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Step into my office: James Gibbon on appealing video content and creating a happy work culture

By Jessica Davis, Consultant Journalist

The Future Factory

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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March 20, 2017 | 6 min read

‘Step into my Office’, is a series of interviews powered by The Future Factory and The Drum Network, which investigate the details behind the office door. The Future Factory is a lead generation and growth consultancy that spends one day per week working from their clients’ workplace, getting under the hood of agency life, ambitions and culture among all its idiosyncrasies and charm.

James Gibbon
James Gibbon is co-founder of content agency, Whitecoat

James Gibbon

James Gibbon is co-founder of content agency, Whitecoat

This month James Gibbon, co-founder of content agency Whitecoat, discusses the importance of watchable content and keeping employees on their toes.

What does your business do?

Simply put, we create content: branded content, film and television content, live content, VR content and interactive content.

They are five quite different disciplines, but they all start with a killer creative idea. We have an internal creative and research and development department called the creative lab, which is where all our ideas come from, no matter what type of content is being created.

What makes us different is that we are at heart a post production facility, so from the very first stages of a production, our creatives are working directly with our VFX artists and coders, which means our ideas are guided by the very latest techniques and technologies. We believe that this collaboration of skill-sets at the ideation stage really sets us apart form more traditional agencies.

Describe your office culture

We see great importance in making the office a really enjoyable place to be, from the style of the interiors, to the complementary drinks and snacks and the quality of the equipment and workstations. I think this is the foundation for making your employees feel valued.

White Coat

On top of this we really try to run a meritocracy, and empower our employees to try new things; we always keep them engaged by allowing them to work across very different types of content.

I think these two factors, plus the fact we always hire open minded and interesting people, creates a really fun and productive atmosphere in our office.

How do you attract and/or retain talent?

The strength of our client list is a major pull for potential employees, and the ability for us to offer a wide variety of projects for them to work on. One day they might be working on a VR project with Manchester United and Chevrolet, the next they will be working with the BBC on a new documentary series, or with Facebook producing live stream content.

Another attractive feature is that we self-fund our own productions (short films, music promos, documentaries). We're interested in any productions that we think will evolve our skill-set and keep our passion for production alive and kicking.

Where are you located and why?

We're on Wardour street in Soho. I like to say it's because this is the heart of London's post-production industry, but I think the real reason is that there are so many great food options for lunch!

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

Our work for Chevrolet, promoting their sponsorship of Manchester United was a real highlight (excuse the pun), combining two promo shoots and a 360 VR experience that brought to life iconic moments from the team’s illustrious history.

What’s the best piece of agency marketing you’ve seen recently?

An agency called Isobel puts an inordinate amount of effort into their Christmas cards. This year, each member of staff had full on prosthetic make-up put on to make them totally bald, and they all dressed up as Hari Krishnas and took an image so beautifully art directed that the final card a work of art.

I thought this was great because it communicates so much about them as a company; they are creative, they don’t take themselves too seriously, they have a sense of humour, and most importantly, they know how to execute a creative idea is a perfectly produced way. It’s a great example of the medium being the message.

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

I would say that the main challenge for content agencies is that consumers are starting to see branded content as clutter or something to be avoided, so we always strive to make content that we would like to watch. Also, I think staying at the forefront of new technologies and platforms for content is key.

Ultimately, we're storytellers. We just need to understand how best to tell stories in an ever evolving industry and on an ever increasing number of platforms.

Describe the new business ethos at your agency

New business for us is a dual stream process; most importantly, it's keeping in touch with our existing clients, making sure they're up to date with our latest work and tracking any clients who move jobs, but it's also about getting in to present with brands that we feel can really make use of the expertise we have across each of our key content disciplines.

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

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Content by The Drum Network member:

The Future Factory

With a mix of lead generation, board level consultancy and coaching, we help to make the future more predictable for agency Owners, Founder and Directors. www.thefuturefactory.co.uk

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