Emily Penny on the Secrets Behind Standing Out as a Design Studio

0:06Katy Cowan:Today, I'm joined by the brilliant Emily Penny, a brand strategist, writer, and the founder of Be Colorful, her own brand voice studio. Emily has been shaping brands for over 25 years, working with the kinds of businesses that live and breathe people, consultants, agencies, communities and social enterprises. She's someone who doesn't just talk branding, she teaches it too, having lectured at London Metropolitan University and she's developed her own framework, Brand Strand, which gives studios and businesses fresh ways to position themselves. Last year she put that thinking to work on Fully Saturated, a major report that she co-authored on how branding agencies are presenting themselves.

0:53Katy Cowan:And let's just say the results are very interesting. What I love about Emily is that she's not afraid to hold a mirror up to our industry and ask the difficult questions, the ones we often avoid. Why do so many agencies look and sound the same? What's driving this fear of standing out and how do we fix it? That's exactly what we get into today, along with her advice for any creative business trying to carve out a space that feels authentic, distinctive, and brave.

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2:05Katy Cowan:Emily Penny. Katie Cohen. Now just for the purpose of our listeners I have to tell everybody what's happening. so the last time I saw you the first time I saw you in in the flesh was at dnad this summer and I just saw you and I was like for a second I was like is that Emily Penny that's Emily Penny oh my god I love Emily Penny so I just went Emily Penny I was standing right behind you wasn't I in a in a talk and um I didn't realize it was you and then you just turned you were like here right in front of me so yeah that was lovely I really was lovely to meet you it was great I like how you just went Katie Cowan oh it was lovely to lovely to see you I was kind of it was a bit of a first foray back out into the wild because of everything I've been through personally lately so I was still not quite 100 % I was just full of joy and anybody I saw I was just like hi hi hi I'm here I think The vibe was really lovely at D &AD this year, actually.

3:14I've not been to the festival before. And yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I caught up with so many people. It was lots of fun.

3:23Katy Cowan:so good and of course you're on a bit of a mission at the moment in that you are doing this incredible report which is called fully saturated and you're bringing all of your wealth of experience and skills to give feedback to branding agencies who what are they all kind of looking the same I mean what's what's the positioning that they're putting themselves through and I guess we're going to talk about how they fix it, right? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, none of this is news. Everybody knows that design agencies, creative agencies aren't the best at sorting out their own brands. And so, you know, we talked to people and everybody was like very clear that they were already aware of this.

4:11So we've audited a bunch of agencies. This is myself and Joel Stein, my collaborator on this project. We decided to limit it to branding agencies in the UK. We looked at hundreds and hundreds of websites, narrowed it down to 150, which we looked at in detail. And we wanted to really find who's doing it well. We wanted to find 25 fantastic case studies of agencies of all sizes big and small from all over the country and look at you know who's who's really doing an

4:50Katy Cowan:inspiring job who's standing out basically because there are a lot of copycats right yeah I mean this this is the thing you know I think there are famous kind of London agencies and agencies elsewhere that you know we we all admire and they have fantastic businesses but the the problem is that when admiration then leads to a bit of a copycat mentality. And I think what we're trying to do with this report more than anything else is say, you know, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Not everybody needs to talk about the same messages and the same promises. So we've used my brand positioning framework called Brand Strand, which basically gives you 18 different strategies.

5:38So it's kind of, this is a sort of generalized universal framework that says, look, there are 18 ways you can show up in any sector. And that includes design. So we're trying to, we've mapped the sector using that framework to just say you've got options. I'm a huge believer in horses for courses. There's something for everybody. so you know we we want agencies to really lean into what's special and different about them genuinely and amplify the hat yeah it makes sense and it's clever because you can then offer your services and say well we can help and make it all happen uh well we certainly can but yeah i mean we I'm calling it therapy for a whole sector because...

6:30Therapy, great. Because there are complicated reasons why this is happening. And a lot of it is emotional and it is about a mindset. And this goes back to when, you know, a lot of these design businesses are, of course, founded by designers. They've come out of design school where everything is about the portfolio. when you go and get a job for the first time it's all about the portfolio and this portfolio mentality stays with people I think so we I mean portfolios are really really important but what we're trying to encourage is for studios to see themselves as a brand which means creating that wonderful wrapper that promise that ethos which is all the good stuff that these agencies are doing for their clients.

7:20So there's really, there's kind of no excuse. But we know that there are reasons why this isn't happening. And some of them are quite kind of serious reasons. I mean, it comes down to fear, a lot of it. It's, you know, when a fragile market, we're also very conditioned to slightly always be on the back foot in the procurement process and jumping through all those hoops. And I think it's just, it's stilted people and stopped them from really being what they could be.

8:00Katy Cowan:Yeah, leaning into that fear aspect again. I kind of think if you're in such a bubble where it's very creative, very competitive, and there aren't very many differentiators, you are naturally going to play it safe. You're going to copy somebody else who looks like they've got the formula right, a bit like the old cargo cult, which I'm sure you're aware of. Yeah, I mean, there's the copying, those who are already being successful, and there's the fear of being put in a box. There's fear of, you know, niching too much and actually putting clients off. That's what people talked about a lot in the survey that we did.

8:47But I think there's something else going on, which is about the fact that creatives really care about what their peers think. And it's a very close community. Being creative is a very personal thing. It's very tied up with your personal identity. And so there's also this kind of paralyzing fear of what are my peers going to think? what's the design community going to make of this? And there's something a little bit grubby about being too marketing and being too kind of commercial when you put your studio out there. And there's good reasons for this as well, because people need to attract staff.

9:31They need to attract great designers too. So that's also a really important audience.

9:38Katy Cowan:Where does that come from, though? Is that by seeing the responses sometimes on social media when a big brand identity project drops? I think it's just a very, very close knit community. And people know that other studios and their design colleagues. And let's be honest, you know, designers are moving between agencies all the time. You know, it's kind of it's the same pool, especially in the UK. You know, it's a small community that is moving between these agencies. So they're very aware of what that community thinks and about how it reflects on their personal brand. I remember 10 years ago, everybody was talking about design studio.

10:26Katy Cowan:Now these days, everyone's talking about Koto. It's quite interesting. Did you ask in the survey, who do you look up to? Who do you admire? Yes, we did. And the same names came up again and again. I mean, the number one name was Dixon Baxi. And that kind of makes sense because Dixon Baxi is consciously talking to the design community. You know, they are building their brand from the inside out. And it's that kind of internal focus that really resonates, I think, with designers. compared to maybe other studios that have more of an external sort of commercial, obviously commercial outlook, certainly on social media anyway.

11:19And of course, there are lots of other ways to show up and find clients apart from LinkedIn.

11:25Katy Cowan:Yeah, Simon Dixon is very clever at updating on LinkedIn and really makes you feel like he understands the pain and the suffering that you have to go through when you're building a design career or a design studio. And I think that resonates and it gets people talking and it keeps everybody, it keeps Dixon Baxi in everybody's minds. Of all the talks that I've done recently on the studio, that was by far the most popular with Simon. Yeah, I'm not surprised. It was certainly an agency that came came up as very well loved when we talked to people but one of the things that we were really passionate about doing was bringing unearthing some unsung gems and maybe some small studios from all different parts of the UK I mean we we found some really exciting examples like for instance we've got a studio called Art is My Career which is based in Selby And the difference here is that they don't just talk about working for social good or working for purposeful brands.

12:36They're really doing it. They're actually investing their own profits in different causes. It's living the promise rather than just throwing the words out there. we found some you know we've we've got agencies like for instance the the behaviors agency which uh you may know it's up in manchester and they're really leading with behavioral science now this isn't something that we saw a lot of people talking about at all but it's a really a really interesting angle and what else have we got i mean we've got we've got interesting new models like Small World, which is kind of turning that remote and distributed sort of structure into a virtue and promising to be more innovative and more in touch with culture as a result.

13:32So I think there's just so many different ways. There are so many different angles. We've even got, I mean, you'll know Lucky Dip, a relatively new small agency. But, you know, the wonderful line that they have on their website is that they're a creative studio where building great brands is an undeniably good time. Is that Katie Cadwell? It is. And her colleague. I can't remember her name. Forgive me. And, you know, why shouldn't enjoyment, why shouldn't having a good time be a valid promise? For the right client, that's going to tick all the boxes. You know, we don't all have to be promising brand transformation and effectiveness.

14:19Those things are important, but they're kind of, that's the job. That's what all branding does. So unless that's really your thing and you can back it up, I mean, effectiveness, there are agencies, I mean, Elmwood always used to be championing effectiveness. I think they've slightly changed their positioning, but they were leading the DBA league tables for a long time. I'm not sure if they still are. But, you know, effectiveness is the right positioning for the right agency, but it's not the only option.

14:56Katy Cowan:What did you find that was the most common in the way people position themselves? It was a couple of things. One was effectiveness and another was empowerment. So these are all labels from my Brandstrand positioning framework. So they're labels for sort of buckets of ideas. But we have this positioning around empowerment, which shows up a lot and for good reasons, because of course, design and branding is empowering clients. It's enabling them to reach their goals. But again, it's right for the right agency, but not the only option. And we've got, you know, there are other, there's going to be things like credibility, heritage, the quality and the craft of the work.

15:53We see studios like Crush down in Brighton, whose tagline is honour the craft. And while craft isn't necessarily a very ownable word in the design sector, they've done everything they can to own it and to make that promise absolutely unmissable.

16:14Katy Cowan:brilliant so you shared some really good examples of alternative positioning strategies but if there's a studio or designer listening to this and they're thinking god you know where do I start how do I kind of find the the thing that will make me stand out what would you say would be a good starting point well I think positioning should always be something that already exists in the studio. We're not looking to invent anything. So we're looking to find that nugget, that truth that already exists, it's your genuine strength. But the key thing is that we're looking to amplify it. So sometimes it's very hard to see what that genuine strength and point of difference is when you're in it, you know, it's that thing of it's hard to sort of see the label if you're in the job, but it will be there.

17:14So asking clients is a good starting point. Doing a survey, that can be very revealing. It's something that we've just done for an agency in London, and they thought that their clients had a particular perception of them, and our conversations with those clients revealed something quite different. So it's really interesting. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? Start with the audience. Talk to the audience. Ask them what they think.

17:45Katy Cowan:This season of the Creative Bean podcast is proudly supported by James Cropper, innovating with paper since 1845. That's nearly two centuries of colour expertise in material science now distilled into their new colour source range. It's a designer's dream. 50 created shades, premium quality, sustainable production, all made in Britain. See how tradition and innovation come together at paperandpackaging.jamescropper.com.

18:18Katy Cowan:What do you think of Creative Boom? Oh goodness. this.

18:25I mean, creative boom, I have known for such a long time. And I mean, sort of almost from when you started. So, you know, a brand is a reputation. A brand is very connected to the people behind it. So, you know, it's definitely not just about having a snappy tagline and, you know, a brand identity. It's that whole reputation. It's the product. And that's something that you've worked really hard on over many years.

19:00Katy Cowan:And still working on, still figuring out, because when you're in the eye of the storm, you don't often get time to take a step back and say, well, what is it that we are? And we're doing that a lot more. We've done it over the years and different fits and moments, like when there's been a rebrand or a new website design. but if any studio is listening to this it's when I talk to a lot of people I'm like I haven't heard from you for ages and I'm talking about big agencies around the world they were just so busy we haven't had time to put out case studies we haven't had time to do this or that so to then have to go through this exercise and say well actually let's take a step back when you've got so many plates spinning must be quite daunting and I can understand why it gets you know put to the back of the pile.

19:46Yes, absolutely. I mean, agencies are putting their client work first, and it's a busy type of business. We need to be very responsive to clients. So it is highly understandable. But then it is what we expect of our clients. We expect them to carve the time out to write the brief to come to the presentations to to be engaged in that process and to invest as well to invest in building their own brands so it's it needs to be planned in it needs to be resourced do you think they really need to pick a niche to succeed It's a very common discussion, this one. And the thing is, what we're trying to do, if we're talking about seeing an agency as a brand, all that means is that we're trying to get really clear on what we want to be famous for.

20:47Now, the mistake most people make is that they don't make it simple enough. So they don't make it unmissable. And we need an idea. We need a promise that's unmissable that you can become famous for. Now, niching in a vertical sector in a particular category, that's a super simple thing to be famous for. So we've got we looked at agencies like Stranger and Stranger that focuses on alcoholic drinks. We've got Edith, I think, who focus on arts and culture. And so it goes on, you know, there are agencies, boring agency focused entirely on boring B2B and industrial. And, you know, it's a really effective strategy if it's right for your business.

21:39But it's not a requirement at all. There are lots of other ways to position an agency that mean you don't have to narrow your target market down to one sector. So, you know, we can think about, I mean, going back to the sort of lucky dip, sort of making the process an undeniably good time. we've got things like service so client management and project management or things like flexibility and off or being a one-stop shop and offering everything in one place you know there's lots of different ways to cut it the whole point of this is to get work so there's there's a there's

22:25Katy Cowan:it's how do we sort of stand out when a big brand is looking to hire an agency it's it's yeah wow Wow. So once you get this anchor right, then everything else, your marketing, your PR, the way you present yourself on social media, even if you're writing a substack, it should all just fall into place quite easily. A good positioning should just feel right in your gut, shouldn't it? Absolutely. And as we know, as we tell clients, you know, branding is not selling. Branding makes selling easier, but it's not selling. But what happens in the world of agencies is that we just cut straight to the selling.

23:09And it's because of that tendering, that procurement sort of process that we've been conditioned to just focus on the sell rather than the brand. But, you know, if you build your brand, if you build that awareness and those associations, it's, I mean, tenders are, you know, it's rarely the case that tenders are entirely sort of a fair playing field. and brand is your advantage you need to you need to have an upfront advantage to be known to for somebody on the client side to be rooting for you way before the actual pitch how do people feel about pitching these days people are still pitching people are still free pitching I mean nobody wants to be doing it and it's it's not something that I would ever do but it's it's really a symptom of that power relationship in the market, the fact that clients can ask agencies to jump through hoops, and they do.

24:22So, you know, wherever possible, you know, try and build the relationship rather than just focusing on the pitch and the sales process, you know, step back and think about the wider marketing and attracting more inbound inquiries and people who already want to work for you.

24:46Katy Cowan:Absolutely. I mean, you've got to think of the client always anyway, haven't you? Because you want to see it from their mind. Oh, these look perfect for me because they tick all these boxes. You don't want them to come onto the website and think, oh gosh, they probably are way too expensive for me or they're too cheap. There's a lot of science at play, isn't there? A lot of psychological elements that you have to think of. Yeah. And if they've seen you showing up in the press, if they've read your kind of content and articles that you're putting out there, then they know that you're coming to this with a point of view that you've got an angle um and you're you're not just another designer you're not just one of many do awards still matter did they ever awards awards are complicated because they they matter in a number of different ways i think um i mean obviously we got together at the uh dna day festival this year and that was undeniably a really positive event and it It really brought people together and it got people discussing what creativity means today and its place in the world.

26:04So sometimes I think awards are good for the team and just for how people are feeling. I don't know whether they're particularly effective at getting more reach or attracting more clients. It perhaps depends what kind of work that you do, but they certainly play a role. What I think is very sad about awards is that there are always many more losers than there are winners. And it's expensive. It's really expensive. and I really feel for the studios, the smaller studios who are spending their hard-earned income on entering awards and not always getting anywhere. So again I think it comes down to you can't do everything and that's what strategy is all about.

27:00It's sort of what are you going to choose to do? What's your, you know, go all in, if you're going to do awards, go all in on awards, be the award winner and and win them yeah um but you know alternatively go all in on thought leadership or go all in on face-to-face networking or you know you need to pick pick your channels pick what's right for your personality we were talking about simon dixie earlier and you know he likes to use LinkedIn and likes to put content out there. And if you choose something that's right for your personality, it's going to be much easier to do, much more enjoyable and much more effective at the end of the day.

27:48Katy Cowan:Absolutely. I like what Robot Food do in Leeds, which is a very interesting take. They every year take whatever money they would have spent on award entries and put it towards two or three of their favourite charities, which I think is so clever and so nice. Yeah, I love that because it's turning the whole awards circus on its head and sort of, you know, playing it and getting noticed and recognised. And people do discuss that. Yeah, it's an ongoing debate. It really is. It's one of those design conversations. What stories then do you think really stand out in your top 25 agencies? I know you've mentioned a couple, but what about those top 25 that, you know, really kind of, wow, this is really different.

28:44Katy Cowan:I've not seen this before. We've got some very big agencies in our top 25. we have probably the biggest is Interbrand actually and of the kind of global London based agencies it was one that really stood out because it has this very clear philosophy around iconic moves and they put out an awful lot of content and thought leadership around that and have the reports and the authority that backs it up. So that was definitely an interesting example. Then we've got the smallest kind of, we looked at any agencies that were two or more people. So we looked at really small outfits as well. So we've got, for instance, who have we got?