Creating a brand

For many businesses, 2020 was a time to take stock and look towards the future, whether that future looked rosy or filled with doubt. Everyone from the small businesses to the giant conglomerates had to move, adapt and evolve at unprecedented rates. In our business, we worked to implement numerous micro-changes to almost every process in order to keep moving forward in a positive way, a transformation that is still ongoing. But now that 2020 is over, one thing is for certain: the professional world around us is not the same one as before and it’s not going to change back any time soon, if ever. 

During the last year one of our strategies for growth and prosperity came in the form of service swaps. It was not something we took on lightly but the overwhelming will to continue, build and expand for many companies, even in the absence of their usual cash flow was an opportunity too good to pass up. We used these opportunities to improve our branding and online presence in order to back-up last year’s award wins, to build our standing on google and overhaul our website to bolster our list of ever-growing recommendations. It worked better than we could have expected and we have seen some great results, but something was still missing.

We know that in Business Development keeping your blinkers on is never healthy. The job relies on your ability to react to the market and keep building new connections, relationships, opportunities. So we wanted to challenge ourselves in a way we hadn’t previously considered.  And we were lucky enough to already have the resources in place to do so.

Sam, my Co-Managing Partner, and I sat down to brainstorm ideas. Many other outfits do publications, magazines, events, webinars but that didn’t appeal to us. They’re relatively short-lived and sure, they may help to show clients who or what you know but what it doesn’t do is help your own self-growth and learning. 

We decided to do something a little different. We decided to launch a new brand. To go client-side. It made perfect sense, that’s the world we are always looking into, exploring and growing for others. This way, we could sit client-side and immerse ourselves into it completely. It’s an objection we’ve had with prospective clients in the past, that we haven’t sat on that side of the table, that we couldn’t understand the nuances or the demands involved … well now we have and let me tell you, it’s been a rollercoaster. Add to that, the fact that we’re launching in the middle of a pandemic and that we’ve selected a target customer base in the most hard-hit area. The Arts. More specifically, actors. It may seem like we’re mad but this is the arena that Sam and I know, have spent all our lives in and that we honestly adore, so it made sense, darling.

Although actors are predominately out of work, contemplating their uncertain futures or making ends meet, we wanted to create a truly helpful resource that we, ourselves (Sam and I are also trained actors, but that’s for another time) knew there was a real need for in the industry. A resource that could help actors keep upskilling even whilst theatres are closed, and one that might save them from resorting to retraining in cyber (thanks Boris). A way to upskill so that when the opportunity does arise they’ll be ready. We chose to make it community-led but most importantly we chose to make it cheap. We changed our mantra, instead of trying to sell fewer units at a higher price we’ve decided to back ourselves. We think every actor should have this in their toolkit so we’ve made it ￡20 a year. The number we need to get our investment back is eye wateringly huge but we believe in what we’ve made and we want it to be accessible to all; a truly useful resource for anyone that needs it, not just the elite. We do, after all, live in a time where Orwell is turning in his grave, as the all too familiar screech of ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ echoes all too loudly in our ears.

Polarisation had become such a talking point in 2020 that it eventually spilt over into 2021, escalating to the point of a man sitting with his feet on Nancy Polosi’s desk, a woman who is third in line to be the president and a horned right-wing shaman preaching from the middle of Capitol Hill. Whilst we cannot in any way hope to rebuild American Democracy we can aim to practice what we preach by bringing people together in search of a common ground. Promoting the need to help other people, in order to better yourself. To share with your community to strengthen it going forward.

This is something in the acting world we pride ourselves on, inclusivity, no matter the creed, colour, religion, gender of an individual, everyone is good, bad and ugly. As CEO of Apple, Tim Cook said in a tweet recently ‘It’s especially when they are challenged that our ideals matter most.’ Acting is not an ideal, it’s a vocation people have trained in for years.

If anything, I hope that ‘spikizi’ becomes a light in this darkness that we’re currently surrounded by. It already has become for us. And we should all want performers to have hope, not just us that are directly involved in the industry. According to the Arts Council, the sector contributes ￡2.8billion a year to the Treasury via taxation and generates a further ￡23billion a year through its output as well as over 363,700 jobs. We can’t let a pandemic and an unresponsive, self-interested Government allow that to die. Before last year the industry was flourishing and it still remains one of our greatest exports around the world. In February last year government statistics revealed that the Creative Industries sector was growing more than five times faster than the national economy. And aside from all the money it brings in, we’ll all be sorry when there’s nothing to watch on the telly during another lockdown, no books to read on the tube to work or no music to dance to at your wedding. 

Aside from all this, one further reason for creating spikizi and wanting to keep performers training in their own sector and not diversifying, is quite frankly their work ethic. They’re unrelenting, undeterred by knockbacks, emotionally intuitive and incredibly quick-thinking on their feet (anyone who says otherwise has clearly never been in an audition room, trust me, it’s a jungle out there). If these people are forced to turn to Cyber, Marketing, Finance, Sales and they get a sniff of a real wage, then these industry immigrants will really show the world how they get the job done.