Creativebrief Founder & Chairman Tom Holmes talks to Jacob Dutton, Client Services Director at 383, an innovation led creative agency based in Birmingham.
Jacob Dutton, 383 Project
Jacob Dutton is Client Services Director, 383 Project, an innovation led creative agency based in Birmingham.
383 develop campaigns, applications and platforms for brands with connected customers. They are ranked in the top 100 creative agencies in the country and work with companies such as General Motors, BBC, Heinz, Royal Shakespeare Company and Sprite.
Jacob has worked in marketing services for the last 5 years. In that time, he has developed communications and platform strategies for some of the worlds most recognised brands and has built successful business relationships across key accounts through insightful strategy, effective planning and exemplary levels of service. Since joining 383 in 2010, the agency has grown from 4 to 30 members of staff, achieved 80% year on year growth and won countless awards for its creative work.
TH: Firstly Jacob, what does the Birmingham brand stand for?
JD: The city is undergoing huge changes and there’s a significant amount of reshaping going on around what Birmingham stands for on both the national and international stage.
As a kid growing up in a working class family in Birmingham I remember the city feeling like a bit of a concrete cauldron, it sounded like reggae and smelled like Ansells Mild. It was a raw, gritty and determined kind of place characterised by the loss of so many manufacturing jobs in the 80′s and early 90′s which devastated so many communities.
What Birmingham stands for to me today couldn’t be more different, I’m one of a growing number of Brummies who are now allowing themselves to be proud of what’s being achieved in this city; our cultural scene which is producing so much world class talent, our entertainment venues that continue to attract visitors from all over the world, the exemplary culinary offer in the city, shopping destinations that are attracting more and more people here year on year, sporting facilities and clubs who are producing young athletes capable of competing at the very top and increasingly, probably most importantly, one of the best places in Europe to do business and to innovate.
There’s more right than wrong with Birmingham these days and people know it. In my eyes it stands for diversity and prosperity, knowledge and innovation, humbleness and humour and the best thing about it is that Birmingham’s brand is starting to be defined from the inside out.
TH: What are your views on Birmingham’s marketing to date?
JD: From an inward investment point of view Marketing Birmingham have done a fine job in concentrating the efforts of multiple organisations and focusing on pulling towards a common goal. In terms of international investment in the city and taking the Birmingham message out globally, it was announced this week that as a city we’re bucking the trend and that foreign investment is up 52% in the past 12 months which is a credit to work of organisations such as Marketing Birmingham and UKTI.
TH: How do you think Birmingham should position itself?
JD: I think from a reputational and positioning point people look at cities like Manchester and Liverpool and how they’ve carved out a positioning for themselves. Essentially they’ve built reputations by focusing on the contribution of their cities to popular culture and the national psyche. The reality is that Birmingham doesn’t have the swagger of those cities.
We have Black Sabbath, they’ve got The Beatles. We’ve got UB40, they’ve got Oasis. We’ve got Birmingham City, they’ve got Man City. We have to stop looking for this non existent ‘cool’ heritage because it doesn’t exist. We need to stop this obsession around what we should tap into and start building a positioning based on now and not the heritage we don’t have.
Jacob Dutton, 383 Project
TH: Are the city’s brand values reflected in your own agency culture?
JD: Absolutely. If Birmingham was the city of 1000 trades then I guess what we’re building at 383 reflects that. We tend to look for specialist craftspeople and hobbyists who are passionate about what they do. We’re pretty diverse as an agency too, we haven’t tried to hire agency people exclusively, mainly because we don’t want to build an agency like anything that has been before. Increasingly we’re looking for people from more diverse backgrounds such as electronics, art, architecture and literature to help us build and ship the very best work. We’re also keen inventors and makers and being based in a listed Victorian pen factory in the Jewellery Quarter feels kind of serendipitous.
TH: Does being based in Birmingham influence your creative output? If so, how?
JD: The creative output from 383 would be just as good whether we were in Glasgow, Manchester or London. The city itself doesn’t have a bearing on the environment and structure we’ve created to make brilliant work. What I would say is that for a large city, there are a disproportionately small number of agencies which means we’re generally able to pick from a very talented pool of people and bring them on board here to create that work.
TH: What makes your agency offer different?
JD: The first thing to say is that we’ve built the agency around a specific ‘connected customer’ profile rather than around a specific channel like ‘advertising’, ‘direct’ or ‘social media’. This means that we have an unrivalled knowledge of consumer behaviour in 2013, how they consume media, what they interact with and what interests them but clients know that they’re not going to get a solution from us based on one specific discipline. The landscape for the connected customer is multi faceted and the purchase journey in 2013 looks more like a flight path rather than a sales funnel and we’re not going to bring about changes in what that customer thinks or feels by running some banner ads or building a microsite. What clients get from 383 is an agency who understand their connected customers and can offer truly agnostic solutions to their problems. That could be an application, a platform, better user experience, a piece of content or a campaign.
TH: Why should clients consider sourcing work from Birmingham agencies?
JD: I honestly don’t think clients are that hung up on where they’re sourcing work from and I think clients should choose the best fit agency for their brand. The important thing is that we continue to build an agency that competes with our global contemporaries and not just with those on our own doorstep. That way we guarantee that location and proximity don’t factor at all in a client’s decision to partner with us.
TH: What sort of clients do you want to attract?
JD: Sophisticated ones. It sounds brave for an agency to say that but all clients are not created equal. We’re looking for ambitious marketers at ambitious brands that know what it means to sell to people in 2013. Clients who are more interested in making things that people want rather than making people want things and working to attract customers rather than interrupt them. We’re incredibly lucky to have a client list that truly reflects this mindset and we’d like to keep adding to it.
TH: What work have you done recently makes you really proud?
JD: Aside from our client work, all of which makes us exceptionally proud we’re really pleased to have launched Birmingham’s only web conference, Canvas which is returning for it’s second year in 2013 where we’re going to be joined by some of the best minds in creative, technology and marketing from Guardian, O2, Berg and Microsoft.
TH: What Birmingham brands do you most admire and why?
JD: Jaguar is a real success story. It’s an iconic brand that has moved successfully through tumultuous periods and is still proving it’s skills and expertise in creating the world’s finest automobiles today right here in Birmingham.
TH: Are there any local marketers who have inspired you?
JD: Trevor Beattie is a personal hero who I had the good fortune to meet an awards ceremony last year. He’s created some of the most successful advertising I’ve ever seen, he’s a rebel and a philanthropist who continues to give back to his home city through the Jack and Ada Beattie Foundation named after his parents.
TH: What business would you most like to win?
JD: Business from brands who are determined to come through this digital revolution in a stronger position than when we entered it.
TH: Thanks Jacob.
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