The agency environment is one I know well, and it’s incredibly incestuous – everybody knows everybody else, and it’s easy to get a feel for how things are done across the board. When clients are looking to build a relationship with a new agency, they’ll often be looking for the differences between a variety of shortlisted agencies that may operate in a similar sector, and be similar in size to one another. Any agency worth its salt should have a display of beautiful work available in its portfolio and an array of superlatives ready to extoll their virtues upon the client. However, in order to see what makes an agency like IE different, it’s important to understand some key things that agencies have in common. Agencies are predominantly full of creative people. As a Graphic Designer for ten years myself, there are loads of great things to say about creatives. There’s nothing more invigorating than seeing a real artist at work, and that’s what keeps this industry so exciting. Seeing talented people solving creative problems – be it a branding challenge, a beautifully tactile piece of print, or a large-scale digital project. However, there’s also an unspoken truth about artistic people – they don’t always make the best businesses! It’s a bit of a stereotype, and of course it’s not true of everyone, but the very people who can realise the most outstanding feats of creativity, can quite successfully trade for decades without really knowing where they’re headed. There’s often something of the maverick that comes hand in hand with the artistic temperament and this isn’t always to the benefit of a client.

So, when I say IE first struck me because of ‘process’, I mean that we’re more than just a room full of creative people. We don’t see the process of design as a ‘beauty parade’, where the best looking designs are scattered in front of a client. We scrutinise everything we do in-house, following a strict procedure to make sure that all our projects are more than just a pretty fascia. In truth, we work in an industry where it’s all too easy to ‘paper over the cracks’, and too many agencies think only of the look and feel of a project, rather than considering what it’s trying to achieve and whether it’s fit for purpose.

People often think that adding ‘rules’ and ‘process’ to an essentially artistic profession is creatively limiting – but I believe the reverse is true. When I was growing up, I was fascinated by Leonardo Da Vinci – universally recognised as one of the greatest artists of all time. You’d only need to take a look at the ‘Mona Lisa’, or ‘The Last Supper’ to see his artistic craftsmanship at work. However, behind the ‘artist’ was also one of history’s most talented scholars, polymaths, architects and engineers – widely credited with inventions centuries ahead of their time, including the parachute, the helicopter and even the machine gun. He had a profound understanding of engineering and how things worked. With this in mind, you’ll appreciate that without ‘the Vitruvian Man’ (Da Vinci’s famous study on the proportions of the human body), there could be no ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. His paint on canvas was the ultimate representation of his work, but his knowledge of form, shape, colour and light are equally responsible for his deserved place in history. In short, a solid foundation should never limit creativity, it should enhance it.

Over the course of my first few weeks at IE, there’s a phrase I’ve heard, time and again. Regardless of the project we’re working on, we always ask our clients to define what ‘success looks like?’ In other words, how will we experience and measure the impact of the project? This seems such a sensible approach to take, but it’s not always the case at every agency.

So, if you’re looking for talented creatives, and knowledgeable consultants, you’ll most certainly find a great match here at IE. And, if you want more than that, if you want a really ‘solid’ partner – an agency that isn’t afraid to challenge you, and be challenged in return – then we’ll be the perfect ‘fit’.

To many agencies, it’s all about the beautiful creative. IE’s clients can take ‘beautiful’ for granted, but they can also rely upon a rigorous process and a healthy fixation on impact and return on investment. Without that, it’s just paint on a canvas…