Step Into My Office: ODD's Sam Sheterline on breaking corporate boundaries and diversity in the workplace

What does your business do?

In the main, we work as lead global agency for brands in the fashion and lifestyle space. We work as an extension of our brand’s teams in a strategic and creative capacity.

Our diverse backgrounds, media neutral approach and desire to answer business challenges (not just briefs), means that our work lives across all channels – from TV to social and everything between. So, if you were to put a label on us, I guess you’d say we’re an integrated agency.

What gets us up in the morning is the pursuit of ‘beautiful effectiveness’ – brilliantly crafted work that delivers tangible results for our clients.

Describe your office culture.

I’d say boundary-less, if that’s a word. Let’s go with it anyway.

While we were growing, we didn’t have all the departments and specialisms that we have today, meaning that our people wore multiple hats and therefore practitioned in a far broader capacity than their job titles typically suggest. As we’ve grown, we’ve built teams and processes to deliver what we do smoothly and efficiently, while acknowledging that both our people and our clients love the way we’ve broken down the invisible lines between the departments that you see at many agencies. This allows us to work in a genuinely collaborative and fluid way across departments, to reach the best creative solutions for our clients. All without any of the ‘us and them’ thing that you find at many agencies.

We love people who bring something different to the party in terms of their background, personality and interests – it’s that diversity that creates really interesting conversations with each other and clients when solving business problems. Agency culture is the responsibility of everyone at ODD and we love it when our people bring new cultural initiatives to the table. Examples have included Cake Wednesday (which does exactly what it says on the tin) and the ODD Occasion – events we put on to celebrate three brilliant people across different industries, who share insights and learnings from their most admired projects. This has previously included the brilliant illustrator-come-rapper-come-comedian Mr. Bingo, a creative technologist duo who created a robot that you could control online to view Tate exhibitions at night, and an experimental mixologist.

My final thing to say on our culture is that when I was approached by a recruiter about my role at ODD five years ago, I had the pre-conception that due to the portfolio being largely fashion-based, it would be a bit Devil Wears Prada, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We take our work seriously, but not ourselves. There’s genuinely no big egos, aloofness or bitchiness – just an 'all for one and one for all' approach to work and play.

How do you attract and/or retain talent?

Outside of a competitive pay and benefits package, I think our people love the flexibility we offer. We trust our people to get the job done and treat them like adults in terms of managing work alongside their lives and commitments – whatever they may be. Everyone in the company is creatively driven and will give their best when feeling empowered and inspired by the world around them – so it’s down to us to get them out of the office, experiencing life and culture.

From a people development perspective, we set clear objectives broken down by the three pillars of our business (creative, culture and commercial) and review these bi-annually. As an IPA member, we also have a thorough CPD plan for our people and have sent people on weird and wonderful courses spanning a huge variety of bodies from D&AD to The School of Life.

Finally, (but very importantly), we want to take our people on the journey. In addition to the bi-annual agency away days (which have ranged from Broadstairs to Berlin), we have recently brought in The ODD Month, where we will get the whole agency together to look under the bonnet of the past month (and the next one coming) in terms of the work going through the agency, new business opportunities, team news and commercial performance.

Where are you located, and why?

Old Street. A short hop from Silicon Roundabout – just off the City Road. We’re next door to Shoreditch Police Station – so we’re always on our best behaviour... of course! We moved here from Farringdon, just before Christmas 2013.

The area has changed immeasurably since we dropped anchor. But what hasn’t changed are the things that won our hearts back in 2013 – the creativity, diversity and optimism that’s in the air.

N1 is also great for many of our people who live and play out East, while generally being well connected for the wider ODD team and our clients.

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

There’s been loads of great work over the past 12 months, but I’d go for being appointed as F&F’s global integrated agency after a long pitch.

Our remit was previously split across four agencies, so it’s a big scope, but one that plays perfectly to our ability in working as a true global partner. We’re working with ambitious clients to deliver a step-change in the brand and in turn, driving tangible commercial growth.

It's a great opportunity to deliver our promise of 'beautiful effectiveness' and it feels like we’re off to a flyer with our first 360 campaign, Supermarket Woman, which debuted in April.

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

Tough one. Not all super recent, but those that I love and have stuck in my mind have been:

• Toronto based John St.’s films – all of which poke fun at ad-land zeitgeist obsessions. They're brilliantly conceived and convincingly made with my personal favourites being ‘catvertising’, ‘buyral’ and ‘reactvertising’.
• CP+B Copenhagen’s The Problem Solver beer, which was designed and brewed to give the drinker the optimal blood-alcohol level to spark creativity… apparently based on scientific research. I’d imagine this was well received by those who got a bottle (after all who doesn’t like free beer?) and also a brilliant conversation starter for the agency to take to new business prospects in the booze category.
• Zulu Alpha Kilo’s Say No To Spec film. Whether you’re agency or client side, it’s definitely worth a watch. They deliver a pretty ballsy message around the ethics of pitching in a simple yet endearing way. I’ve yet to meet anyone from adland who hasn’t concurred with the sentiment of this film.

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

I’d say the number one challenge is the bandwagon. You know, that thing that rolls into adland at full pelt, omitting a fug of hyperbole, hysteria and anxiety?

I’m not talking about any specific bandwagon that's rolled into town in recent years (big data, programmatic, automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) etc, etc), but more generally, the risk of agencies either jumping on blind or burying their heads in the sand when they hear it screeching around the corner. For me, it’s about understanding your agency’s DNA and having a well-informed (and well-debated) conversation on what each ‘trend’ means for the agency and its clients – before any knee-jerk decision is made.

Describe the new business ethos at your agency

It’s easy for agencies to jump at every opportunity going, but I’d say the key words to describe our approach are ‘considered’ and ‘inclusive’;

‘Considered’ in terms of evaluating each opportunity against the key pillars of the agency – creative, culture and commercial. If we’re not convinced any one of these boxes won’t be ticked, then we’ll usually walk away and save everyone’s time.

‘Inclusive’ as we want to bring brands and briefs into the agency that enable our people to deliver their best work. Bi-annually, we ask our people to identify brands they would love to work with and there’s always a real mix. The team are obviously inspired by brands they buy into personally as consumers and fans, but more so by any brand who invites us to the table to help solve their business challenges. In a nutshell, we love nothing more than seeing our work, work.

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