The Uncommon Manifesto: Building Brands People Actually Wish Existed feat. Lucy Jameson (Founder, Uncommon Creative Studio)

[Music] Namaskar, welcome to the 22nd episode of the Indian ad geek. My name is Vishal Maira. There's a word that gets thrown around a lot in advertising. Purpose. Most agencies say it, few mean it, and then there's uncommon creative studio which did not just say it, they built an entire business around it. Founded in 2017, uncommon started with one clear idea to build brands that people in the real world actually wish existed. Not brands that people tolerate, not brands that blend into the wallpaper, but brands that matter. In just their second year, they were named campaigns independent agency of the year. Then campaigns creative agency of the year. Then both. In the same year, the first time any agency had ever pulled that off. They became the first ever contagious agency of the year. Then picked up ad ages, international agency of the year title in 2023. Fast company, named them one of the world's most innovative companies in advertising and marketing. Not once, but in both 2024 and 2025. And most recently, ad ages design and branding agency of the year on the 2026 A list. They now operate out of London, New York and Stockholm, working with brands like Nike Jordan, British Airways, Pinterest, Sirius XM and Formula E. Uncommon is now fittingly anything but. At the helm of all that thinking, is co-founder Lucy Jameson, widely regarded as one of the best strategic planners of her generation, having featured at the top of campaigns top 10 planner list multiple times. She was the global head of strategy for DDB and CEO of Grey London and then came Uncommon. Welcome to the Indian ad geek Lucy. Thanks very much for having me. I'm excited. Well, then the excitement is on both sides of the aisle. How did you and advertising happen? Well, I read history at Oxford. So that has absolutely nothing to do with advertising, but also doesn't really equip you to do anything in particular either. And I literally was in my second year thinking, you know, I want to go to London once I finish. I need to start thinking about what career I might want to do. And back in the day, Oxford actually had an incredible careers library. But and I'm not joking. I went through and looked at alphabetical order and advertising is obviously one of the first things you get to. And I kind of knew I didn't want to go into the city and the banking or all consultancy or law. So I was sort of already knew I might want to do something creative. And then when I started reading about advertising, I started reading about what was then known as account planning and strategy. And I kind of thought, you know what, that could absolutely be something I would like to do. And finally enough, it is that sort of thing of find people endlessly fascinating. Why they do what they do, what motivates them. And that was always the bit of history. I found really interesting. And a lot of the same skills are there. You're trying to figure out, you know, look at a lot of data, a lot of books, a lot of stuff. And then try and figure out why something happened. And I think that's very much what we do every day. Lucy, you moved from a massive legacy network to founding uncommon. What was the specific broken part of the traditional agency model that you were most determined to fix? So I mean, look, there were quite a few different things actually. It wasn't just one thing. It was that I felt like advertising agencies were too focused on just advertising. And I'd always wanted to focus on, you know, actually, how do we build a whole brand? And we'd done a piece of work called Volvo Life Paint, where we had, got a brief from Volvo about safety and sort of thought, you know, what would be terrible to write an ad about. We believe in looking after everybody. We believe in, you know, safety, not just for the people in the car, but the people around us. And so we sort of thought, well, why don't we create something that demonstrates that point of view? And that was when we created something called Life Paint, which was a spray paint that you could spray onto backpacks and cycles and all of that stuff. So that people outside the cars in London could be safer, because there's a lot of issues with cycle safety and pedestrian safety and stuff like that. And so we created a product and we created a product that we actually, instead of being paid by the hour, Volvo paid us by giving us a pound for every can they sold. And that took us an enormous amount of time and negotiation for us and WPP to be happy with being paid that way. And that just struck us as being really, you know, silly. And we were interested in different shapes of work, different business models, different relationships with clients. And we wanted to be able to explore all of that. And that was going to be really hard from within an advertising agency, which was a tiny part of a much bigger holding company. So for us, it was, you know, it was really that. And then it was that sense where I think we'd been mechanised just to win, not to care about who we worked with or which brands. Just that all we had to do was win at any costs. And I think, you know, I didn't really want to do that. I wanted to be able to work on clients that I thought deserved to really matter in the world and could really matter in the world. Yeah, that's an interesting segue, Lucy. Uncommon's mission is to build brands. People wish existed, right? How does that mission filter down into the types of clients you perceive? So look, I think, you know, as somebody wants asked us in a pitch, how do I go from just selling stuff to being a brand that actually people sold out and wish existed? And we thought, you know, well, that is a brilliant, brilliant question. How do we take any brand we work with and make it something that people really love? And that is yes, advertising can play part of the role in that, but it's probably also going to be design, packaging, the retail environment, the visual identity that might make a difference there. It might be something in the UX, so and the CX, which is why we're interested in that, why we create events and experiences to. And for us, it was we really kind of wanted to be able to look at that wider, wider remit and help clients reimagine their brands so that their brands people really love because there's, I mean, there's so much data that says, you know, three quarters of brands could just disappear and people wouldn't care if they went from their shelves or their apps or their phone screens, no one would care. But if you can become a brand that people really care about, you can charge a price premium and people love you for it. So let's try and take brands, they may not be there, but let's try and take brands and turn them that way. And for us, that's, you know, that's always been a doesn't mean they have to be brands that are saving the world. They just have to know why they exist and why they make people slides better. And what do you think for every brand to have a purpose Lucy? I don't think every brand should have a purpose unless it is a purpose that aligns with their business strategy and why they exist. I don't think every brand needs to have a higher social purpose, but it needs to be a brand that actually does something for people. Is useful or entertaining or, you know, serves a purpose. I don't think it necessarily needs to save the world and have us a higher social purpose. I think those are two different things. But I do think every brand needs a purpose in the sense of it needs to be clear why it exists and why it makes people slides better. In the early days of Uncommon, what was the hardest no you had to say to a potential client to protect the agency's DNA? Yeah, I mean, I think we've said no to a lot of clients actually. Not necessarily, I mean, we say flat nodes to some categories that we are not comfortable doing. For example, you know, I'm not comfortable working on gambling brands. I'd probably do the national lottery, but I worry there's lots of very harmful, addictive gambling and I'm not personally comfortable with working on that. those kind of brands. So there are some categories like smoking or gambling. I think we'd have a pretty hard know on. But mostly it's not about a category. It's about looking around the people in the room and going, do you really want to change things? Do you want to make it better? Do you want to build one of those brands? Are you ambitious for that? And that for us is the most important thing. You can't always tell until you actually start sharing work and ideas. A lot of people say, yeah, well, we want to change everything and then when you show them some stuff that is a dramatic reimagining of their brand, they look at you like you're absolutely crazy. And that's when we tend to say, you know what, maybe we don't align. And so it's really on a case by case basis. And it usually is that sense of, oh my god, even if that is a massive business opportunity, if we're sitting around a table and they're just going, now I want more of the same or they're going, are you absolutely mad for showing me that? That's when we tend to go, maybe this isn't a match made in heaven and maybe we're not right for each other. Is there a pit story you'd like to share something that you remember fondly? Take one of our early clients, which was ITV, which is the UK's largest commercial broadcaster. And if, you know, the BBC is very much the establishment channel, very received pronunciation, ITV is much more the kind of people's channel. Very dear, you know, dear friend of a friend, now a good friend was the head of strategy at ITV, and she called me up and said, got this brief, it's a brand strategy project, not really sure, would you be into doing it? And so we of course said, yeah, that sounds fun. And we broke all the rules in that they'd specifically said it was the brand strategy task and we went away and yes, we did quite a lot of brand strategy work, but we also came back with creative ideas, ideas for where they might want to focus to little lots and lots of stuff that was well beyond the scope. And I think some clients might have gone, the A, that was quite a big investment of our time and money, B, it wasn't what they asked for, although part of it was what they asked for, and C, it could have been seen as treading on lots and lots of people's toes. But that definitely, you know, A, it meant we won it, B, it meant we then got to do wonderful work over the next, you know, sort of five years from everything from actually in their case, a social purpose campaign, which was the biggest mental health campaign in the UK called Britain Get Talking. We did work launching their new streaming service, ITVX, we did work providing, you know, their quality broadcast, we did all kinds of stuff with them and that definitely started with a pitch where we massively overstep the mark. But maybe that sure would be one of some, yeah, but maybe that sure also your keenness, you know, how passionately invested you were in the brand. And also it showed to us because it was for us, we talk a lot to clients about we are best when you're in a moment of change and you need not just some more advertising, but you need to reimagine what you do. And ITV was definitely in that moment because they were in an old world broadcasting where, you know, it used to be them versus channel four and the BBC and suddenly they were up against the global streaming services and we were going, you need to find a reason why you matter to people in the UK and what role you play in shaping British culture. And that for us was really important and that was part of reminding them internally as much as anything else and then externally, you're really important, you know, you're the people's channel, you shape how we feel and you change our culture and don't forget that and you need to remind the world that you do that and you care about that in a way that Netflix never will care about the UK. You know, there was a logic to what we did for sure, but it wasn't really what we've been asked to do. Many agencies struggle with the feast or famine cycle in terms of business development. I'm curious to know how is your approach to BD? How does that ensure that your pipeline is steady and is good without losing the quality of the work that you guys want to pursue? Look, I think at its heart what it comes down to is we don't have a single passenger plan. Every client we make brilliant work for, you know, most traditional agencies that I've worked for, they do some shiny stuff on two or three clients and then they do a lot of stuff they hide in the cup of downstairs. We're not really like that. We only want to work with clients where they are absolutely lined up. They want to do brave stuff. They want to build those kind of brands and they want that level of fame because it massively pays back disproportionate fame, creates disproportionate results for clients. So for us it's a really virtuous cycle because we are so focused on making sure that we deliver that for every single one of our clients. That means that every project is a calling card for another client to pick up the phone and go, I want one of those. And that is honestly the way it works. As soon as we let work out the door and just stop caring about producing the best work for our clients, the whole thing will fall apart but we are really, really focused. I mean we say to clients everything we do is something else we're not going to do. And if you're going to hire us we are going to be all in and we're going to want to do some brilliant brilliant work together. It won't be easy but it will create disproportionate results for you. And so it becomes a very virtuous cycle because they can see that kind of work we're producing and go, okay I want one of those. So yes, I think all our work becomes a calling card for other clients. And we're looking always at pushing the edges. So we do an increasing amount of design work into a store design for example physical spaces. That kind of stuff that we're just pushing at the edges of. We've done several projects that coming out of our, we have a world glass design practice. We're now kind of building out our PR and cultural influence practice because so much of our work is about creating real fame for our clients. We just wanted to kind of supercharge that practice. And I think that practice is going to become more and more important in a world of AI and GEO rather than just SEO. You need to make sure that your brand is being talked about incredible publications of stuff like that because that obviously influences LLMs. So you know we have a view I think that physical experiences and design and experiential and PR are going to become more and more important in a world of AI slope. I'm going to take some inspiration from what you just said Lucy around GEO, other LMs and algorithms. Most decisions we take as humans are emotional in nature. We would like to believe and hope they are a bit more rational but mostly that's not the case. So much of discovery, product discovery is now being handled by AI tools which means increasingly even decision making will be added by them. Now unlike us these bits and numbers are rational to the T. Curious would that mean that advertising will have to become more rational in future rather than emotional? Maybe future comparison because that's how algos will read it right? I don't think it's that complicated and I think that right from you know the beginning of time you've needed to create emotion that drives people to want something and then at some point in that journey people are going to do the rational bit as well. Unless it's a kind of you know a bottle of wine or a bar of chocolate that you're just shuffling in. You're probably going to do that bit of you know what I should do my and just look. at the feature set comparison. I kind of need to know that I want that thing first, and then I'll go away and do my due diligence, and I might kind of actually make it go in that direction, because I know what I really want is over there. So I sort of think that that hard-working rational bit has always been part of the customer journey, and I think it will always have to continue to be in the mix. Now whether that is, you know, we do endless sail appetising on British airways, which is price and destination-led, I think that work is, you know, I would never underestimate how important it is, you just can't do just that, because it doesn't create the desire. You've got to create the desire, the emotional desire, and I think you will still have to do that, even if stuff is being looked at there, because I think we're still going to be doing the same thing. We're just supplanting one with another if that makes sense, and I think, you know, you will still, they will still be looking at things like who does, I don't know, GQ says the coolest piece of fashion, that's not going to be done by rational stuff, that's going to be done by influencing the influences, and that may still be by a really wonderful content series, or an incredible kind of experience, or whatever that is then told for journalists or whoever to write about, that's the coolest brand in the sector. So I still think there is going to absolutely be that requirement to create that emotional desire, and in certain categories and certain purchases absolutely the hard-nosed, which is the best kind of feature by feature comparison. So I think there will be both of those, I'll continue to coexist, they're just going to look quite different in where they show up and which bits and what place within the customer journey. I don't think GEO is going to replace that need for a motivational connection to that. What do you think about that? I'm curious to know. Yeah, I think Lucy Discovery would, Discovery like we were just discussing, Discovery would go to AI as an algo, but I think what I hear you saying is the decision in that process will still be human-led. And I think where algorithm and the GEO sucks from, it's got a suck from somewhere, and that will be from quite often PR, credible influences, events, people writing about stuff, who is still going to have to touch and feel things. So that's why I think things weirdly like activation, events, and PR are going to be slightly more important than they have been, even. And I think then the difference really between low-involvement categories and high-involvement categories would become even more pronounced. So if my car needs a new battery or a new set of tires, I would leave that decision to the AI. I don't need to bother myself with it. But if I need a new, let's say a nice or maybe an upgraded sound system for my car, that's something I'll care about. So I might ask the AI, "Hey, why don't you suggest me top three?" and so on and so forth. But in the end, I would still prefer to go to our showroom, get inside there, demo vehicle, listen to the sound, and then go with what I want to go ahead with. So that's where I think experience will come in as well, that you were talking about. Yeah. And some categories will remain badge categories. And there are also some brands that even in a low-interest category almost become badges. So I think there is surprising potential for things to become badges, even empowering categories. That was actually a discussion I was having with Adam this morning, because they've done some really interesting work for Reserve Bank of Australia. Right? Now, a Reserve Bank, you probably wouldn't expect, I mean, banks do some interesting work, but the Central Bank, you wouldn't expect a Central Bank to have an interesting campaign. And we were talking about, you know, which categories he thinks are most fertile, boring categories, boring categories which are most fertile for interesting work. So, yeah, I can connect with budget. We look at something like Hiscocks, which is insurance in the UK, and business insurance and consumer, that's one of our most loved and best campaigns, which looks at the consequences of when things go wrong in business insurance. It's the most disastrous campaign ever. And, you know, you think that was a very rational, very low-interest category, but we've shown that that is a category that is actually fraught with emotion and really interesting, and you can do great work there. So, yeah, I think there's a, you know, people are quick to kind of go, well, that's just a boring category. I think there are boring categories, but there's no such thing as boring brand. That's the strategist in you talking, Lucy. Awesome. I want to talk about a category which is very close to my heart. I did tell you I run this other podcast as well, aviation podcast. So, yeah, I was very, very keen to talk to you about your fantastic work for BA, right? And you did mention BA sometime back. Now, a British original, it won big because I, you know, just so simple and so brilliant. I mean, I think the greatness of the campaign was its simplicity, right? The reasons to fly. And you're not focusing on hardware, admittedly, BA is not number one there. You're not focusing on anything else. You're focusing on reasons to fly. Now, as somebody who manages one of the most iconic airline brands in the world, what do you think is, I mean, you would have done, I'm sure, tons of research. And since on boarding, BA, you would have had more access. I mean, is there a holy grail of passenger experience that, you know, you think even a television spot cannot figure out, cannot fix? I mean, is there something you'd like to focus more on? So we, I mean, I love working on airlines that fascinating. And, you know, the whole business of travel is exciting. The idea that you're a national flag carrier is fascinating too, because people have an unreasonable sort of pride and connection with their national flag carrier. And for us, we looked at it as a real opportunity, because coming out of the pandemic, British Airways had lost a load of money because they had ground, you know, 70% of their fleet and, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And the truth is, it was going to take them a while to build back capacity and to build back the experience. So the first six months, they didn't have all their cabin crew back in, they weren't able to serve their full complement of food. You know, there was a lot of stuff that needed to be built back in. And the truth is, it takes a long time to build those things back in an airline because ordering planes, changing cabins, that's all slow, big stuff. So we needed to get people excited about, remind them why they loved flying and why to get back into a plane because people have got out of the habit. We needed to also remind them that BA understood each customer as an original, because that's really important. That is one of those intangibles about BA service. They don't just treat passengers like cattle. They really try and kind of understand them as people. And so for us, it was really important to start gradually building up that perception. And then the longer we've been working with them, the more you'll see things like there's British original breakfast in the menu card or on the high life, the inflight entertainment. There's a British original section. There's the safety videos, the period of drama ones we've done. You can gradually start building up and up and up the experience. And you know, the British Airways team have really, you know, post pandemic once they started to be able to build back that experience to base level, they now started to invest a lot more money. So you're seeing new things coming in in terms of club suite and the level of food and the app and the lounges are new. And so we've just worked on new lounges in Miami and to buy and place this like that where we wanted to help, you know, we worked with the the architectural team doing it to help build in a bit more of a sense of originality. So you would go into a BA lounge feels British, it feels a bit local to you, but there's some original touches in that. So for example, in the lounge in Miami, you have to, there's on the roof, but reflected on the floor is a London calling sign so you have to kind of play with it to get to see it. You know, there's little touches there. So for us, it's always about that sense of how can we bring the best of British and kind of give that sense of that is what it takes and that's what the great experience is. It's got those lovely memorable touches that could only have been done by British our ways. That's what you're looking for, I think. Before we move on, just a quick reminder to all of you who listen to the show, but do not subscribe to it yet. Please do press the follow, subscribe button wherever you are listening to this back to our chat now. Lucy, you have positioned BA as a piece of brand Britain. If you were tasked with rebranding an airline in a market like India, would you lean into national heritage as heavily or is that a strategy that only works for legacy flat carriers? You have to find a strand of the DNA that works in the local market that appeals to your other core markets. And so for us that piece of, you know, we're quite proud of the fact Britain's seen as a little bit eccentric and original and it's got kind of soft power in terms of, you know, music and books and creativity and sort of stuff like that. And that is something we're proud of in Britain, but I also think people outside Britain quite enjoy when they come to Britain. That's one of the things they like. That's one of the reasons people come here. Yes, there's the sort of heritage and castles and stuff like that, but there's also that sort of sense of oh yeah, it's kind of quirky, there's a street scene, there's music, there's a little that kind of that side of the UK too. And so I think you're always looking for what's the strand that people in your country can feel proud of, but that other people want to experience as well. So for me, that's always the wind. It's a hard thing to pull through because you absolutely need to find that and we love British originality because it does sort of, you know, I think people around the world think we are slightly eccentric and I think people think there's a slightly kind of we're not we're not exactly the most rule following nation. We're very polite, but we don't always follow the rules and that sort of sense of originality and slight quirkiness. You want to kind of come through and that's what people expect and quite like doesn't feel like you're getting maybe the, you know, the welcome you might get in a US airline, it's much more unionized and much more whatever, it's just different. So I think you need to play with that and so I would be looking for what are the things that India feels phenomenally proud about, but that everybody else around the world wants to experience. Yeah, the diversity, the colors and, you know, the food, the culture, yeah. Again, all the soft elements like you were saying Lucy, right? Yeah, absolutely. Lucy, when scaling an agency, there's often a tension between profitability and creative purity. How do you as a founder manage that tension in the boardroom? Our role is very clear in that you hire us because we are going to give you a really different creative idea, which is going to drive disproportionate results for your business. And if we are not delivering that, we can't charge a premium and we have to do that. It isn't, it's, you know, it's quite a hand tool thing. You can go to a kind of crappy agency who plugs and numbers into AI and give you average system one of Donson work where, you know, they plugged in every single pizza rad, they got an AI to create a good pizza rad. They put it through their tests and guess what? It delivered average. You hire us to go, you know what, we're not going to give you average results. We're going to create disproportionate results. And that's what you hire us for. And so for us, it isn't a kind of trade-off. It has to be, we will only, you know, we will deliver that. You will pay for that. And that's what you'll get. That's at least, you know, very much what we're trying to sell. We're trying to sell. We believe creativity delivers, you know, disproportionate results. And that's why we generate uncommon value for our clients. And we are, you know, we have what we call our value chain, which maps out, you know, if we deliver this, this is what we think it will do. This is how we'll get noticed. This is how it will change perceptions of the brand. And this is why it'll change behavior and ultimately profitability. And so whether that is a piece of design or a piece of CX or a piece of advertising, we're always looking at, right, what's that value chain? How does that translate through into results for a client? And I think that's really important. It's not just us going, we want to win some nice creative awards. We're going, right, we're trying to do this because we want it to be loved, noticed, spanned out. And that's why it's going to drive better results for you. How do you view the consultancy versus agency battle today? Does uncommon see itself competing more with the accentures of the world or the traditional holding companies? I mean, I sort of think it's interesting because because we're at slightly unusual business in our design practice is very core to what we do as well as advertising and CX. And I don't see many of the consultancies investing a tool in design. Do any of them have good design practices? I don't think they do. And I don't know that I think many of the holding companies do really either. So it's a bit weird, I mean, this sounds terrible, but we are trying to be in a business of one in that I don't think anybody else is trying to sell really now trying to sell creative transformation because I think consultancies are trying to sell business transformation, a through spreadsheets, numbers, rational solutions. And I think holding companies are increasingly trying to sell efficiency capability and we'll do it cheaper with AI. I don't think many other people are out there saying we're trying to sell the idea that creativity can give you an unfair advantage. I don't know that I hear that rhetoric from WPP, Cindy's, Cindy Roses, most recent kind of strategy piece. Where was she talking about that? I don't think our to us, so Dune is talking about that and publicists. I don't hear Accenture talking about it. So I don't know that I just, I think we play against all of them a bit, but we are very focused around what we think we can deliver. I'm not saying we're anti AI or any of that. We absolutely use it and embrace it, but we see what our difference is is that we are sort of very focused on using creativity to create a disproportionate result for our clients. So yeah, I don't hear that. I'll try to talk about it much. Yeah, okay. If you had to give advice to an Indian indie shop and in India, I can tell you there's so many fantastic independent agencies now. Yeah. What advice would you suggest to the who's the best at the moment? Well, that's hard. The gentleman I had on the very first episode of this podcast, got them, he runs talented. It's a really, really good shop. Then there are other shops called together. There is Kulfi. Kulfi is a form of Indian desert. There's a natural inclination towards that. No, but there's so many fantastic shops actually. And these are brilliant people who were part of, of course, holding companies and then they got kind of dissolutioned with what they were going through and they were like, you know, if it I'm going to start something on my own, right? And those two, three people come together. There's another great agency called Fund mental. So actually there's so many I can probably count 10 12 agencies. So all of them are fantastic. But if you had to advise an indie shop based on your rich experience of starting an indie shop, why would you tell them? Yeah. I mean I think you have to be very clear on why you exist. What you're for, what moment you're for and why you're different from everybody else. I mean it's all the usual things that you do as a strategist to be honest. But I think too many people kind of go, I'm fed up with that. I just want to start something different and they're not really focused on what are we going to say that is why we exist, why we're different, what we're for. I mean we're really clear with for clients in a moment of change. You know, whether it is ITV suddenly facing the streaming services, the global streamers or British Airways coming out of a pandemic or Google talking about how do we reinvent search or you know it could be any of those things. Or Monzo going we want to scale those sort of things when you're trying to change something. That's when data and algorithms can only take you part of the way and you need creativity to re-imagine where things could go. So I think you need to be very clear about why exist, who you're for and then you need to be really loud. I'm not a brilliant PR person but my business partner Nils is a phenomenal. He is just really good at that and I think people forget that that is absolutely fundamental. You need to have a very clear positioning and then you need to be very, very loud, disproportionately loud about what you're doing and why. I do think those have been, we probably invested much earlier than most people do in PR in our own house PR and thinking about how we wrapped, how we told the story, how we became a magnet for creative talent as well, not just what clients we chased after and then you need to be super, super disciplined and stick to it because most agencies just end up chasing after anything and everything. That's not how you build a brand, you build a brand by being quite disciplined about what you do and who you're for. So I would just say stick to that discipline quite ruthlessly and it's painful. There are times when we particularly during the pandemic we rely on my god are we going to have a business in six months or a year. So we resigned the week after the Brexit referendum which was not great for the British economy and we were quite sad. We were 18 months old when the pandemic happened and three out of our four biggest clients stopped their spend overnight. We've been through the ups and downs of it and you just have to be I think throughout all of that incredibly focused on now what we're going to stay true to what we believe this brand is about. You've also experimented with taking equity in brands and in those instances Lucy does the agency client dynamic shift from being a service provider to some sort of a corner who's very involved, let's say involved instead of being meddling. How do you handle a situation where you're creative instinct, your strategist instinct as a founder conflicts with the brands, brands needs and those needs can be varied, those can be piano needs, those can be administration related needs so on so forth. How do you figure that out? I think we worked out with our very first brand which was Halo Coffee. We're not good at any of the supply chain or logistics. We're rubbish at all of that. That is not our special source. You have to be in bed with people who absolutely are sector experts and understand that side of the business. We are really good at design, brand, figuring out in this case it was one of the world's first fully composable coffee capsules. That for us answered a real friction and a need and was different from a nespresso of the world and because it had that inbuilt at the beginning it was a brand that deserved to exist. It got disproportionate fame. But the business because of the supply chain and logistics was an absolute mess to begin with and as a result probably got beaten by other brands who were better at that side of it. I think it reminded us of yes, brand is super important. Don't get me wrong. It allows you to charge a price premium and it allows you to create desire. If you don't have the fundamentals of supply chain logistics, the business model in that sort of sense sorted then you're absolutely screwed and I'm not going to get involved in that because it's not my world and I would meddle in a place where I don't have the level of expertise I need to, you know, I can give broad advice but beyond that it's not my bag. So I think you learn to be respectful of all the other stuff that, you know, a business needs in order to survive and really respectful of the fact that your bit of expertise is really important but is really talking. So I think you understand that and then I think you understand increasingly which bits play where like at the beginning of a journey, nailing the founder's story, why you exist, what you're different for, you know, all of that is really fundamental and we're very good at helping a brand with their narrative there. We're also great at creating design in a way that makes a brand look gorgeous premium, all the rest of it credible, well beyond most brands at that stage which means that when you're selling into a supermarket or a partner or whatever, you've got a disproportionate advantage but we're not going to go out and recommend you doing brand advertising at that point, it's completely irrelevant. So I think we're, you know, we've got better at understanding which bits of our stuff might be useful. So yes, brand narrative, right, the get go, PR, the get go, design it, the get go, the rest of it, not so much, wouldn't spend a penny on that to begin with unless you've got giant budgets. So I think, I think we've learned to be a lot more commercial and respectful of, you know, where we can play a useful role and which bits of our armoury, which bits, you know, which bits of a brand's life stage are most useful. There's an interesting Indian startup, if you can call it startup, it's an agency only but in West in brands, it's called Spring Capital. If you have a moment, maybe check them out, they've been doing something interesting because we were just talking about indie shops. I just thought, yeah, so we have an accelerator program. After our experiences at the beginning, we kind of went, you know what, we're not great at this. So we invested in an accelerator program called Unrest. So they take equity in small startups and they help them accelerate their journey by giving them advice on the legal track, the fundraising track, leadership, and we do the design, brand and advertising bit of it. So we've had sort of 70 plus startups go through that accelerator program now. And you know, that has also means that all our strategists get to kind of go and work with founders, understand how that works, help them get their stories sorted. So it's a really good, it's great for them, it's really good for us, it's helped us hone how we think about this, where we're useful, what we do. So unrest are amazing, really, really interesting business. On strategy, Lucy, I've read how you have talked about applying the Hollywood model, which is bringing in a fluid network of, you know, uncommon minds. How do you maintain that consistent uncommon agency DNA when you are a strat team is bespoke and changing for every project. Does it ever lead to an island? We have a core team in every market in New York, in London, and in Stockholm. And then we expand it. So, you know, we will different markets, for example, we've worked with uncommon minds in India on British Airways, for example, we've worked on common minds in Italy in just different markets where our clients have needed to be. And what's great is I think because we've got a very clear brand and DNA and we have a very clear what we call ROS. So we have our brand way of doing brand on a page or way of thinking about a mapping which is just figuring out where you can add and common impact throughout a customer experience. You know, we've got the value chain, we've got all of those sort of things that help us think through that. So it's quite easy for somebody to come in and pick up, oh, that's how they do things and see our work and the way we apply things. So I think we have a head start in that we have a very clear point of view on the world. We tend to attract people who want to do the kind of work that we produce. So it means we get to do that. I have a good network, global network of strats because I used to run a global strap network at DDB for many years. And you know, I still do training with people like WALA and lots of stuff like that. So I have a reasonably good network of people. And then we also work with say a music specialist when we need to do deep dive that into that or materiality or sustainability. So the point is to have a very core kind of foundational team. And then we supplement it with different people coming in and out with either specialist local market knowledge or specialist insight of a category we don't know so much about or a deep dive like sustainability. I'm not a sustainability expert. And we really love that. Keeps everyone in the team fresh, gives them new people to learn from and it's always a really lovely value exchange actually. You have champion fast strategy and noisy thinking in an era of air driven insights is thinking slow becoming a luxury that agencies can no longer afford or is it the only thing that will save us from becoming a sea of sameness? And does AI add value? Massively adds value. But quite often I'm almost looking at it going right what's the obvious answer? I'll get AI to do all of that. And then I'll kind of go right how do I turn it on its head? And sometimes even actually prompts can be right. Okay, if I was to ignore all the best practice, what would you tell me to do? It can kind of trigger good thinking actually as well. So I am absolutely not averse to AI. I think it speeds up and accelerates a lot of thinking. I think it provides you a lot of the obvious answers very quickly. You need to know what you're doing though because I've got nearly 30 years of pattern recognition of understanding where I think something is good or bad or being able to figure out where a good hunch might be that will lead. And I worry a little bit that people coming through and develop that same sense of, you know, I've been through the crunchy things of where it's been difficult and where I've thought it would be a really good thing and then why it hasn't worked or, you know, so I've got a kind of spidey sense of things which only comes I think from painful knowledge of where things have gone wrong as much as they've gone right. Feed on the street, right? Nothing beats that. And also that sense of I sort of can recognise what sort of a problem this is and I can kind of go completely different category but it reminds me of that. I'm going to go away and dig that out. And for us, I think very often our clients are often deep experts in their category but where we are unusual is being able to see right across every single category and quite often it's that kind of thing where you go, oh, this reminds me of that in that category over there. Why don't we try that because that's never been done in this category and that can unlock massive value for a client because they would never have thought about it because they tend to be a category specialist for example. And I don't think an AI would probably come up with that. You could get there, you could prompt it to do that but you'd need to have the experience to kind of go, oh, I think it. I remember one of my bosses told me many years back that Michelle go down five level of wise, you know, and in some respects that might apply to AI as well. I mean straight away it'll probably give you the lowest hanging fruit but that everybody will get and you'd be like, that's AI slop. But yeah, you really need to dig in and maybe maybe and I think quite often the five level of wise might be something that somebody within a category would already do. For me, it'd be the five levels of sideways wise are actually the bit that I think is harder for most people and AI to do because being able to figure out what is a good parallel and what isn't is quite often quite hard but really helpful. As someone who looks at global trends, what is that one thing about the future of the agency business model that excites you the most? So look, I think you build brands people love by doing stuff they love and I think increasingly that will come from IRL stuff. Whether that is wonderful events, immersive experiences, beautiful products and packaging, things you can touch and feel in a world that is increasingly, you know, virtual. I think that is one of the big kind of opportunities and I get very excited by that. I mean, I love work like there's a wonderful set designer called Esdevlin. I get excited when you go to a concert and you see what they're doing with, you know, their set design or what those experiences are now like. A lot of that is high-end stuff but I think there's something really interesting in a kind of, you know, not just that, oh, we're going to show up at a music festival and do the same crap as everybody else does because we're a beer brand and it's generic and boring but applying the same out there, level of creativity that you create something wonderful, memorable, emotional that people are going to love and remember and write about and get talked about and show up in Geo Articles all the rest of it. I think that is a big opportunity because I don't see many ad agencies or creative businesses doing that at scale. I see some boutique kind of very high-end sort of set designers, production studios doing that but I don't necessarily think that a lot of brands are applying that level of creativity. They're spending a lot of money on events, experiences, sponsorships, partnerships but maybe not applying the same level as creativity as they could be to them. I think that's really fascinating as a place to play. Wonderful design, wonderful experiences, stuff that people love. I think there's just huge opportunities there. And how do you see the agency of the future Lucy with all this AI, Hala Blue? I definitely see there's a massive role for AI, an agency that says they're not going to do AI as an idiot. You know, there's yes, we will use it to automate it, we will use it to accelerate our thinking, we will use it to create stuff, we can't currently create, we'll use it to prototype ideas, we'll use it for all of that. So without a shadow of a doubt, we use it for data, all kinds of stuff. That will be a base layer for sure that needs to be a fundamental and that by the way is not cheap in terms of licenses, in terms of training, in terms of people. Everyone says it's going to be massively efficient. I think it is, but it is also quite expensive, all of that. So I think that is fundamental, but then I think you build on top of that, that beauty creative that really is, I think, a smaller group, unfortunately, of very talented, more senior people who can actually beat the average that you will get from an algorithm. I think there is a role for that and then I think showing up with that in more interesting places across a brand's ecosystem. I have always loved, you know, like I always use this example, the Google Doodles for years. was actually the thing that shaped how I felt about that brand, far more than any advertising did. And I think that was an exercise of creativity. And to me, I kind of go, "That's what I want to see. I want to see creativity showing up in unloved surface areas of a brand and doing something amazing. Not necessarily in traditional paid media. It might be there or it might be in creating an amazing event that means I'm going to remember that and talk about that in decades. So you want really creative people who can define a brand, think through all the places they could play in the customer experience and then use their creativity to transform bits that might not normally be looked at. That's what I see as the future of an ad agency. So it genuinely is that kind of high end. We're going to use really impressive people who understand the business thoroughly, how you can transform it through creativity. I love that. That you want to see creativity on unloved surfaces of a brand. I think that's so powerful. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so beautiful. But I'm going to tell my team that tomorrow as well tomorrow morning. First thing, that's what I'm going to tell them. Fantastic. Do you have any books or podcasts that you like that you'd like to recommend to our listeners? If they haven't listened to it, Adam Morgan's podcast he's been doing on dull is a really good one. The cost of dull because I actually think that's a kind of such an interesting exercise. And we're always talking about how we make things efficient. But we don't talk about the cost of things then being boring. And that's a really interesting some of the work he's been doing with Peter field. On the extraordinary cost of dull. I think is a really good one that not enough people have been listening to. And then I mean, I listen to all the usual stuff as well. But that one I don't know that your listeners will maybe not have heard of yet. Thank you so much Lucy for being so kind. For being so generous with your time. Thank you. Honestly, I really enjoyed it. It's one of the fun things of our job trying to talk about what the best bits of it are. Yeah. And I feel we have the best job because every day you get to work on a new product, a new category. You get to learn about it. Why I'm still playing it after only. Well, the good shows on your face Lucy. Thank you again. And I hope you have a lovely evening ahead. Angie. Angie. As we wrap today's conversation with Lucy, I'm stuck on one specific thought. The idea that the skip ad button is into a technical feature. It's a consumer verdict. Lucy's career is a masterclass in the uncommon truth that the best business strategy is not about how much noise you make. But about how much space you fill in people's lives. Next week, episode 65 of the Indian Abgeek is going to feature two massive heavyweights of the industry. Stay tuned for that. If you've enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe, leave us a review, drop a rating and share it with someone who might enjoy it. The Indian Abgeek streams on all major podcast apps. Lucy is not active on X, but I am @VishalOneMahara Everywhere. Hit me up with your feedback. Until next time, keep your creative antennas tuned and your Abgeek flag flying high, stay quirky, stay curious and keep it.