-line marketing agency. It was part of the TVWA group. And so I had no concept of what the difference of the line or below the line was. I just started going into an attachancy. And then how did I go? What, it was after two years? Yeah, just a bit under. And it was okay. So, it was amazing to get exposed to, you know, festival London. I never really spent any time in a big city. Yeah. And so I was based over, not again, but like, defending for myself in London was an experience in itself. And then, expect there's probably two, three hundred people there, spread over various different floors. And, you know, it was an amazing education. And again, I just didn't. I came up so green and just had no concept of what I was going to be walking into. And the learning curve was pretty steep. I think they probably thought that I might know a little bit more than, I mean, I did raise. Yeah, I think that that sage Eocreia, it's quite important to be able to have a role with it to a certain degree, isn't it? Yes. Yes. It certainly is. Yeah, it was, it was a great experience. We were working on high profile accounts, lots of brands. You would have heard of, I was working at the client service department. Oh, yeah. Which, again, I think at the time, I probably didn't really have a concept of what the different departments were and what they all did. And my talents were probably, if I'm honest, not what they were, they were certainly better suited to working in a kind of more creative role, in a kind of operational one, like client service. So that was the first thing that suddenly started to make me think, not quite sure if this is me. Do you think that big agency experience helped you form recordages as it is today? Yeah. Yeah. So I learned lots and lots of good things. And I looked like the kind of underlying principles and managed to client and figure out timing plans and costs and things like that was amazing. But I think what it also taught me is, so, recordages kind of born from trying to be the antithesis of that big kind of network agency culture. Yeah, absolutely. Which worked to some people. But it was not, it didn't really work for me. And so we wanted to create something that could still do that big, globally impactful work, but didn't have to dance to the tune of a multi-national company. Yeah, it could be quite lumbering. Yeah. That's something. Yeah. By nature, it can be quite slow and quite as agile as you guys can be basically. Yeah, absolutely. And it felt very particularly, and particularly this, remember this is a sort of direct marketing company. And it just felt, it didn't feel like what I now know, a creative agency could feel like it didn't feel particularly creative. Yeah, that's pretty important. Yeah. So what would you say, so looking back to your time as an intern? You had, so you had basically an internship there for two weeks that went on to become 12 to years. What do you think made you stand out? Or could you, could you give any advice now for students and grads coming into design industry, that how to stand out so many people? What I have learned since about what made me stand out was not necessarily what I thought made me stand out at the time. Yeah, that's a good point of view. And actually, like my ability at the time, that the thing that people used to praise me for was my ability to write sort of whether it was emails or creative briefs, the sort of more creative, expressive side of what I was doing. I was able to do really, really well. And so I think in hindsight, I think one of the things that could have really helped me, if I'd been aware of my own strengths a little bit more, and actually at the time what I was doing was focusing on what I couldn't do and what the things that I was struggling with compared to other people, but actually I wish that I'd kind of lent into the things that I was really good at. So that's, I do think you don't have to be an all-rounder taking all boxes, you can really excel at a few points, and you get help for, yeah, off-loader with other stuff to people that that's their area. Yeah, absolutely, and I really, really believe, and it's a policy that an approach, it's the principles that we a lot of hard to let ragged edge, that to focus on what people are good at, and if someone's really, really great at something, you can kind of teach the rest and get to the rest to the level that it needs to be, but you can't give someone a superpower that kind of has to come from within really. So focusing on what you're good at, as a, you know, when you're just starting out, feels to me to be the right way to go, rather than worrying too much about what you can't. Yeah, I think that's a really good advice. I think at the beginning of my career, I used to do that, probably until relatively recently, actually, used to do that, just feel bad about what I could do, and try to get those up rather than really excelling them, what I was good at. It's a pretty common way to think, isn't it? Yeah, it's a good way to think, isn't it? It's a good way to think. So what way do you think that advertising wasn't for you, and you wanted to get more into the brand design side of things? I knew that working in a big, relatively corporate agency probably wasn't quite right for me, and so I was quite keen to get out of that structure, but equally advertising to me at that time felt to be a little bit lacking in. Well, I learned very quickly that without a really strong brand, it's really hard to make advertising that has any substance to it. I think we worked with some really strong brands, when we worked with some brands that maybe weren't so strong. For me, why was excited by it was building the brand, and building something that had that richness, and that's what I just thought at the time as a substance and depth, that could then be brought to life through advertising. Yeah, so that's what I believe it to be now, that the brand's the essence of who the company is, and what they stand for, that advertising sort of further down the line, really, isn't it, that once you've developed all that, that's the sort of activation point that gets people to see it more. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you've got strong brands, it's probably the advertising bits, easily via an ad agency, and you're sort of having to come up with stuff from nothing, because the underlying brand isn't great, it's much more charter. Yeah, absolutely. Now I agree. It said you went straight from TBWA's agency into, were you freelance for a while? Yeah, so what I tried to do was I tried to transition into the creative department at the agency, the OSA, but I didn't have any of the things that you would normally expect to have like a book or a portfolio or anything like that. So yeah, I had no real right. And so they didn't even consider me for that. They'd let me have a couple of chats and things, but quite understandably they prioritize people who'd spent the proceeding in a couple of years building up experience, doing internships and things like that. That's really interesting. Yeah, and then it completely fair enough. And it was just my own naivety that made me think otherwise. So what I ended up having to do, because I didn't have a design background. I ended up having to go and teach myself, the underlying principles, but also the skills and the software. I felt I was quite imaginative, creative person. I was good at art and things like that at the school, but I didn't have any basic design skills. So I went out and thought, I now understand that this is what I want to do, and I have to learn. So how did you teach yourself? I did. So courses, did you just get stuck in on illustration, photoshop, and all that side of it? The latter, yeah. So I just spent a lot of time staring at a screen and doing tutorials and just trying to sort of look at other people's work and try and figure out for myself what was good, what was bad and what marked out the good stuff from the bad stuff and just trying to, yeah, as I say, understand the principles. Yeah. The line, which was lots of reading and lots of tutorials and things, but also then learn the specific technical skills. I love that that's quite from the usual routine. So what, basically, just to balance your own portfolio, that you saw was going to start getting the attention of some of the larger and smaller brands that you want to work with. Yes. Yeah. Let's be clear, I was never getting it. The beginning, I was never going to be particularly appealing prospect to some of the larger brands. But what was great was because I had a basic understanding that I'd managed to accrue through my time working in an agency. I was definitely able to talk to talk. Yeah. I did what the work had to do. And then I also had a decent aesthetic sense, I suppose. So I could kind of get away with it. Friends and friends of friends, like, trusted me. And I got lucky that a couple of my friends were kind of starting businesses and needed some help. Then, you know, didn't have money to pay someone who could prove they could do it. So they'd sent me. And, yeah, we managed to create some cool stuff. Then, you know, I was able to add to my portfolio. Yeah, that's fantastic. It's a tech you, but a few years start building up the right portfolio to kill to the right people. Yes. Yeah. I love that you've got in sort of through the back door of it. But it's that having that commercial sense of how to talk about projects and how to talk about the impact they're going to have is actually something that's really important to learn early on, isn't it? So yeah, absolutely. And I only now realize that because I used to, folks, again, I couldn't do, but I realized that that ability to understand the commercial side of it, to speak to clients, to be able to talk a client's language. Yeah. Was another, it was a super out of it, given to me my experience doing client service. So it marked me out of something a bit different. Yeah, different. It gave me a advantage over other creative people who had other skills. So then, how long would you free art store? I was free-lancing kind of on and off at night. And because it was tricky to earn money and a consistent income without any real portfolio or anything like that, I ended up taking various other jobs as well from Bargeurk to a little bit of Stint in PR, I believe it not. Did you? I did. Yes. Just free. Which was cool. But I didn't-- I didn't do it. I wanted to be a great-- Yeah. And so yeah, over the period of a couple of years, I started to build up some clients, started to build up a fairly steady stream of work in retaining clients and things. And then that slowly evolved into an entity that isn't at heart, Ragged Edge. Fantastic. So did you know Matt anyway, Matt Grand, your business partner, did you meet him anyway too? Yeah, so I met him through friends. And then we bonded. He was-- Matt was working for a digital agency, a digital dev agency building websites. And so actually, I started to sort of pass him a little bit about trying to learn how to build websites because my clients are asking me, we need a website. So I got him, he was very generously, showed me the basics. And it fast got to the stage where I could deliver the basics. But then people were asking me for kind of e-commerce and things like that. And I forget this is long before the days of Shopify. [LAUGHS] Absolutely. And so that beat me, I just couldn't get my head around it, and get my head around to kind of back end development side of things. So I started to try and persuade Matt to come and help me. And that began. That was the sort of catalyst for Matt leaving his job and us setting up as an agency. Oh, that's really good. You couldn't get your head around it really, isn't it? Again, like, was coming to play to your strip? And I was never going to be a developer. I think it was good that I riff out as that relatively. Why did you choose the name, Ragged Edge? So I think it was-- or a number of things. Number one, it was kind of reflective of my general state mind at the time. And I thought, well, what we wanted to do is we wanted to create this agency that did feel a bit different and did feel a bit like was ready to push ideas, push things beyond what was expected. Yeah. And we now talk about Ragged Edge as kind of referring to where the change happened. So at the kind of Ragged Edge is of culture, I'm not going to pretend that we were able to articulate it with that level of clarity and precision at the beginning. But we kind of grew into the name. I think it does. It kind of reflects that kind of edges of discovery type thing, doesn't it? And also just the design references that I'd better rely. Yes. And actually, that was part of the inspiration with the typography, was the typographic term. Yeah, it's very good name. So that was 14 years ago. Yes. Yeah. That's-- So you started off your own agency relatively early in your career, then, which I think is really impressive. Yeah. And I think maybe you can draw the conclusions from what we've just been talking about. But it wasn't a strategic decision to do that. Oh, yeah. It just seemed like the most logical next step. And it just evolved rather than just part of some grand master plan. Yeah, absolutely. What kind of aspect of the industry do you think is the most challenging? So I was thinking about branding in general. I know we've talked quite a lot and passed about how branding itself has got a bad image. Yeah. Or maybe not our bad image, but it's gotten an image that isn't easy to understand. So we don't know what it is. If you could change something about the image of branding, what are you trying to strive to do with that? I would love, through Ragged Edge, to change the way people talk about branding from less about systems and typefaces to something a bit more holistic, and to be about ideas and defining the idea that drives an organization and the way that an organization communicates it itself. I think branding was all about the craft, and it was all about the systems, and it was all about the guidelines. And it was kind of like a little bit-- it felt a little bit like designing for design sake, whereas I think what we've really, really tried very hard at Ragged Edge to do is try and think about branding in a little bit of a different way. And of course, the design and the craft, and the systemization, the scalability, that's really, really important. Not, that's not a brand, that's my identity system. Yeah, it all comes from a central idea. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I was reading the other day actually about a pivotal moment in Ragged Edge where you had a call from a client, and they were going with another agency, and you sort of chucked your phone across the room. I think we wide-fitted that. Can you tell me about that? It sounded like quite a pivotal moment to become Ragged Edge's unite today. Yeah, it was. So the grace of Ragged Edge has always been organic. And we'd always let the previous project win us the next project. We never had a plan in terms of scale or anything like that. And we would just, if we won more work, we would hire people and just gradually agree. What that meant was that we would take on work that was off the tours. Yeah. And we did start to get a bit more focus and at four point reading things like experiential and things like that. But we did start to get a bit more focus. We started to put really focus on brand. But we didn't really have any way of differentiating ourselves versus the many number of competitors that we would come up against on a fairly regular basis. Yeah. And the conversation that you described was we were competing against another agency who you'll know for this project for a new brand. And the founder of that said, I can't tell the difference to your proposals. And the only thing that Mark's yard is this other agency has got some experience on a slightly bigger brand than you have. So we're going to go with them because they've got just that little bit more credibility. Wow. Emma's hurt. Well, it was frustrating. It was. It was. But unfortunately, it was also very obviously true. Yeah. And even though, of course, we believe that we could have done that project as well if not we believe better. We weren't telling that story. And we were just positioning ourselves as a generic branding agency really. You know, we have some things that we thought made us different. But I think to someone who didn't know that the real ins and outs of branding and what goes on behind scenes, they weren't particularly relevant. There's actually a really valuable call and valuable feedback, almost from that client, we jake hoed on. It were all interchangeable. And the whole thing becomes a commodity. Why would you choose one agency over another? Totally, and it is ridiculous, isn't it? Because obviously what the branding agencies preach, they create the power of distinctiveness and of being able to offer something that is meaningfully different to some of your competitors. And yet actually what so many agencies do is they ignore their own advice. And we were doing that. Yes, absolutely. So you developed the change-maker philosophy. I think you developed, I mean, basically I think, that is very much the core of who you are. So you developed something that is very true to yourself. You'd have a little bit more about that, because I think it's so distinctive at being ashamed on this podcast, not to go into that a little bit. Yeah, so for us, what we realized was that distinctiveness is about making a choice. And so as a group, as an agency, as the leadership team at the time, we knew we had to make some choices about the work that we would get a really focused on on the types of clients. And we knew that the more clarity we had around there and the more tight that definition was, the more powerful the position would be. And I think lots of planning, a two-talk, we didn't want to do, because we had one that specialized in a particular category. Like we had at the time, we had a ton of drinks expertise, but we didn't want to narrow down and only a drink agency, which was one way of doing it, because we just know that the breadth of ideas and working across categories is just so much more powerful and helps you grow and actually learn rather than this sort of deep category specialization, which just makes you start to think in a not only one way, I think. So we didn't want to do that. Yeah, you didn't want to. If we wanted to keep our client base broad, we needed to find something specific. Yeah. And for us, we'd had this success with bold, we'd had the success with mindful chef. And so we went and we looked back at the clients that we really enjoyed working with and we got a lot out of, we looked at, we spoke to the team, we spent a lot of time thinking about the types of work that we were excited about. Yeah. And that then became our change maker positioning. So really focusing on those brands that are looking to define or redefine categories, people that we talk about and a lot of people that care less about what is and much more about what could be. So people would definitely-- --in the equation. I think just having that target client and that target the mindset and then what we then built out of that, which is stuff we were all be doing anyway, but then we then built an approach and a way of thinking for those specific types of brands, which is, by definition, a little bit bolder and a little bit more radical than-- Yeah, just-- --it might be for some sort of brands that are sort of at a different stage in their life and their defending-- Yeah, both. And Rajan trying to create something new. That's it, isn't it? Genuinely it's creating change. You're-- Yeah, yeah, and creating change-- --and losing creates now. Yeah, there's companies that are changing the way businesses done and, yeah, sure, go into many other things. Yes. And so what we found that we had-- and actually this was deliberate that we had a thing that would-- when we met new clients, the clients would self-select. There would be people that really brought into that approach, sort of selves in the story that we were telling. And we're excited about the way that we were saying we would work. And there were other clients who perhaps wouldn't be right for us and wouldn't get the right level-- they wouldn't get the type of work that they were looking for out of us because our process was designed to create something different. And so what that meant was that the conversations we were having with people, instead of us selling, and trying to say people that we were the right browning agency versus all the other browning agencies to choose. It's like, well, we're right for you if these things. And we're probably not right for you if these things. And so let's have conversation about which box you fit in. And we'll figure that out together. Yeah, that works perfectly, doesn't it? Because then you genuinely are selecting the right types of companies for you to gel really well with. And I think it's a really good thing. If you're saying no to lots of people, it's that build a really strong agency on the back of people that you are saying yes to. I speak to so many agencies who say, the great thing about us is that we can work with anyone and we can work with any type of company, any type of client, and we'll do a really good job for them. And that's just not interesting. From your point of view, we end up with a really desperate agency, and there's no standoutists that know what's the point of difference. No, you're actually right. And I'd imagine you see a lot of agencies in our days of their basis. And you can really see-- when you're in it, you always feel like you're doing it differently. And all the little small things feel like big differences. But I think you're probably in a really good position to gel out of Jantye. The differences are just too small. Yeah. The differences people tend to come up with are some of the night. We're really good on client service. And no one's going to say that they're absolutely a bit of a rage on client service. Yeah, we're really creative. We're really going to find a service. You get to deal with senior people. You don't have the big teams you can get in. And it's just, I think, so many people say that. But you want to someone that really buys into your business gets repassionate about greater change. Yeah. And then you work with your right businesses, create some really exciting. Yeah. And that was, honestly, even though we really believed in that approach, he was quite nerve-wracking. It meant that we were going to be turning down stuff. And I think we've grown into that and grown into the confidence to turn stuff down. So every now and then, at the beginning, what we might have done was we might have taken on some projects that didn't really feel right. But it felt silly to be turning down work. But because we built this process designed for a certain type of project, the projects that we brought in that didn't feel right went wrong. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So we realized, OK, we've got to be quite strict about this. This isn't just something for marketing that we talk about this. And then actually the reality is we just take on anything. We realize quite quickly that in order for the projects to be a success, they have to be the types of clients that we built strategy around. And that was quite scary, because it rules out a lot of people. Yeah. It really does, doesn't it? But on the basis that you keep you to stand out in the way, it's kind of not just about standing out in the right way, is it? It's about everybody at Ragged Edge feeling like they're achieving something, and they're doing something different, and changing the world in your own way, basically. Yeah. I'll do that without turning a little stuff down. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I've learned is in any agency or any company, really, you need buy into the overall vision and the overall kind of objective, what you're trying to do. And I think it comes quite clear, quite quickly, if a positioning and all that stuff is only really surface stuff, you get exposed. And that's where the problem starts. I think we're held to account on our positioning now by the client, by the team. And so if we bring in a project that doesn't tick the boxes that we save, we want to have ticks, the team like, why are we working on this? [LAUGHS] Absolutely, as they should do. Yeah. Yeah. So if you were left in front of an intern now, do you think your changemaker philosophy has changed the type of person you think of or the type of intern you'd like to see? Yes. I think it probably has. So fundamentally, what we're looking for are people who are able to think, quite exceptionally, that have come with that kind of growth mindset, so that I've been a little less hung up in the debt today and more excited about tomorrow and what can be achieved and how they can get there. Yeah. We want people that have got something that can bring something different to the table. And I think problems at the founding is that the industry is attracted a very specific type of person. Yeah, absolutely. And that isn't great for any number of reasons. Oh, no, there's huge amounts of reasons from what right to the fair to just getting something that genuinely created. Yes. Everyone's playing. You're not going to get it. Yeah. So we kind of have to over index on that a little bit and really force ourselves not to just hire what's comfortable, but look for people that maybe make us a little bit uncomfortable that again, a challenge is that again, to bring new things that again, and make us think in a different way. Yeah. And we have to be really conscious about this, because it's really easy to just fall into the trap of this person who solves this immediate problem. Yeah, it really is. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I think we've always heard very strict sort of tunnel vision around what we expect education needs from someone that we hire, certainly in terms and that sort of side of things. But in actual fact, people that are having the same opportunities and maybe haven't had same educational opportunities for one reason or other, are still very much worth considering and can attend and take all my preconceptions out at the moment and start again. Yeah. And what's scary about that and what we've realised is sometimes so you bring someone in at any level based on what they can do not worry about what they can't do. And sometimes that won't work. And actually the things that they can't do start to become a real challenge. Yeah. And I think that happened to us a couple of times. And I think what we had to enforce ourselves to do is believe in that as an approach. And just because it hadn't worked that a couple of times doesn't mean that the approach was wrong. I think that's the thing. Yeah, if you really want to change things, you've got to go up and eliminate it, haven't you? And that's what we'll mean that everything's not going to work. You're going to fail on some stuff. Yeah, I think it's huge. Yeah, but I think what like we've been really lucky with We've had a real focus on Lisa, who's a head of people in culture. She's a big focus of her role is to make sure that people get everything they need when they come in to ragged edge to be a success. And I think at the earlier on, we just, we kind of hope that people would come in and sort of figure that out for themselves. But obviously that in my entire life is, you know, both unfair and a bit naive of us. So making sure that when we're bringing in people we're really clear about why they're hiring them, what are they waiting for that's an internal level or if they're ready to level why we're hiring them, what they're going to bring, what are they going to be the challenges and where there'll be areas they need to work on and just be really clear about that stuff. So it doesn't, that sort of journey, it doesn't stop when you hire someone, it comes from the arts when you hire someone. Yeah, that's really insightful. Yeah, and it's like it's been hard to learn that. Yeah, it mainly led it by experience, really thought you ever put a long period of time that, yeah, you guys are doing some really good stuff, so it's obviously working very well. Yeah, it's, we're definitely getting better. I think that's a good state of mind to be in. I think it's hard to be a distance feeling of generally getting better rather than feeling you've made it and that's it, you know, because you always want to be on the custom of working as a going, don't you? 100% yeah, and I think that's exacerbated in the creative industry where if you start on still your dad on you because every time you're moving so fast and I think we've all seen it with, I've seen it with agencies that I really looked up to when I was starting out and they some of them stopped moving forward and they're still the same agency that they were when I've started out and everyone's overtaken them as a result. Yeah. You know, that's a really good lesson and like just getting comfortable and thinking that you've figured it out and you've must have completed roundings. Definitely. You're just placed two for the second time set to get into. Yeah, absolutely. I never would have been a place where it all feels like it's settled down and we've cracked it. Yeah. That's kind of not a good place to be, but it's the same quite nice. Right, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Really interesting talking to you and I think yeah, lots of big rads out there. We'll pick up a lot of great stuff from this. Great. We'll be right back. Good out. I hope it was a little bit useful. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for your time. Thanks for listening. For more information about the Design Community Hub, please love on to www.thedesigncommunity hub.com.