An honest account of the last 5 months...

On Wednesday the 11th of March 2020 I drove from Edinburgh to Aberdeen to embark on a day full of client meetings. I got up at the usual time of 5am, started the drive and as 7am arrived I started getting calls, text messages and alerts on my phone saying that the meetings were cancelled. By the time I arrived at 8am my whole day had been wiped free. 

On the Thursday night my wife asked me what was wrong and I told her that we had just lost all our production work. She looked at me and couldn’t really believe it. But I explained that in the space of 24 hours all our potential work and contracts had been cancelled or postponed. Nearly ￡500k of work gone. 

The next week we went into ‘lockdown’ and over the next 6 weeks we restructured (weekly) rebuilt, tried to work out what we could and couldn’t do, how we could carry on. What risk assessments, insurances, legal, locations we could work with or not. We moved to complete remote working, set up a remote studio and came up with new technologies.

We sent out newsletters, emailed existing clients until our fingers bled and the whole team went onto sales, I had editors cold calling, our management team re-engaging with everyone. We were fighting for our survival. Much like the rest of the country. 

When the furlough scheme arrived we made the decision not to furlough the staff because if we did we would have no company left – because without this team, MBP is just 3 letters. 

At the same time I was at home and I still am, this is the longest I’ve been in one place for 17 years. We have two children, a 4 year old and a 2 year old who were also at home while we were keeping MBP alive. My wife jumped in to help on sales and she still is so if she messages you please say hello!

And then we started to bring in contracts, we have had the pleasure of creating TV adverts, social content, stills, large campaigns, technical support, how to film PDF’s, editing home videos. Animations. All socially distanced and all remotely. 

And we survived the worst of it, with some help from the government and with a lot of hard work, long hours, dedication and just plain old graft from my team. And along the way we’ve had the absolute honor of working with some of the most wonderful people who believed in MBP to deliver a solution, solve their problem and make their lives easier. I want to thank you publicly but I’m pretty sure all the NDA’s would get me in trouble but you know who you are!

And now 5 months in, it has changed, the ‘lockdown’ is easing and we are in a very different world. Companies I worked with daily have folded. Our old offices are gone and our new ones are looking pretty epic (we will give you some cool updates on this asap) 

We now have 2 new staff members and we have a slate of work that is running well into October.  

I wanted to share this as we are the lucky ones, we have so far managed to survive and navigate this most difficult of times and I wanted to just say to everyone we have worked with along the way thank you, to all the crews that we haven’t managed to employ or work with for the last 5 months I hope we will work together again soon. For our friends and families who we haven’t had a second with we will be able to spend time together again soon! 

For the people that haven’t been so lucky and are out of a job or don’t know how they are going to survive my heart goes out to you. Good luck and if we can help in any way we will. And finally I got into the creative industries 17 years ago, I have had ups and downs like everyone, the thing that has kept me sane is the work, delivering productions and seeing the change in clients. The smile on peoples faces, the reactions. That is why I do what I do. 

I thought I would leave you with this, MBP was founded by myself and Scott Thomson in 2012. The name was Matt Brown Productions and that was mainly because my accountant said I had to register as a LTD company within an hour or I would get in a lot of trouble and I had writer’s block so it was MBP…. For the last 7 years and 364 days I’ve been trying to figure out what those initials could stand for instead, so if anyone has any ideas please let me know!