The Spark: James Greenfield of Koto on Apple Rants, Mr Bingo Dreams & Pitch Mishaps

0:03It's another episode of The Spark and today we're catching up with James Greenfield, CEO and co-founder of global brand and digital agency Koto. In Monday's episode, James looked back on a decade of building Koto from its scrappy beginnings to becoming one of the most respected studios in the industry. We talked about leadership, team culture, what it means to lose your underdog status and how to stay creatively sharp in a fast changing world. If you haven't checked that out yet, please do. It's available to download now. But today we go behind the scenes and get to know James a little better as he answers some of our favourite quickfire questions, including what his most controversial opinion is, what's the weirdest dream he's had lately and why does it involve Mr Bingo, what helps him fall asleep when his mind won't switch off and what's something completely irrational that gives him comfort.

0:55this season of the creative boom podcast is brought to you by the school of communication arts which has just launched its sca online portfolio a brand new fully online course designed to help more people break into the creative industries find out more at school communication arts.com and to enjoy a 500 pound discount use our special code boom 500 at checkout out so we're back with james greenfield from koto and we're going to have some fun now james are you ready for some fun always ready for fun okay you're a good sport i really appreciate you doing this um we're going to start off with uh quite an interesting question um you know just to make it clear to the listeners you've chosen from a list of questions we supplied let's hope i can remember of them i feel like this is going to be quite cathartic for you um what is your most controversial

1:48James Greenfield:creative opinion i really should have thought about the answers before i chose the questions but um my most controversial creative opinion the apple brand's not that great

2:01James Greenfield:i think they make great great products but i think used to i still think they make great But I think if you look at their marketing efforts recently, yeah, pretty average. And I think things like Apple TV and Apple Music are two of the most substandard platforms I've ever had the misfortune to use. So there we go. That's my controversial one. Are you pitching for it? Are you saying come to us? We'll help you out. I'd love to get hold of Apple TV and Apple Music. Yeah. What would you do differently? Give it some personality? give it some personality merchandise it properly and make sure that the artists are shown in the and the you know if you put apple tv next to netflix it is dull shocking that they think that that's an okay product out in the world for the money you spend on it if you're listening apple you need to you need to come and talk to james at koto um he's going to sort it all out um they've probably like rested on their laurels a little bit you think uh i think there's a misbelief in some kind of minimalism or something going on there which is just and i also think there's a there's a misbelief at apple that no thing should be bigger than apple as a brand and actually i think it's perfectly fine that if i open apple tv that whatever the new show is is across the whole top of the whole thing because let's be honest i'm not there to be an apple consumer I'm there to consume severance or you know whatever else I'm coming to watch and so therefore you need to be able to serve me that content because what happens is people go to me have you watched so-and-so it's on Apple TV and I'm like I don't know I can't find it it's got no discovery ability to it you just go on there and it's just like these tiny little things that you don't know whether you've even selected them or not it's like it just doesn't even pass basic UX it's unbelievable make some good TV though it makes some amazing TV that's what makes it even worse which is like can't even find it what did you think of severance i've not watched it all but i liked what i've seen so far yeah oh gosh yeah it's um it's all the colors isn't it it's one of those tv shows that appeals to designers yeah beautiful lovers yeah have you followed that instagram account where they take all the different color palettes from each scene lovely work yeah great stuff so what's your favorite time of day to create and why Most of my creativeness these days happens in the morning.

4:29James Greenfield:And I just feel like since I had children, I get up at horrible o 'clock every day and I've just built like a discipline. And so therefore, and I used to, you know, in my 20s, I used to be an absolute cliche. It was at 10 o 'clock at night, drum and bass on and you could start really getting into stuff. Whereas now I can barely stay awake at 10 p.m. So I am very much a morning person. You've just got to, you know, accept who you are. You had me at drum and bass. I forget that you're the same age as me. We had a lucky time, didn't we, in the mid-90s? Very, very lucky time, yeah. And I like the way it just carries on ticking on the background and most people have got no idea that it still exists.

5:07Yeah, definitely. Did you go out clubbing back then, back in the day?

5:11James Greenfield:I did do very heavily, yeah, for a good period. Yeah, I was very lucky enough to get into some amazing stuff and see some... What were your favourite DJs? Come on, we're having fun, James. yeah i always uh so i always thought fabio and groove rider were really good live and i really liked them yeah and uh yeah i liked fabio and groove rider yeah they were good and ltj bookham yeah i was a big book and fan saw him quite a few times and dc will always did a really really good show as well yes um somebody just um one of uh one of my friends um sent me um jj selects have you heard of those yet yeah yeah really good um oh it's just started playing stop stop stop this is where siri like you know yeah starts just sending now i've said it is going to send a text which is someone i've not talked to for 10 years that's the thing that frustrates me the most about apple at the moment actually you know i feel like siri is just this really frustrating companion the only thing i use it for is to start a timer or ask it what the weather is and even then it's like really slow and clunky.

6:18James Greenfield:I use it in the car and it doesn't always do what you want it to do, but it's better than getting arrested for using your phone. Yeah, that's true. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? The best piece of advice I've ever received, I think, was you cannot be the complete person. I think it's this whole school of thought, which is, you know, do you work on your weaknesses? Do you work on your strengths? What both sides of that fail to understand is that we can't be great at everything and I think in my 20s I used to be really frustrated about certain aspects of my personality or my character or my ability and I couldn't do stuff that other people I work with were amazing at but what in that what I failed to realize was that I had things that I could do that they couldn't do and actually the reason I think team works really well is you just have to put complementary skills together and then we're all working together in one group.

7:10I'm throwing in extra questions I know but it's just interesting have you had any other discoveries lately in in this era of our mid-40s that we're in?

7:20James Greenfield:I get accused of being a grumpy old man a bit more than I'd like to which I don't know where that comes from. My wife said I need to watch more comedy I'm not sure I'm not sure that's true maybe I do. Maybe you're just thinking about what's going on in the studio the next day and how are you going to solve this how are you going to solve that or are you somebody that just switches off can switch off dead easily switch off until i'm terrible like literally blearily look at my slack on my phone at 5 30 in the morning and then look at it at like 11 p.m at night now i'm terribly terribly addicted to work i'm afraid oh dear well there you go that reveals a little bit of koto success you know it's the drive and the ambition that gets you to where you are it doesn't come easily it's not something that you just sort of rock up and at nine o 'clock and finish at five and everything just falls into place it's it's a big commitment isn't it definitely but you love it you wouldn't you wouldn't have it any other way no no no i'm perfect i like i've created this if i didn't if i didn't like it i'd be an idiot yeah well exactly what do you do when you can't get to sleep then i listen to the same audiobook every time which is Marcus Aurelius meditations.

8:29James Greenfield:There's like a, it's just such a cliche, but it's because I've read the book, I don't know, five times and I've listened to it numerous other times that I know it all. So therefore there's nothing revealing in it. And so therefore it sends me to sleep. Comforting. Is it with one AirPod in the ear that's free? Oh, gosh. That's quite a common thing amongst blokes. My husband puts on a podcast and falls asleep to it. I don't every night. it's just when I can't sleep it's also on planes when it's really noisy pop the air cancellers in and put it on right we're very odd I put the fan on the lowest setting and he puts his podcast on and we both just pass out he's like we have to have the fan on it's not cold I'm like I need it for the noise I love it it's like Wayne Rooney there it's got a hoover at the bottom of his bed to go to sleep isn't it oh my gosh now please don't compare me to Rooney my goodness sorry oh it was the white noise component yeah it is it's it's a strange thing you know you can it's probably more energy efficient of me i don't do this in winter to have like you know one of those unless you've got a very warm house that must be a lot well it is a warm house it's a modern house so we're not used to a modern house we've always like the house we were in previously was like a drafty old edwardian house um where you know you had slugs and snails coming up the floorboards and having a dance on the carpet downstairs until I came down at three in the morning to go ha and pick them all up and throw them out and then they come back the next night for another party where do they all come from it's irritating isn't it you could make a song out of that um the lovely slugs and snails did you know you could charm snails I didn't know that I wish I did know that I've got a bad snail problem in my back garden so pick a snail up and start talking to it gently and be really kind to it and then just look at his little face it'll sort of turn to you and go oh hello there we go learning something every day we are we do things a little bit differently here on the creative boom podcast james we're not we're not um conventional let's put it that way all your gardening tips as well oh are you into gardening now i am a gardener yeah yeah we're at that stage aren't we what can you recommend i plant next because i've got a lime soil clay soil um a south facing garden and i just fancy planting something on the right of the fence is there any shade there is some shade yes at the back hydrangea in the shade that's very well okay thanks for the tip okay there we go speaking of random um what's a completely random dream you've had recently or one you never forget i have really really over-the-top dreams um which really freaked my wife and friends out um and i'm good friends with the illustrator mr bingo he's not an illustrator he's an artist these days actually sorry he'll be really offended i've just called him an illustrator the artist mr bingo and uh i had a dream the other day that he insisted that i called him the way which made me think of the the edge from you two and he it was really really vivid dream where he was incredibly incredibly serious about it and i texted him the next day and he said that he was worried that i had a very low opinion of him so there you go sticks to mind is he still taking his clothes off or is he behaving now yeah no he's i literally i'm like his conservative uncle i hate his nudity and his insistence on it it's a little bit hashtag something isn't it tell him off tell him to keep his clothes on at least he wasn't naked in the dream oh no that'd be awful that'd be literally though you know what's going to happen now you'll be putting your podcast on later because you can't sleep because you'll be getting beer fear after this podcast and that'll be it dreaming about mr bingo naked god yeah there you go that's planted in your head forever what has been your most embarrassing moment as a creative the most embarrassing thing is when you present something and it's got some terrible like thing in it that I can't see because my mind just doesn't work in that way um so yeah I think my most embarrassing moment ever is probably presenting a logo that looked like a penis um and not noticing it oh my goodness well why well yeah why would you innocent mind you know i just i just don't see things like that so yeah who was that for no comment oh dear so so was that in a meeting did they say yeah yeah yeah in the meeting they were like we like route three but it looks the logo looks like and i was like oh it really does as well so yeah i'm sure they gave you another chance they didn't pick route three yeah oh okay good good we'll forget about route free um this is interesting what's something totally irrational that gives you comfort i really really enjoy reading the comments on our work which most people absolutely hate but i actually get so much enjoyment out of it well do you know what they used to not be like that because you were the underdog because they were like oh these guys are lovely and cute they've got a really nice logo oh have you all right okay yeah we've we've got one troll who absolutely like merciless like pulls every project we've ever done to bits in like details and it used to wind me up but now i actually really really enjoy it so just think i've found some kind of like inner peace about it yeah i think you have to don't you at some point you build that armor um because when you when you work so hard on things i mean who are these people that it's just to me i look at it and i think it's just petty and it's jealousy that i can say that you can't say that i can say that and when we put these um amazing projects on creative booms linkedin we get the same comments sometimes on your projects because we've got um our you know eyes as a sort of like branding part of our branding we just use the eyes emoji because it's brilliant we don't have to reply and say anything we just reply with that no matter how kind of nasty the comment we just reply with that because it can be a like oh okay um or it can be like a oh you know and it calms everything down it's an amazing powerful icon that we've got in the process so branding there we go there you go it works people you've heard it here first you've done something that i've advocated to clients for years which is if you're going to move towards some kind of symbolism like that have an emoji which can be akin to your brand because then you can use it in a very powerful way it just kind of happened naturally to be honest it wasn't um you know well thought out or anything it just one day we just started using it and that was it um so yeah now we um always ask each guest every week a question which our previous guest posed and last week on the podcast we had fiona mcgarver who is um a fantastic writer author event director and the founder of sunday communications she wants to know do you have a creative outlet you're not very good at oh that's really good like so I used to be terrible at writing and I've worked really really hard to be better at writing because I really enjoyed it and it used to be appalling and being dyslexic as well I find it quite tough so therefore it's like that's the thing but I have an aspiration to be good at painting but I am awful at it and it's something I would love to I don't have enough time for at the moment but I would love the best right but yeah i'm not very good at painting all right well you've got to buy the paint and the easel and set it up somewhere in the house and just go for it yeah yeah what would you paint probably quite weird stuff to be honest a bit more surreal kind of odd things are you saying you're just jealous of mr bingo no definitely not jealous of him no uh his is his This is more just...

16:25Satire.

16:26James Greenfield:Yeah, kind of madness. I'm not, you know, I think mine would just be a bit more weird. Yeah, maybe like an abstract depiction of your shaded hydrangeas. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, love it. Okay, and what question? We're finishing the season now. Season nine is coming to an end, but we will save your question for the start of the next. what question would you ask our next guest on the cravedbeam podcast what's the most surprising thing about you that's what i said wasn't it yes it was so what's the most surprising thing about you love it so we will ask our next guest when we're back in september well thank you so much james this has been amazing thanks for having me best of luck with koto and we'll see you soon see you soon cheers see you later

17:14thank you for listening to the spark and a big thank you again to this week's guest james greenfield of koto it was a brilliant way to wrap up the season thanks also to our sponsor the school of communication arts for making this season of the creative boom podcast possible if you'd like to subscribe just head to creativeboom.com forward slash podcast or find us wherever you get your fix that's it from us for now thank you so much for listening to this season and we'll see you very soon because we will be back with more brilliant guests in September.