In this episode of the Agency Collective Tales, Ellie spoke to Rea Averill, founder and Managing Director of Agency A about making the choice to start out on her own, much earlier than she anticipated and using the skills she picked from one industry brought to a standstill by the pandemic to pivot into a different one altogther. Rea started Agency A in 2022, a social media savvy team who build online communities, creatively.
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:10:10
Narrator
Welcome to the Agency Collective Tales with Ellie Hale. Our podcast
where we talk to our brilliant agency owners about all things agency
life.
00:00:10:17 - 00:00:17:14
Ellie Hale
Today on the podcast, I am joined by Rea Averill from Agency A.
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
00:00:18:06 - 00:00:19:13
Rea Averill
Thank you very much for having me.
00:00:19:23 - 00:00:31:00
Ellie Hale
You're so welcome. So first off, like we always do with The Agency
Collective Tales, can you just tell me a little bit about what life
was like for you before you started your agency? And then what
prompted you to start Agency A?
00:00:31:13 - 00:00:51:22
Rea Averill
So I moved to London for university. I did a business and marketing
degree, and when I was at university I started a blog because I
wanted to document student friendly places in London that people
could enjoy and experience. So I started that blog on Instagram and
visited like new and exciting restaurants, sites and activities in
London. Grew the Instagram.
00:00:51:22 - 00:01:11:24
Rea Averill
to about 3000 4000 followers and then ended up working at an agency
because I really liked the influencer marketing side of the industry
and equally, that was an exciting experience for me. Now, at that
time, Influencer Marketing still felt like quite a gifted, exciting
experience. It wasn't as big, bold and brave as it is now. So I had
that blog.
00:01:12:01 - 00:01:31:17
Rea Averill
I then worked another agency and worked there for a number of years
managing the execution teams. And then at the beginning of the
pandemic saw an opportunity to start my own agency because I had
built some great relationships and was really keen to just do
something for myself, really. So I set up Agency A with a brilliant
business partner who had been a mentor for me for a number of
months.
00:01:31:23 - 00:01:47:00
Rea Averill
My previous experience was rooted in hospitality. But then we had to
pivot a little bit because of the challenges that were in front of
us. And since then, we've just grown the agency over the last couple
of years. It's been fun, but difficult, I'm sure, as it has been for
many. And now just looking forward and feeling positive.
00:01:47:19 - 00:01:53:15
Ellie Hale
Amazing. So Agency A at the moment, is it still strictly influencer
marketing? Do you have other facets as well?
00:01:54:02 - 00:02:05:07
Rea Averill
We see our sweet spot as anything social for us, like TikTok,
Instagram, Facebook, and we also do some consulting and training as
well. So where we've worked with brands and helped their in-house
teams with best practise.
00:02:06:15 - 00:02:22:18
Ellie Hale
That's magic! What do you think it was that gave you the incentive
or the bravery to think: "Sod it, I'm going to start my own agency"
because it would have been really easy for you to just work your way
up in someone else's agency and forge your career that way. But what
was it that made you think, "No, I'm going to be my own boss"?
00:02:23:04 - 00:02:49:07
Rea Averill
I think I've always felt quite entrepreneurial since I've been
little, I always was watching The Apprentice or I set up a couple of
little businesses when I was in my teens, I used to sell jewellery
at school fairs, and so I always wanted to run my own business. I
guess I had never planned to do it in my mid-twenties I might have
waited a bit longer, but I felt at the time in 2020, when I set up
Agency A, I felt I had enough experience, enough contacts, and I had
a great business partner who complimented things that I wasn't good
at.
00:02:49:10 - 00:02:57:03
Rea Averill
So we felt like it was a good time to do it. And it was actually my
mum that said to me: "Well, you can either go and do this for
someone else, or you can do it for yourself." So I made that
decision.
00:02:58:04 - 00:03:12:17
Ellie Hale
So if your background had really being carved out in the hospitality
industry, how did you then pivot with the challenges that obviously
we faced with lockdown and COVID and people slashing marketing
budgets left, right and centre? How did that affect you cutting your
teeth in?
00:03:12:17 - 00:03:28:08
Rea Averill
Honesty, that was quite hard. I found it extremely difficult,
especially because things were changing all of the time. And I think
brands, at least from my experience, they didn't really know what to
do. One moment, they'd be like, "Let's just go heavy, let's keep
shouting about our USPs and brand values."And then the next minute
they were like: "Okay, let's cut stuff and not do anything,
00:03:28:12 - 00:03:48:08
Rea Averill
we need to be sensitive to what's going on around us." So I found
that incredibly difficult. But I think my key learnings would be
educating people around the value of retaining social media as part
of your marketing mix. And it was fortunate because obviously we
were all at home, so there was an increased amount of people online.
So there was a lot of opportunity to demonstrate that that's where
brands' audiences were.
00:03:48:11 - 00:04:13:10
Rea Averill
So I think it was an education piece, finding our offering. The
previous agency that I worked at was more full scale digital, and I
was quite keen to be more streamlined, more niche, because I think
let's just do what we do really well and then lean on other
brilliant agencies to feed into other things if that's appropriate.
And then equally, I think just keeping on top of trends and keep
learning, I think would probably be a good one as well and not
feeling potentially stagnant, but it was very difficult.
00:04:13:10 - 00:04:34:11
Rea Averill
And it tells you a question about how we operationally pivoted
between doing hospitality and then working with other brands. It was
demonstrating subject knowledge and then also demonstrating that the
skills that we had in those industries were applicable across
others. We started working with a luxury furniture brand who I
remember now had some nervousness about working with us, because
they did say: "All of your previous experience has been with food
and bev.
00:04:34:12 - 00:04:48:18
Rea Averill
How are you going to translate this to outdoor furniture?" And we
went from an experience angle. We were like: "We're great at
showcasing experience, so let's just take that that we do really
well and showcase that with your brands." And actually it's worked
really well and we're just about to go into our third year we're
working with them.
00:04:48:18 - 00:04:50:17
Rea Averill
So that was a great planning for me.
00:04:50:23 - 00:05:05:07
Ellie Hale
Must have been an absolute baptism of fire for you. So I imagine
what you learnt those first six months / year of running your
agency, had it not been in such a chaotic landscape for everybody,
maybe it would have taken you longer to learn these lessons, do you
think?
00:05:05:20 - 00:05:21:20
Rea Averill
Yeah, I think so. That's a nice way of expressing it, like I'm
grateful for the fact that it was fast tracked and then equally,
I've thought recently about the fact, you know, the last couple of
years of running have been during difficult economic times,
difficult times for people in general. Hopefully now the more fun
elements of running the business will come into play.
00:05:22:06 - 00:05:43:13
Ellie Hale
How do you educate clients with the cost of living crisis and
there's a recession coming? How do you educate your clients that
actually, cutting marketing is probably the worst thing that you can
do because I was always struck by Christmas 2020, and adverts. And
how you could absolutely tell who had ditched their marketing teams,
who was on furlough and who had kept investing.
00:05:43:14 - 00:05:47:01
Ellie Hale
I think it was quite evident. So how do you best educate your
clients on that?
00:05:47:06 - 00:06:09:02
Rea Averill
Liaise with the existing clients we're working with. I feel quite
fortunate in the fact that we don't have to reiterate or demonstrate
the value. They get that entirely. I think the budget issues are
probably around the fact that they'd like to spend, but they can't
spend. So I think it's probably around again educating them. Okay,
fine. If we've got this budget, should we spend it slightly
differently for the next 6 / 12 months or what's going to help us
during this time?
00:06:09:03 - 00:06:33:12
Rea Averill
And then equally being quite adaptable because I think potentially
if a client starts with a proposal from an agency that says, 'here's
our budget for the next three months', they might look at it and
think: "Well, okay, I don't really know what's going to happen for
the business in the next three months." But I think if you present
yourself as quite an adaptable collaborative partner, that is
therefore the good days and bad days and equally can chop and change
and make messaging really sensitive or really exciting or really
showcasing escapism.
00:06:33:23 - 00:06:49:23
Rea Averill
I think it's just showing them that you're not just going to look at
something through one lens. You're very aware of the fact that a)
any spend for them is going to feel like a big investment and b)
that you'll spend it like it were your own money. You're happy to
chop and change because we're all in this situation together.
00:06:49:24 - 00:07:05:05
Rea Averill
And it's a really good question. We had that team brainstorm this
morning. We've got one of our brands. We're doing some quarterly
planning for them for Christmas. We're talking about do we make the
creative, really elaborate, exciting with loads of props, or do we
make it a bit more stripped back to be a bit more sensitive to the
fact that there's a lot on around us, around cost of living?
00:07:05:10 - 00:07:22:23
Ellie Hale
It's so hard, isn't it, around Christmas? But I think Christmas will
always be that extravagant, fantastical time to dream and aspire, I
think. I hope so, anyway. I hope it still stays that way. How have
you found being a manager to a team and how has that learning and
role developed over the past three years?
00:07:23:17 - 00:07:41:10
Rea Averill
It's a steep learning curve, especially because I'm early in my
career and I do think if you look at management on paper, it sounds
like you have quite a rigid set of responsibilities. But I'd like to
think that I'm quite intuitive and quite empathetic, and that has
lent me quite well to looking after my team, potentially, sometimes
maybe too empathetic -
00:07:41:11 - 00:08:05:13
Rea Averill
I'm not sure! In some people's opinion, I'm not sure. But I found it
challenging being remote and in the office because you can't have
that easiness of the day to day and seeing someone the next day and
having that rapid comms. And equally I've got some good learnings
around managing lots of different personalities, particularly in a
creative role, because I think one of the biggest things I've learnt
is the fact that in our personal lives no one person's the same, but
it's totally applicable to managing teams as well.
00:08:05:13 - 00:08:19:18
Rea Averill
And you need to adapt to approach based on the person in front of
you. It's been one of the most exciting or valuable things I've
learnt over the last couple of years has just been how to manage a
team, how to look after a team and how to get the most out of the
brilliant people that you hire, because otherwise why would you hire
them?
00:08:20:06 - 00:08:32:07
Ellie Hale
So what have been some of the most exciting client projects that
you've worked on? What are the ones that really jump out at you as
being the landmark ones where you could see your progress as your
agency was growing?
00:08:32:18 - 00:09:00:20
Rea Averill
We're working with a large new French brand called Mode Furnishings,
and they are a premium outdoor rattan retailer. That's been a really
exciting project for us because it's been the most physically
demanding project we've done. So like I mentioned, my previous
experience is working in hospitality or food and bev, where you
either go on location to a shoot or you'd be working with food
products in a kitchen. But then have to manage big furniture sets on
site and on shoots has been an exciting challenge, and we've done a
couple of trips away to go and shoot in really beautiful locations.
00:09:00:20 - 00:09:27:13
Rea Averill
So that's been really exciting. Both at the time. And then also
looking at the creative work that we've done after. Really, really
enjoyed that. And then equally, most recently, one of our clients
did a food truck event on London's Southbank. They gave out a
thousand free plant-based burgers and we did the social media
coverage for that. I was so excited about it before, so excited on
the day, because it was the most physical activity we'd done with
that brand, especially because we'd been working with them during
the pandemic.
00:09:27:13 - 00:09:47:15
Rea Averill
So it was really exciting to be outside with people trying their
products and feel that buzz, especially in central London. So that's
been great. And then one other one that has felt more personal to
me, is that we did a bit of pro-bono work during the pandemic as an
agency, and in December not during lockdown. We did a project for
Smart Works Women's Charity, with another agency that we partnered
with.
00:09:47:15 - 00:10:03:09
Rea Averill
We helped them create a promotional video for a fundraising campaign
which went live in January. And that was a really proud moment for
me because it just felt really good to be able to give back in a
skills focussed way, which I thought was a) really important but b)
really great to be a part of.
00:10:03:15 - 00:10:11:11
Ellie Hale
That's wonderful. As an agency founder is looking at the bigger
picture and looking at your corporate responsibility as an agency,
is that something that's important to you?
00:10:11:23 - 00:10:28:10
Rea Averill
Yeah, absolutely. It has throughout all my roles, any job that I've
been in prior to Agency A, but now absolutely. I listen to an
amazing podcast that was talking about how you just can't
continually just take, take, take, and so it's important to give
back and I like us to always gear it towards something quite skills
focused because it's training for the team.
00:10:28:10 - 00:10:44:02
Rea Averill
And often when you go to these charities, they lack resources and
rely on a lot of external specialist's help. So it's really great to
be able to fill that gap. Each of my guys has a day a to contribute
to CSR that we like to team up and do stuff together. So I think
that's hugely important and I would say very easy.
00:10:44:02 - 00:10:55:02
Rea Averill
I think often people think with small businesses that they kind of
lack the time or the resources to do it. But I think if you email
probably any marketing team member at a charity, I'm sure they would
gladly take a phone call and take any help that they could get.
00:10:55:08 - 00:11:06:15
Ellie Hale
That's really great advice, Rea, because I think there are so many
agencies who would like to do more and who would like to help, but I
think it's the thought of the organising and actually getting around
to doing it, probably puts them off a bit more.
00:11:07:02 - 00:11:32:01
Rea Averill
Yeah, I've thought about that as well, because I think it would be
great if there's like a network of people that can feed in helping
others. Or if you could just contribute four hours, if you've got
someone whose project's been delayed or they've got some free time
that they could just sit and help someone, I think that'd be really
valuable, especially in the next six to nine months because I think
there'll be a lot of charities, particularly ones around like
surplus food and food banks that will definitely need a huge amount
of help to increase awareness and get the word out and help a lot of
vulnerable people.
00:11:32:12 - 00:11:45:21
Ellie Hale
It's definitely something we can look to do or looked to try and
facilitate. I'll get the team on that, maybe. Got my mind whirring,
there. What is it that's next for Agency A? What's coming up? What
big projects are you working on? What's your goal for 2023?
00:11:46:04 - 00:12:05:15
Rea Averill
We've just done a bit of a brand refresh so we'll be launching new
logos, new branding, which is looking really good, looking quite
punchy and exciting in my opinion at least. And then once that's
live, we're also going to launch a B2B service offering. We just
hired a new guy called Gus. He's brilliant, he's going to lead our
B2B services at Agency A.
00:12:05:20 - 00:12:14:24
Rea Averill
So we're really excited to hit the ground running with that and then
be able to work with clients focus on the B2B and B2C. So that's
plans for the next couple months, not sure about 2023!
00:12:15:12 - 00:12:21:05
Ellie Hale
That's really exciting. What do you think your key lessons have been
so far in your agency journey?
00:12:21:19 - 00:12:43:16
Rea Averill
I think talking and I don't mean just walking into the office and
just chatting to the team. I did a government course recently, could
Help to Grow, and I had a mentor on that course, called Sebastian,
and he helped me with how you structure team one to ones or team
management and he recommended that I go up to bi weekly one to ones
a month, versus one hour long one and just keeping really close knit
communication with the team.
00:12:43:16 - 00:13:06:04
Rea Averill
And that for me personally has been really invaluable both for me
and then the team have also commented that it's been really helpful
as well to have that the frequency of communication, especially in a
small team because it keeps everyone aligned, that keeps everyone
engaged, so I'd say talking and transparently talking is really
important because if you bring people into a small business, they
need to feel motivated and empowered and equally, really aligned
with where you're going.
00:13:06:18 - 00:13:22:03
Rea Averill
And so now my approach is I'm just going to be wholly transparent
about everything, obviously within reason. But I just think the
frequency of talking and communication is really important and
getting to know your team on a really personal level, as well and
understanding what makes them tick because you want them to come to
work, enjoy what they're doing.
00:13:22:03 - 00:13:33:06
Rea Averill
And then I would just say also trusting your guts, which probably
sounds a bit corny, but I do think that that's really important when
you're running your own business, you have to take scope of all the
feedback and ideas around you, but equally trust what you think is
going to work.
00:13:33:18 - 00:13:42:13
Ellie Hale
That is brilliant advice, Rea. Thank you so much. It's been great.
I've had so much fun thanks for being on our podcast and sharing
your story. And I can't wait to see what you guys do next.
00:13:43:06 - 00:13:53:20
Narrator
Thanks so much for listening. Please don't forget to subscribe. Stay
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