67. How to evolve your offering to grow a service-based business | Gregory Nice + Jack Stanton

9:14Jack Stanton:A bit sticky, bit kind of inaccessible. People like to play with all the kind of fancy gear and set up like barriers between the people making the work and who they're working with, which has just never been something that we've done.

9:27Gregory Nice:right in terms of thinking about changing the name just tonight you're actually changing your sort of approach as well i'm hearing sort of widening the number of possible business lines you might offer exactly talk me through that a bit what what's what's in your mind um well quite

9:43James Reed:honestly a big part of this comes down to our relationship with reed because um prior to to working with you we were video and photography so you know a lot of our campaigns were video with and then also with a sort of subsidiary of photography so it'd be it'd be video first then there might be a photography campaign to support it but working with reed was the first time that we actually had uh multi-channel so it wasn't just video and photography you all asked for the photography to be out of home so it that is an extension of the photography the photography part of the work that we were doing previously, but it is, there's much more involved in technically in delivery, in deliverables and working with, you know, the media agencies and the media buyers, which was something we hadn't really done before.

10:34James Reed:And then also you asked for radio, which in, to be completely honest, we'd never done before. So we were very happy to learn how to do that. And, um, now it's something that we offer to clients quite a lot and like online, I mean, audio ads especially seem to be something that people are pushing towards more and more. And a lot of the people we work for now are asking us to do Spotify ads for them, which is great because it's fun creatively and it's relatively cost effective for brands to do. For us to write a script and then to record a 30 second ad is not the same as a TV ad, which is a quarter million pounds.

11:11James Reed:You know, it's like, or more. It's, you know, a tenth of that easily.

11:16Gregory Nice:I love radio for that reason. Yeah, exactly. So this is interesting to me because we wanted a campaign that was multimedia, that would reach people in different ways, depending on what they were doing. So radio, out of home, video, TV, all of those are important channels, as well as social media. So you're, in a sense, adapting your business model to meet your customer halfway, in terms of offering that service is what I'm hearing.

11:45James Reed:Yeah, I mean, definitely. But it's also a bit of a chicken and egg situation is that I feel as though previously, because we didn't have the experience of doing those things to doing the multi-channel, it wasn't something that we would sort of actively push or promote. But now that we have the experience of doing it, it's something that we can then actively promote. So, you know, a brand previously might come to us and say, we have this, you know, social media campaign that we want to put out across Instagram and YouTube and we want pre-roll ads and, but we also want branded content with it, photography.

12:23James Reed:Great. That's absolutely something to do. But now when they come to us, we can say, have you had a think about an out of home campaign? Or have you thought about an additional radio campaign? Because you're already spending X amount of money on the video campaign, which is the most expensive, and the photography, which also can be expensive, but less so. But then here are these other channels that are you thinking about because we can support you in creating them. And in some ways, they're the most cost effective of all the channels that you're talking about. so it'd be a shame not to be having that conversation with you just because you're coming to us because we're well we were a video first social agency and now we're sort of a video video first creative agency but trying to push and put trying to push the all the other

13:07Gregory Nice:channels yeah i can see how that would have evolved from yeah but you know reed gave us the opportunity in this podcast we'll include a couple of ads and we'll make sure they're ads It's made by you guys. Read.co.uk's Million Job Giveaway has been extended into 2026. Read.co.uk is giving away not 100, not 1 ,000, not even 100 ,000, but up to 1 million free job listings right now. Employers, post your jobs for free. Looking for a job? Discover your next role today. Head to read.co.uk forward slash Million Job Giveaway to find out more.

13:45Gregory Nice:Terms and conditions apply. So people can evaluate your work. Yeah, we're very grateful. How do you divide this work up? It sounds like you have a good collaboration.

13:57Jack Stanton:Greg's the brain, so I'm the muscle. That's pretty much it. What does that mean? No. So I'll walk you through it. So every project has a cycle. So at first, you've got to come up with an idea. We're both across that. We figure that out together. then once we've got the budget together uh we go you know we enter into pre-production and production greg is much more on top of the logistics keeps an eye on the money uh whereas i stay more on the creative when it comes to direction on the day we are both um we're co-directing but greg's a little more yeah if you looked around on set he would you'd say that he's the director you know he's a little better at barking orders at people I might be by a monitor or you know working with you whoever's actually on screen.

14:45Jack Stanton:So you're more the art director are you? Yeah I'm officially creative director yeah yeah and then on the post end that's where I take over more and oversee everything that comes in post. So you mean post-production yeah and what is everything that comes in post what are you talking about? Editing music colour uh all the the sort of nitty-gritty of deliverables various formats yeah and you've also you know over the years

15:11James Reed:have also become quite savvy in the media delivery side as well yeah you you i think because you've you've run most of the post-production side then because you're creating the deliverables you then also become the person who then has to communicate how those liberals are put across all the channels whether or not it's on social or on tv or radio wherever it is jack's the one who's communicating with Clearcast and all the other agencies that you have to speak to about getting permissions and sharing the scripts to make sure they pass.

15:41Gregory Nice:That's an area that people may be unaware of. You have to get ads approved. Tell me about that. How does that work? You mentioned Clearcast.

15:49James Reed:Again, this is Jack. Jack handles this for me.

15:53Jack Stanton:Well, very simply, scripts have to be signed off that they don't contain anything that is problematic in any way. So you submit ahead of time you get it checked in a kind of preliminary way but then once you've actually produced the ad that then has to get checked but this is you're talking about radio and TV radio and TV yeah

16:16Gregory Nice:you can put a poster up pretty much without anyone checking it

16:20Jack Stanton:yeah yeah that tends to sail through it's interesting isn't it which is strange which is not something I've thought an awful lot about

16:27James Reed:and social is also a bit of the wild west as well Like I think it's still, you know, people do get pulled up by the ASA about their social media posts. Like you sort of things that you have to say it's an ad if you're being paid for it. Oh yeah, these influences. The influences and stuff like that.

16:42Gregory Nice:They're meant to say that, but often they don't.

16:44James Reed:Yeah, exactly. They're meant to and they don't. And so they do get pulled up, but it is, yeah, as I say, it's still dead.

16:49Gregory Nice:Months later and no one knows they've been pulled up. Exactly.

16:51James Reed:And then at that point, the ad spend's already gone and it's already had its millions of views.

16:55Gregory Nice:So I was really bad at Latin at school, but I remember the words caveat emptor, buyer beware. And they still apply. And so, you know, if you're buying something, don't rely on the advertising standards agency. You need to be sure for yourself, I always think. But it's good, I suppose, that these extra checks are in place. Sometimes they can be a bit frustrating when you want to use a bit of creative license, can't they, Jack?

17:20Jack Stanton:Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've ever had a problem with the creative. They tend to be quite lenient, but it might be on details like it's the T's and C's that we're often figuring out with Reid. And that can get a little bit last minute sometimes to make sure all the boxes are ticked. T's and C's, terms and conditions. Yeah, it's the same.

17:36James Reed:Yeah, I mean, it's sort of the same with all our clients. It's like they just get very sticky about if you're saying that you're the biggest or the best and you're putting a number in or however you want to sort of push or promote your brand as in those sort of ways. then they then they push back and say how are you the biggest how are you the best and then you have to prove it or disprove it either way and um yeah that can get a little bit complicated so you have to change the the wordage to to fit right the campaign so from your point of view as nice

18:12Gregory Nice:nice productions whichever it is i mean this is a crowded space so there are lots of people making content um lots of people doing what you do how do you stand out and how do you stay relevant

18:24James Reed:i mean that honestly is the million dollar question right now and is something that jack and i discuss pretty much all the time especially as we're in a what i would consider a growth period again um you know it's it's it's been a nice gradual incline and we would obviously like it to incline further, but I honestly don't feel like I specifically have an answer because there are so many people doing it, but we've also seen a lot of other agencies drop off when we haven't. It's not been the easiest period of time, I think, across the board for any business to start and run a business in the UK from when we finished university to now, from the general global political climate that's happened in our lifetime um you know and especially things like covid covid was a big killer of a lot of companies and brands that worked in our space they just i guess didn't have the the capital to survive that and we were really lucky and i think i think because we have a really good relationships with lots of the companies we work with and i think one of our big skill sets is our post-production we were able to offer to a lot of our clients additional post-production work so that they could keep con they needed content and obviously we've been shooting them for years so we were able to remix and re-evaluate what it was that we had to be able to put out new content in the world over that period of time so we were still getting paid but i know from other people in in the world they really struggled and then post that um there's been a big knock-on effect in in the content creation world from uh the film and the proper film and tv world where um because of the writer's strikes and the writer's strikes in america that massively affected all the cast and crew who are working in the uk so it kind of it kind of had a knock-on effect whereby um the people who were working in in tv and film and working in it everyone just sort of had to scale down so then there was a lot more people who will now who let's say you were a cinematographer working in tv tv's completely gone so you're so you're now reaching out to your network of commercial production companies like us and saying do you have work so now you have big name cinematographers who are happy to be doing social media content because there's no other work in that system so it was kind of a knock-on effect that then the bottom end of it was then falling away but i think again we were just fortunate to be in the position that we have really good relationship with our clients and who we've worked with for years and years and years and people like you and some of the fashion brands we work with who, you know, want to do two campaigns a year with us, that we were able to survive that as well.

21:21James Reed:We weren't knocked off the bottom by people coming down. So it's been interesting.

21:26Gregory Nice:So this writer's strike you referred to started in America. I mean, that was a response to dangers of AI, wasn't it? In part.

21:35James Reed:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think.

21:36Gregory Nice:So these new technologies coming in. Yeah, exactly.

21:39James Reed:Which again is another thing that I think has affected a lot of companies in this space. In what way? Well, I mean, to be honest with you, even with us, we were recently approached to create some content for quite a big corporate with their senior management team where they wanted us to go in. And they, they had basically created these scripts in relationship with an AI company, um, to speak for 45 minutes. So the, I probably shouldn't tell you this in case, in case you get an idea to speak for 45 minutes. And then the AI company was basically promising that after you'd been filmed in this multi-camera setup for 45 minutes, um, you would never have to speak on camera again.

22:29James Reed:They could take that 45 minutes of footage and they could use it in perpetuity to make you say whatever you wanted to say. So you could just send them a script saying, okay, let's say, I know, for example, you speak a lot in the press and on TV about the current state of the employment in the UK. so what they would say was is you could do a weekly outreach of talking about the current economy the current um employments uh in the uk and you send us a script what you want and in i don't i they didn't actually tell me how quickly you'd get it back but i imagine it was very quick in half an hour they'd send you back a five minute video multi-camera of you of you in essence talking about the current climate and you could do that every week every day and they and they were just i guess i guess they charge fee anyway we turned this down because because we were basically being asked to kill our own job and uh well yeah i had to say to the agency that was asking us i was like you do know you're asking us to basically kill our own job so thank you but no thank you um do you think that's going to take off

23:39Gregory Nice:i mean i mean would someone want to watch some sort of avatar rather than the actual person

23:45James Reed:saying what they think i mean that's been my feeling on ai in general in that i personally don't want to watch a film that was written directed filmed by an ai and i don't want to listen to music that was filmed and directed by ai sorry recorded and directed by ai um And I think this is my general feeling on it is why I'm maybe less worried than other people who are in the industry in that I think that's probably the general population's feeling on it is that ultimately people won't want that. They want their relationship with the band that they listen to. They want to go watch them live and they want to buy the merchandise and they want to listen to it on Spotify.

24:28James Reed:and same with film and tv i think people don't want to watch ai performers and they they they want the relationship that they that they have from experiencing art visually um so yeah i i i'm possibly less worried about it but saying that when it comes to the the example i just gave you where we turn down the work, I think that that probably will happen. And so if your production company is in that space making those type of ads, the corporate talking headspace, then I think I would be very worried. The thing is, is that we're not in that space. We're in a very creative space where it takes Jack and I days and days and days of script writing and idea generating and storyboard drawing and everything else to come up with what we think are good ideas that help brands put out their messaging.

25:30James Reed:And I don't know if people have used AI creatively, but it's just not good. Like you, it's rather lazily every now and again, your last chat GBT to help pump up a script or, you know, you're in a hurry. So you just want it to support you in some capacity. And it's no good. It doesn't get humor. It doesn't get humor. It doesn't really get creativity. And it doesn't help you generate ideas that are any used to, I think, to a brand.

26:01Jack Stanton:That's my position. But, you know, maybe I'll... If I can add one thing to that. I think what AI does remind me of a little bit is in our earlier days, we were to some degree having to outrun smaller businesses, making content themselves on smartphones. And so you're constantly trying to climb the ladder and get projects that require some real filmmaking. With AI now, I think that's what's happening. I think the idea that we should be scared about or worried about films made in their entirety with AI is maybe not so much the issue. It's more that the lower end stuff is being mopped up by small businesses or medium-sized businesses who can now just produce.

26:46Jack Stanton:You see them on Instagram, you can tell that the entire thing is AI generated. Maybe someone has dropped the logo on Photoshop or Illustrator or something. But if we were starting out now, that's where the struggle would be because there isn't that sort of entry point first rung or it's not quite as easy to hop on because businesses can make these smaller, cheaper things themselves. Well, that's happening to sort of entry points right across the economy.

27:13Gregory Nice:Yeah. Entry-level jobs are affected in the same way because AI has been used to do those more simple tasks very effectively. Exactly. And that's the problem. And I suppose the question is how far up the value chain will that ultimately go? Will it go all the way to the top and do my job, your job, the jobs of the creatives and the commissioners? Yeah. Will there be two computers sitting here talking to each other in 20 years time? Well, possibly. Will they do a better job? I don't know.

27:50James Reed:As AI currently sits, I feel like basically it is already two computers talking to each other. And because they're not that good at it, it's getting worse. So any communication that it seems to be having with AI is like they're generating more errors. and right and I feel that's your experience that's what I've that's my experience that's interesting so you're not

28:14Gregory Nice:troubled by it in that way well in a different way that it doesn't work very well yeah okay

28:19James Reed:but I mean obviously you know we're at the we're possibly at the forefront of it but who knows and you know it probably will only get better as time goes on and that is a worry but like I said

28:30Gregory Nice:it's entirely possible it's been overhyped and the whole thing will come crashing down as something that was sort of the emperor's new clothes

28:37Jack Stanton:there's one theory i quite like which is that ai will break the internet um and that over the last 10 years or so uh well there's a term i'm not sure the inshittification of the internet is uh something that i think everyone experiences and um the ai will actually hasten that and just make the internet uh a place that no one wants to be anymore and maybe we'll all return back to reality and uh i quite like that as an idea the in shittification that is an official term by the

29:08Gregory Nice:way i didn't just point that before no but it's i thought you were going to start going on about the singularity but you didn't okay in shittification of the internet everyone that's something that could be coming soon well it's already happening you think it's already on us so someone needs to clean out the stables yes exactly yeah where are you her kidneys please. So, okay. So going forwards, Jack, from what I've heard so far, you do more of the sort of choreography, design. Well, no, I want to be clear.

29:44Jack Stanton:Certainly like Greg and I, when it comes to, you know, concepts and creativity, we're very 50-50 on that. But particularly film projects.

29:53Gregory Nice:I mean, we did a piece of music. You wrote it. I mean, You're being very nice to each other. Come on, let's get to the point. I mean, you can't do everything, both of you. No, to be fair. I know it's called nice, but let's try and get some sort of clarity here. Hands up, hands up. Who does what? I want to know.

30:06James Reed:To be fair, that campaign, Jack wrote the theme music. He did, I know that. Sang the theme music. He sang it to me. Yeah, he did everything. So, yeah. But the initial ideation was very much collaborative.

30:22Gregory Nice:So what was the idea? So this is our Love Mondays campaign. Mondays are working for me. You wrote a song, an earworm, shall we call it, that has been quite widely played that lots of people know. But how did you get to that point from, I just probably said, I want a Love Mondays ad.

30:41Jack Stanton:Exactly. I mean, I think this is probably quite a good illustration of what often happens with projects, which is you talk to a client, they have a history of their marketing and you're wanting to take from that, move it a step forwards. But you're also always playing a game between the two of us of what do we want to do as filmmakers? What would be fun for us and how can we make those two things overlap? And I mean, I remember, I think we were sat in a pub in London somewhere and we said, you know, how much fun would it be to do a big Technicolor style movie musical you know snippet for for love mondays and so you start there and then you kind of figure out well how can we how can we make sure everyone's happy if we do this idea that we'd like to pursue

31:30Gregory Nice:so it ends up with a man jumping off a pink bus a sort of flash mob in wembley somewhere yeah which is what i remember recording with you which was great i mean it was very interesting that ad i mean i think the music great i enjoyed the ad very much it just went down badly on one

31:48James Reed:program do you know what it was it was a dance it was the dance yeah the people watching darts did

31:54Gregory Nice:not like that ad i don't know why but everyone else seemed to quite like it but it was there was a lot of angry comments on x i think after the darts well this is where the media buying

32:04James Reed:side is that was quite funny well now you know not to play a singing or dancing ad

32:09Gregory Nice:during darts so if anyone's doing a sort of cabaret style ad don't put it on in the darts

32:14James Reed:Yeah, just play your standard Heineken and bet 365 ads. You'll be fine. Exactly, exactly.

32:21Gregory Nice:But overall, it was a successful campaign for us. I'm very happy to share that so people listening know it worked well.

32:27James Reed:Right.

32:28Gregory Nice:But one of the things I liked about it was this multimedia aspect because it's very expensive putting ads on television, but if they're supported by out-of-home posters, you get much more value for your money, really.

32:42Jack Stanton:well we saw some out of home on the escalators on our way here yeah yes yeah well it was massive

32:48Gregory Nice:monday just this week was the biggest day for job applicants in the year so we tend to advertise at this time yeah oh very nice yeah so it's been a very busy week so january and february very busy

32:58James Reed:for job applications it's a lot of fun uh that the ad still runs obviously we have worked with a lot of the dancers that we worked with from the very beginning and we've reused them and taken their characters and giving their characters new stories and new motivations across multiple campaigns for you now and i regularly get whatsapp messages from them saying i'm on a massive billboard driving through birmingham you know and i think that's very cool well good well i'm glad they like them

33:25Gregory Nice:yeah and i like it too so i mean part of our motivation was to give you know young people an opportunity in terms of making and performing in these ads because you know we want to help people progress in their jobs and careers as a business and that applies to the people who work with us as suppliers so you know i was delighted that you were up for it and had the idea that you had yeah the reasons i like you in the beginning is you weren't as expensive as the others because i still think we're very cheap james so you know you want to watch that because that's one of the

33:55Jack Stanton:problems with with advertising especially television yeah yeah of course expensive it is i mean not the

34:02Gregory Nice:making of the ad and then the the playing of it buying 30 seconds yeah of course but i think i think the thing that um we probably excel at beyond tv is that as you say because we're creating these multi-channel ads for you we're always thinking okay here's the here's the expenditure here's the spend how much can we get from this so you know where before maybe you'd only have a tv ad now

34:30James Reed:we're thinking okay well we have a tv ad maybe we could have a 30 seconds but maybe we could have a 40 second cinema ad and then we could also have the out of home and we can have social cutdowns and we can have verticals for your phone and we're already thinking about radio so you know what used to be a huge spend just on a 30 second tv ad we're now thinking a much smaller spend but that we can push a lot further. And I think that's beneficial.

35:02Gregory Nice:Well, there are many more channels now that people consume, so it makes more sense to do it that way. That's a big change in the market. So what else are you working on that you can talk about? What can we talk about?

35:12James Reed:I mean, I think the big one for us right now is, I mean, we're recording this just after Christmas, so this is a pre-Christmas campaign, but we've been working with Itzu on a few campaigns, which for us are the first time a organic campaign has gone what we consider sort of mega viral so across the two campaigns that we shot for them towards the end of last year they both achieved over 20 million organic views together together yeah so what was going on well the the one that the big one and the one that probably most people will have seen because of how viral it did go was the Wilsdon Raider Christmas campaign.

35:54James Reed:I didn't see it. Describe it to me, please. So they're describing it as the anti-Christmas ad. So Itzu struggles with people wanting to go and eat dim sum and noodles pre-Christmas and in January.

36:08Gregory Nice:Yeah, it's not the sort of...

36:09James Reed:No, exactly. People want their turkey and potatoes. They're not thinking about bao buns and chikinkatsu. I don't know if they're dishikatsu, but let's say noodles.

36:19Gregory Nice:Um, and so it's not a good time of year for it. So it's not a good time for it.

36:23James Reed:So that was the, that was the emphasis behind the ad. Um, we'd also, we'd already made an ad with the Wilsdon Raider, who is a gentleman who went viral sort of 10 years ago, um, for getting a bit silly at a football game. Let's put it like that.

36:37Gregory Nice:Wilsdon Raider, what football game? Who is the Wilsdon?

36:40James Reed:Wilsdon is a very small football team, obviously in North. I know where Wilsdon is. Northeast London. So it's a small league. Northwest London. Northwest, sorry.

36:47Gregory Nice:Yeah. It's near Harlesdon. Yeah. Yeah. So, Wilson have a football team. They have a small football team.

36:52James Reed:I think they're in, you know, a Sunday league or like, you know, one of the smaller leagues. And so, yeah, so he says some funny lines. Like, you've got no fans. You've got no fans. Lots of people know it. And also, lots of people we were speaking to.

37:07Gregory Nice:So, you were aware of this before?

37:09James Reed:I actually wasn't. And neither were Jack. Like, yeah.

37:11Gregory Nice:So, how did it come under your nose then?

37:13James Reed:So, we've been working with a data agency called Block Report. and they basically generate for brands these very heavily data-led reports.

37:28Gregory Nice:What you're saying is sort of blowing my mind. So you're trying to sell chicken katsu in December and you're using a bloke from Wilsdon Football Club who used to shout abuse at the three opposing fans. Is that the concept?

37:40James Reed:Yeah, quite honestly, that was the concept. It's quite wild.

37:44Gregory Nice:It's quite obscure.

37:45James Reed:Yeah, really obscure. but somehow it hit some note.

37:48Jack Stanton:Well, it's speaking the language of the internet. It's meme culture. And in this case specifically, it's nostalgia meme culture. So this idea of organic, candid moments with characterful individuals. This has been around for 10, 15 years now. And it's got its own history to draw from.

38:08Gregory Nice:Okay, so organic, candid moment with this individual. But what actually happens in this meme? In the original meme? No, the one you made. What happens? Why did it go viral? Because I still can't see it in my mind.

38:19James Reed:I don't know why. I can't think that we have a specific reason when it's viral. It's kind of what Jack said. Do you mean the original one?

38:25Gregory Nice:I think we have to describe it. No, Jack, you have to describe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

38:29Jack Stanton:Okay, so the original video, we're at a low league football match and someone's winding someone else up. He became known as the Wieldstown Raider, but he was there sort of shouting relatively good-natured abuse at the opposing team. and someone comes up to him, they're filming it, and his mate sort of prods him a bit and has a little chat. And the guy goes as if he's maybe going to square up to have a fight with him. But he doesn't mean it. He's joking, but he's playing a part. He's also five foot.

39:03James Reed:Yeah, yeah. He's a very small man.

39:05Jack Stanton:Right. Yeah, yeah. He's in on the joke.

39:07James Reed:Which I think plays to the humor of it.

39:09Jack Stanton:Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he became like a beloved character. the idea was okay so his iconic line was you want some that then became you want dim sum and that was the in yeah

39:24James Reed:quite simply it's you want some you want dim sum and that's the in so then the Christmas

39:30Gregory Nice:so you then had to go and sell this idea to someone at Etsu

39:33James Reed:no Etsu was already bought into the idea

39:35Gregory Nice:so they knew the line you want some some dim sum yeah so they just told you to go and make it

39:40James Reed:yeah exactly So they gave us budget to go away and make it. And then that went very viral. That did super well. And then pre-Christmas, they then wanted to do another ad. And so going back to what I was saying before, It's Who Does Very Badly pre-Christmas in comparison to the rest of the year. So they wanted to make an anti-Christmas ad, against the backdrop of John Lewis spending£5 million on an ad. they wanted to spend 0.01 % of that to make a Christmas ad that had the same sort of messaging but anti and so that so this ad is basically the Wielsen Raider is trying to hand out dim sum pre-Christmas saying you want some you want some dim sum handing out Christmas to a Christmas fair a Christmas market and yeah I mean that's that's pretty much the whole ad there's not much

40:41Gregory Nice:so if anyone wants to look at this as a sort of study in contemporary marketing that goes viral where do they find this stuff

40:47James Reed:on Itzu's Instagram and TikTok and TikTok yeah and you'll see that it's got hundreds of thousands of likes across the two and yeah

40:55Jack Stanton:from a creative perspective what was quite fun about it was the original ad the objective was to imitate the original video as closely as possible So even, you know, making the quality very bad, making sure the angles were right, the people walking in the background. The idea was that you might think you were watching the original artefacts and then to move away from that into a more clearly ad space with the same character was a lot of fun.

41:22James Reed:And it didn't just get picked up by the general populace who seemed to apparently really connect with it. It also within, you know, the marketing community got really picked up. as well, and by other brands. Other brands seem to really like it. You know, the retweet comment section below it was all Greggs, Waitrose, et cetera, all commenting underneath it, getting in on the gang.

41:50Gregory Nice:So that's good in a way for you, but they don't know who made it. They just know it's Itzus. Yes, but other than - So how do you then use that to your advantage as nice, the company?

42:01James Reed:Well, ultimately we then try, If we see that interaction online with them, we will then try and approach their marketing company.

42:09Gregory Nice:So have you had any success with that subsequently?

42:11James Reed:We've had some good conversations. that hasn't so which honestly i'm kind of surprised by because the the the intersection between um the person who runs the social media account who responds to a viral video to the marketing team within said company to uh then a cold email approach seems quite hard but but quite honestly yeah we've had some really good responses and from some relatively big brands they said oh that was you that's great let's have a conversation i mean

42:47Gregory Nice:i asked you earlier how do you stand out i mean if you can become known as the people who can make low budget ads that go viral i'd have thought that's quite a good way to stand out as a as a person who buys commercials i'd be interested in meeting people who can do that 100 and

43:05James Reed:And hopefully that the adverts are sort of slightly charming and have like a fun edge to them that works.

43:13Gregory Nice:So this is interesting to me for younger people who are thinking of doing this in the future. I mean, they can almost make these ads now with their phones for next to nothing, can't they? Yeah, 100%. And they perhaps should give it a go, which is sort of what you did, Gregory. Yeah, exactly. Back in 2011.

43:32James Reed:Yeah, I mean, I rode the same wave. I mean, I think ultimately the slight difference to when I started. So I would say that there's sort of been...

43:46James Reed:So to give you the history of how we were able to get into this business and how the business has changed over the last 15 years. No, let's say, actually, it's actually almost exactly two decades. So prior to 2005, the film industry, both film and commercial film, was completely siloed because the technology was just so incredibly expensive. So you were either pre that filming on film or you were filming on Alexas and digital cameras, which were just astronomically expensive. So the process by which to hire them and have them on set, you needed cinematographers and cranes and et cetera. And you needed assistance.

44:28James Reed:It was a whole process. They needed lights. You know, you need a light. That was 20 years ago. That was 20 years ago. And then what happened was, is the 5D came out, which was made by Canon. um and that democratized democratized filmmaking in general because it was a five grand camera that created a very beautiful image um that you could that you know i mean obviously five grand is still a lot of money but but it's not the same as what you were just it's not the same it's not the same as 150 000 plus a huge crew so what happened then was is that you know us in 2011 other cameras came out off the back of the 5d that further democratized it Like, you know, we're being filmed in here by a seven S's, I think, which are made by Sony, which again, I think a couple of grand each, but they, they create a very lovely image and you could, you can shoot a film on that.

45:20James Reed:You could, you can create short films, films, music videos, whatever it is you want to do. So, you know, you could save up a little bit of money, buy a camera, buy a lens, and you could call yourself a filmmaker, which is kind of what, when we were going to go back, that's what we were doing on the weekend. We bought relatively inexpensive cameras. We bought some cheap lights and we made videos for social media and we made short films and we made music videos. And then what happened is, is that then you could then make films on your phone. And that was the next democratization of the whole thing.

45:53James Reed:And like, obviously then video has just completely blown up that everything's video now.

45:57Gregory Nice:Well, YouTube's huge as well.

45:59James Reed:YouTube is massive. Advertising on YouTube is massive. You know, obviously Google is basically the biggest marketing advertising company in the world. That's their main business model. And how that sort of affects us in some ways is that, yeah, it has further increased the democratization of filmmaking and allows young people just to go out and make films with their friends. um you know the thing is is that um danny boyle very famously shot the latest 28 years later films on an iphone so you can shoot a hollywood movie on a phone that you can get on a contract for i don't know 40 pounds a month obviously he had the whole crew and everything else to make it possible but he still shot it on the iphone and then for him it was because he shot the previous one on dv cams which was a beginning of a bit of the democratization of of filmmaking but they just the image quality wasn't very good whereas the 5d's filmmaking quality was amazing and then to now where your iphone film quality can be fantastic and so my messages of people would be like if you do wanted to get into making films and tv or advertising just do it just take your phone go and make a video with your friends if you've got a friend who's you know it seems to me that like everyone wants to be the next gymshark so they're making some hoodies make some cool ads of the hoodies you can shoot in slow motion on your phone you can shoot in relatively poor light you know there's so much opportunity to make things and you can edit it in your phone there's so much you can do there so it's even more democratized but for us as filmmakers i think we've just got slightly lucky as we were also saying earlier it's like we rode that 5d wave and we're able to start a business that's been able to supply both jack and i with like you know a good living and like creating work that we love to make and then we got there early so then we were able to be a little bit above the iPhone, you know, phone filmmaking part of the, of the industry.

48:09James Reed:So when people come to you now and, and you're then talking about the lower level work where people just are happy for an influencer to be shot on their phone, we, we sort of risen, risen above that beyond that again, which is great because I think if you were starting out now and you were expecting to be able to start a very successful marketing agency that primarily shot video it probably is very hard because you are competing against other guys and girls coming

48:40Gregory Nice:out of university you'd need a good client wouldn't you exactly i mean you need someone

48:44James Reed:to say i'd like you to do this for me exactly and we got really lucky in that you know we had read and we have other agencies we work with and we have other brands that we work with and you know a big part of what we do is fashion and they message for sort of businesses is to give young

48:59Gregory Nice:filmmakers a go i mean what's to lose actually yeah i mean it's not gonna cost you a lot to make some of this no and that's totally true there's a lot of places you can put it out there and it's who seem to have done pretty well from doing this yeah what i imagine wasn't a huge budget yeah yeah so there's so from so the negative from your point of view is there aren't many barriers to entry to this business but the positives for people think of getting going is it's definitely doable although there are challenges yeah yeah yeah but yeah and i think

49:30James Reed:that's what when i said we got lucky is we've kind of we were kind of at the forefront twice in that i think it would be very hard to make a lot of money now and obviously there are agencies who are coming through and have done very well. And I think especially the agencies that were very specifically influencer marketing led, a lot of those have sold over the last four or five years for tens, hundreds of millions off the back of using influencer marketing successfully. But I think less so production companies like ours who were sort of video first creative agencies because there are so many of them now that it's hard to then stand out.

50:15James Reed:So, you know, we just got very lucky to have relationships with people that read.

50:19Gregory Nice:So what's next for you guys? That's a great question.

50:24James Reed:I mean, so we're right in the middle of basically having a big rebrand from, as we were saying earlier, from Nice Productions to Nice because...

50:34Gregory Nice:I mean, it doesn't sound that big.

50:35James Reed:No, I know. Well, it is for us. It is for us. big rebrands go repositioning

50:44Gregory Nice:where does that take you

50:48James Reed:hopefully to the next level of the success that we want to be at

50:53Gregory Nice:but what is that

50:55James Reed:I mean quite honestly it's sort of two or three more reads

50:59Gregory Nice:so you need to find more customers who have multi-channel requirements

51:04James Reed:yeah exactly that's definitely that's definitely the goal for us we you know we have other friends in the industry who have taken who've built businesses and taken them to that next level from ours which is you know basically for them is four or five reads scales and then once you're at that point you then have the scalability to take on more people in a new business role which are obviously very vital because jack and i don't really have that skill set but we've actually taken on our first employee Frankie who's our new head of production so she's been sorted us in a production role but she's also a fantastic new businesswoman so we she's been doing great work for us doing that and then you can scale like you know we definitely needed we definitely needed probably a second full-time editor because a lot of the time we just get too busy in all the other capacities but cash flow wise it's just hard for us to take on a full-time employee when you're just not positive that, you know, especially for us, like December, January, February.

52:10Gregory Nice:Well, yeah, the income is intermittent, I suppose, because it depends when the project. It's very cyclical.

52:15James Reed:And like, we always know that December, January, February are just tough months. There's not that much going on. And then we know that August is completely dead. And I think if you have the cash flow to start taking on employees, you just have to know that over those months, it's not going to make you struggle. and we're nearly there you know but for us it's just like a little bump and then we'll be safe and then it's an but it's always been like that i mean you know our it was for us it was doing work for bentley that was the first bump for us because that gave us the uh kudos to it's a chicken and egg situation where you couldn't work for big brands and you couldn't work for specifically like big luxury brands without having worked for a luxury brand so getting to work with bentley not only gave us the kudos to work with those brands but it also seemed that it gave us kudos to work for other brands like for example one of our big clients is the intercontinental hotel chain and we've traveled around the world with them and done projects uh both here in london and across the world and they're a fantastic client and we make we love working for them and the work we make we really enjoy but when we first met them i don't think they would have spoken to us if we hadn't been already working for Bentley um because prior to that we were working for small medium so how did you get the Bentley gig honestly nepotism Jack's mum worked at the agency that uh

53:42Jack Stanton:yeah had a connection to um to like a driving experiences agency they used to call them like red letter days um I don't think that's nepotism that's just sort of context just yeah no of course

53:53James Reed:you know exactly i mean that's the more you work in this industry as well the more you realize that who you know is the biggest thing the biggest part of the whole industry the most asking people to introduce you to people exactly yeah no and it was you know they didn't have to take a chance on us it's not as though um it's not as though they had to work with us just because we'd been introduced to them of course not we had it we had a back catalog of work that allowed them to trust us and they didn't have a huge budget because it was a new project for them and but it but you know it was also amazing for us because we got to fly out with a crew to Finland and we were filming the Arctic Circle.

54:27James Reed:And it was also probably for us the first time we worked on a project probably of that scale. So even though the budget wasn't amazing, again, we probably over-invested and took more people than we should, but the end product allowed us then to open more doors. And now, and probably even helped us meet you. And then from there, we were then able to scale up and then we were able to meet Reed and then Reed was the next scale for us. So, you know, we went from being a video first social agency to then by a Reed, we very much been able to massively push that we're now a full service creative agency.

55:03Gregory Nice:I mean, it's clearly very important for your plans for the future to win more clients, to build your client base. You've mentioned that contacts are clearly helpful. What other techniques are you using or ideas are you deploying to help win clients? Gregory, if I could ask you.

55:22James Reed:I mean, it's the hardest part of any industry, I think, is especially when you're sort of in the scaling phases to win new clients. But we, I think we use, we use all the current techniques available to us, like from, from cold outreach, which generally speaking, we don't think is particularly successful. The most successful thing for us ultimately is asking the clients that we already work with to introduce us and share our work with their wider network. And word of mouth is quite honestly, 95 % of our business. Very small amounts of it comes from SEO. You know, we get a few inquiries a year, which turns into, again, a few jobs via just people.

56:12James Reed:I'm not even sure what they'd be searching because I've never found our website online, but they do come across our desk. So, you know, that is something that we're probably going to look into pushing more into the future. Yeah, LinkedIn proves to be a pretty good place to be able to promote our work. So, you know, for example, the Itzu campaign, we were able to use that to both approach brands and start conversations with other people because of the virality of it, people were posting their own stories in their own stories about the work. So we were then able to jump on. So, you know, a lot of people were sort of jumping onto the story in the way that was worked well for us, where they were saying, look, you don't need to spend five million pounds.

57:00James Reed:Here's Itzu's latest campaign, which has probably in some ways gone more viral than John Lewis has for, like I said, 0.00001 % of the cost. people were posting messages in a similar way and then we would jump in hey we were the guys who made that if you would like to do similar work get in touch and that has been really quite successful for us so you know there are there are lots of other channels and and to get new business these days but nothing is better than word of mouth because it sounds like you really

57:33Gregory Nice:need to be on it though you need to be super active and alive to making the most of opportunities as and when they arise.

57:40James Reed:100%.

57:40Gregory Nice:Because you're right, every business needs to be good at sales if it's going to succeed. And the other question that's sort of in my mind is this creative process. I'm very interested in ideas, where they come from and how you develop ideas. Because ideas are so important, again, to every business, to innovation. And to make a good campaign, you're going to need good ideas. How do you... I don't like the phrase ideate. I don't know where it comes from.

58:08Jack Stanton:Corporate.

58:09Gregory Nice:It's a sort of corporate speech, so we won't use that word. But how do you generate ideas and make sure that you get the best thinking creatively?

58:16Jack Stanton:Well, I think, you know, we've now got 10 plus years of doing it together. So you might go away and have a few ideas, you know, by yourself and make a few notes and have a few, you know, things that you might ideally like to create. but then it's about sharing it between the two of us and you know maybe picking holes or you know strengthening things but what is that process i mean how do you do that do you go into the office or do you go to the pub what do you do it's not formalized at all is it i mean it's we've known

58:47James Reed:each other very long time sometimes we do we do think about formalizing it a bit more but

58:51Gregory Nice:a lot of time it just so it's informal i mean i want to understand this because it's sort of important where do ideas come from so yours is an informal process based on a long period of

59:01James Reed:knowing each other yeah and you know we'll create um a shared doc where we'll throw down ideas however silly however fun however serious depending on what the campaign is and i think i i sort of generate my best work sort of as i'm falling asleep or when i wake up first thing in the morning i sort of i do kind of have those uh creative epiphanies and i'll just get on the google doc and i'll i'll throw down the idea no matter how jumbled or gargled it is and then message jack like when you're up have a look and uh yeah i'm always up later apparently

59:41Gregory Nice:sounds like it yeah so you're so you create a sort of repository for thoughts yeah and you know and it's not like that someone has an idea you go oh that's not very good it sounds to me that

59:50James Reed:No, we are quite mean to each other.

59:51Gregory Nice:You are, but it sounds to me like you give enough space for the ideas to sort of be left to cogitate.

59:57Jack Stanton:Yeah, yeah.

59:58Gregory Nice:And you take ideas seriously. Because I think a lot of ideas get sort of killed off too early by people I've observed.

1:00:09Jack Stanton:Well, you're trying to work out, there's two main branches of whether or not something's interesting or captivating or fun or whatever it is, and then whether or not you can pull it off. So you've got to make sure you've got both of those things. The execution of the idea.

1:00:25James Reed:Yeah, I think that's definitely true. Probably in our relationship, a lot of the time, one of us will throw down an idea and then the other will be like, okay, but are they going to give us a million pounds? Because this is a million pound idea.

1:00:41Gregory Nice:But this is a reason for having a partnership, I suppose. Because if you hadn't invited Jack to join you and Jack hadn't wanted to, you wouldn't have been able to do that on your own, Gregory. No. You'd be lost at sea. Lost at sea. So you might have been in your own head, I suppose, but there's a sort of dynamism by being a partnership that you'd have missed out on.

1:01:02James Reed:Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, we have a great working relationship and it works really well.

1:01:06Gregory Nice:So someone who wants to make a similar journey or start a creative business, in many ways, should be looking for the right partner to spar off, generate ideas with, and work with over a long period of time because there are benefits arising from that. Would you agree?

1:01:21James Reed:Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, from back in the day when I used to, you know, attend all these startup events, the conversation there was always about finding the right partner. You know, in those spaces, it was all about finding the right technical partner. So if you were coming up, whatever it was, whatever the app was, if you were more of a creative ideas person, they were always talking about find the right technical partner for you. And I think that's probably true of us, is that possibly I'm more of the technical partner and Jack's more of the creative partner. But together, my creative side complements both of our creative side and my technical side probably complements Jack's creative side more.

1:02:04James Reed:So like between the two of us, we cover a lot of ground by having capabilities across the board.

1:02:10Jack Stanton:And that's on the ideation side, but also all the way through. I mean, like on set or on location, you know filmmaking is such a collaborative pursuit and quite a large part of it is checking everyone else and making sure that problems have been spotted before they become problems so whether it's something as simple as um well in that last shot he's looking left so you better make sure that you know we do that or if it's something more interesting but half the time you're just politely and you know quickly going actually no so that's not right we need to do this or we need to do that so it goes all the way through so if people want to see your work or

1:02:54James Reed:find out more about you where should they go nice hyphen productions.com but i don't wait because we're gonna do a big website relaunch and then yeah but obviously now go go to nice siphonfractors.com but we are have you got nice.com no i wish i think i think um obviously you'll know this but we looked at buying new website addresses yes and nice ai i think was 350 000 pounds

1:03:28Gregory Nice:oh that's much more expensive than read it i'm sure it was yeah because obviously nice is a bit more desirable yeah yeah all right well i'm glad but we do but we do own nice dot productions and

1:03:38James Reed:even though we are moving just to nice singularly we're going to move to nice.productions as our

1:03:42Gregory Nice:as our primary website but the most important thing is people know how to find you and they and there's examples of your work there yeah exactly so reed's on there bentley's on there

1:03:50James Reed:see what you do yeah

1:03:56Gregory Nice:well thank you both very much for coming in to talk to me this afternoon i always end with um the same two questions i'm thinking i might ask one of you one and one of you the other or do you want to both answer both let's both of you can answer both so the first question which i ask all my guests because at re we love mondays you know that is what gets you up on a monday morning and i'm going to start with you jack it's a lot easier to get up when we've got

1:04:23Jack Stanton:a fresh juicy project especially when you're at the beginning of it and there's all the potential and you're figuring out what you can do with this budget that someone's trusted you with and like we were saying earlier particularly with filmmaking with marketing campaigns it's this cycle and the earlier phase of it when there's all that potential ahead it's probably the most exciting part for me What about you Gregory?

1:04:48Gregory Nice:What gets you up on a Monday morning?

1:04:51James Reed:Quite honestly I get off very early and go to the gym that's what gets me up

1:04:55Gregory Nice:What's very early for you?

1:04:58James Reed:I try to leave between 6 and 6.30

1:05:02Gregory Nice:right yeah and then well i was doing a bit of training at 6 30 so yeah good for you so um the next question and the last one is um in my interview but why you where do you see yourself in five years time i'll ask you this first gregory in five years time quite honestly

1:05:22James Reed:looking at the other businesses who who you know similar in size and scale i i would really like to be at the point where we had 10-ish employees and we were making just bigger and better ads that people hear about and love.

1:05:42Jack Stanton:And I'll be right by your side, Gregory.

1:05:46Gregory Nice:So you want the same thing, do you? Absolutely, of course. Well, that's good because you're a partnership. It'd be a problem if you didn't. So you want the same. Well, that's fantastic. Well, I wish you every success and I hope you achieve that objective. I see no reason why you shouldn't. And it's very nice of you to come in and talk to me. And also thank you for making our commercials, which has been a pleasure working with you. I'm very happy to endorse you to anyone listening as a good partner. So thank you very much. Thank you very much.

1:06:14James Reed:We really appreciate it.

1:06:17Gregory Nice:Thank you, Gregory. And thank you, Jack, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reid, chairman and CEO of Reid, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to learn more about Nice Productions, Gregory Nice and Jack Stanton, and their work on campaigns including Read, you'll find all the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and see you next time.