Step Into My Office: Red Bee's Andy Bryant on new business ethos and the importance of customer service

What does your business do?

We describe Red Bee as the content and design agency born in entertainment, and that's no empty claim: we started life as the BBC’s in-house creative and design team but we have been a thriving commercial business for the last 15 years.

We create and produce compelling content and integrated campaigns for brands in the entertainment sector and beyond, design distinctive brand identities and also work as pure brand strategists in content and entertainment marketing.

Describe your office culture.

Is this the bit where I talk about being one big family, our picnics/bake sales/quiz nights or our office dog? It’s hard to avoid the clichés, but we try to foster an open, non-hierarchical, multi-disciplinary creative culture. And we share a love of TV.

Our antique tea trolley is always laden with sugary snacks brought back by Red Bee-ers from overseas trips, we really do have picnics, bake sales and quiz nights along with office yoga and our legendary Christmas awards to recognize the unsung heroes of the year. And we make a mean human pyramid. We’re very proud to have been judged one of Broadcast’s Best Places To Work In TV 2017.

How do you attract and/or retain talent?

Hopefully by maintaining the culture described above and giving everyone, from every discipline, boundless opportunities to learn and make a contribution. As part of this we encourage and support our talent to pursue personal projects, from making online comedy shorts for the BBC, to children’s book illustration, animation and long-form documentaries. And we always strive for high profile, award-winning creative projects that everyone is proud to be associated with.

Where are you located, and why?

White City. When we started out it was an unloved corner of West London, opposite a derelict site full of unexploded WWII bombs and with a curly BBC tea bar sandwich pretty much the only lunchtime option. Now we’re in the heart of London’s newest business district, dubbed ‘White City Place’, and soon to be bordered by Imperial College West, an even bigger Westfield and a new Soho House with rooftop pool.

Name a project you were proud of in the last year (client work or otherwise)?

It’s so tough to choose, but I have to say our work to support Nissan’s sponsorship of Team GB and Paralympics GB running up to the Rio Olympics. We pranked top athletes with hidden cameras and two brilliant improvisation comedians pretending to be Nissan’s global sponsorship team, who tried to persuade the athletes to adopt ever more ludicrous ways to integrate the brand while actually competing in Rio.

What’s the best piece of agency marketing you’ve seen recently (yours or otherwise)?

Without doubt, Grey London’s ‘re-brand’ to Valenstein & Fatt in honour of their two long-overlooked Jewish founders. It wasn’t just the boldness of their stance on diversity but the scale of ambition and the flawless attention to executional detail, from the moving film on their web site explaining why the founders couldn’t put their names over the door back in 1917 to the way in which I was invited on LinkedIn to congratulate Grey friends for their new ‘roles’ at Valenstein & Fatt. Best marketing for an agency, ever.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for video content agencies wanting to grow and thrive both now and in the coming years?

I think one of the biggest challenges lies in the question itself. How do you define a ‘video content’ agency these days? As technology increasingly enables all brands to make and distribute almost unlimited amounts of content, an increasingly wide variety of agencies – from the global mega-corporations to the creative equivalent of 'a man with a van' – are claiming expertise in content production and creation. Add the (often false) promises of digital platforms and so-called ‘big data’ and it’s no wonder that many marketers don’t know where to turn. In this over-supplied market it will be increasingly challenging for agencies to differentiate themselves and prove the value of their work to clients.

Describe the new business ethos at your agency

In response to the challenges outlined above, at Red Bee we have a very simple approach to cut through the claims and counter-claims. First and foremost, we ask ourselves how a brand can make itself genuinely entertaining. Why will people choose to spend time with its content? If those questions can’t be answered, all other questions are irrelevant. Many research studies over many years have demonstrated that brands that entertain have a competitive edge. We always strive to understand why our creative work is the way it is and prove its value and relevance to a brand.

We believe in the old adage that ‘people buy from people’; we try never to forget that no amount of strategic or creative brilliance will compensate for a bad customer experience. We hear many horror stories about how clients have been treated by other agencies and we try always to be nice people to do business with: collaborative, can-do, fast, cost-effective and fun. (We really must think about getting a dog though…)

The Future Factory is a new business agency based in London.