This week, we spoke to Dave Allen, Founder of “independent purpose-driven transformation consultancy, Brandpie.
How was your company born and where are you based?
Brandpie was conceived in the summer of 2008 and launched in December 2008. Today, we’re based in the UK and USA.
Before Brandpie, I was running WPP’s consulting business and could see two major trends: first, that sustainable business creation would grow massively in importance. Back then it was still more about compliance.
Secondly, during the recession, a lot of businesses were downsizing, and I could see that this was a good time to launch a business. I started with an idea that there must be a better way to do business, and this grew into what would become Brandpie, working to find businesses their purpose.
The financial crisis really made people focus on the role of business in society; there was a lot of soul searching happening in the world as to how business is conducted and its impact on the planet.
I wanted Brandpie to get into the fundamentals of why a business exists, rather than what drives its profit. I wanted to form emotional connections between society and businesses, and this was driven by wanting to uncover the core business purpose.
At the time, the idea of purpose was still relatively in its infancy, but it has only continued to grow. Our model of purpose, ambition and strategy was created within 18 months of launching.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
Finding the right people, particularly when we were still in the early stages of building our business. In those the first 2-3 years, it wasn’t easy to find the right talent as most were holding on to their jobs during the recession for job security, and wouldn’t consider leaving a big business to join a new company that was still in its infancy.
We were really lucky in that we had a senior team, which included myself, Roger Partington, Sally Bye, Terry Moore, Peter Widdup and others who came with plenty of business experience and were able to help us build the business from the ground-up.
We supplemented this senior team with talented people straight out of university, who we felt were the best-in-class, and that model lasted us for quite a while as we continued to grow our business.
It was only when we started to get bigger that we built out our team with more senior consultants and designers.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
Our first huge success was the repositioning, restructuring, and brand architecture for Eircom in April and May of 2009 – so it was quite early on. This made it possible for us to transition into large, brand transformation programmes; we worked on the Meteor project shortly after this. We originally received the Eircom project through a connection we had with Paul Donovan, the new CEO at the time.
Four weeks after that, KPMG contacted us to work with them. Within six months of launching Brandpie, we were fortunate enough to had landed two major pieces of work from our network.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
We’ve continued to prove that purpose-driven businesses are more successful than profit-driven businesses, and we’ve done several successful transformations of this for our clients, creating longer-term employee engagement in the process.
Our biggest long-term opportunity right now is scaling this, now that we’ve proven that the model works.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
Our process is multidisciplinary; we bring together the best strategic thinkers and designers, and we create for purpose, culture, and brand all-in-one.
The idea that glues this together is what makes our creative process unique – we look at those three things holistically. Most creative agencies would only do a brand revision or only look at the employee experience, but we’ve integrated all those things into one program, and that holistic approach makes us unique. We’re a consulting business first and foremost.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
Because our own purpose is to make the world of business purpose-driven, we’re making sure that Brandpie is a world-class place to work. We allow our people to manage their own destiny, and they are given total flexibility over their workday and where they want to take their role.
This creates a great atmosphere for people to work in – recently, we were awarded one of the best companies in the UK to work for at Best Companies Live and I think this is a testament to everything we do at Brandpie to make this a great place to work.
My biggest takeaway is trust in your employees to do their work – I trust everybody that works for us, and I think this is what keeps them engaged. If they break that trust, they’ve only let themselves down.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
It made it a lot stronger. It has accelerated our own transformation – we’ve become more efficient, and our carbon footprint has reduced massively. It’s freed up more time outside of work as well; we’re more productive and people are generally happier. At Brandpie, we’ve developed a new hybrid way of working and this has made us into a better business.
The pandemic had enabled us to do in one year what would have normally taken five. We were lucky enough as a business that we were able to take our work online and that we had the technology that enabled us to do that.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
More of my inspiration comes from people – seeing people who really believe in something and that go out there and make it happen. People who effect real change in the world and try to make society better. I believe we should be celebrating all of the people who are pushing change forward and making this world a better place for future generations.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Be true to yourself and be clear in what you believe in – don’t deviate from that. Don’t do something just to make money; do what you’re passionate about and believe in.
I’m lucky in that what I do is my hobby, it’s what I would choose to do even if I wasn’t doing anything else.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
Most of our new business comes from recommendations and from doing good work. If we produce something great, this opens the door for more connections, whereby we’ll either be recommended to someone looking for our services, or someone we know may change jobs and their new organization needs our services. Making our clients success makes us successful.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
My hope is that the industry will become totally genuine. It hasn’t traditionally been a trusted industry in society, and I would like to be a part of an industry that is highly regarded and respected because it does great work. Although there is definitely great work being done in this industry, it is tainted by those who are not genuine and who place profit above all else.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
A lot of the time, I get my inspiration just from watching the world and observing. There are no books that will teach you how to build a successful business – I get this from seeing how the world works and from observing people.
Observe what’s going on and you will become much more aware. Being aware helps you see new ways forward. That’s how we created Brandpie in the first place.
