Upon graduating from Manchester University in 1997 with a degree in English and American Literature, Ben Mooge landed a job as a runner and self-described “tea boy” at Mother, a London ad agency that had opened just six months earlier.
“My getting into advertising was a happy accident,” said Mooge. “Studying English and literature, your career thoughts normally turn to journalism or teaching. I didn’t want to be a school teacher. I guess I might have drifted towards journalism. But luckily I had a buddy who was obsessed with advertising and he pointed out to me that someone has to write the adverts. So we put together a scrapbook of ideas and I wound up at Mother.
While running about and getting people their cups of tea by day, Mooge was writing by night as both he and Mother progressed significantly.
Mooge grew from junior copywriter to eventually a creative director while Mother became an internationally recognized and much lauded force in advertising.
During his Mother tenure, which ran ’til 2007, Mooge won assorted awards including three D&AD Yellow Pencils, Gold at The One Show, a pair of Golds from the British Television Advertising Awards, and Grand Prix honors at the Art Directors Club of Europe, Kinsale and Epica.
In ’07, Mooge took a year off to travel and work on two screenplays. He rejoined the advertising fray in ’08 as creative partner at Work Club, a startup agency that was originally billed as a digital shop. When Mooge came aboard, Work Club was about six months old, having been launched by managing partner Martin Brooks, strategy partner Patrick Griffith and creative partner Andy Sandoz, all formerly with Agency Republic, a leading U.K. digital agency. Mooge now reflects on his first year at Work Club.
SHOOT: Do you view Work Club as a digital agency or is that description no longer relevant in the marketplace?
Mooge: The word “digital” as a prefix to an agency should die. I think it will be dead in a couple of years. That’s what I’ve learned and experienced during my first year here. Work Club was labeled as being digital but the digital world is quite different today than it was five or six years ago. The world itself is completely digital. Digital isn’t a niche anymore.
It used to be that you were doing digital content for digital people–programmers, codes and people who thought digital was cool. But now I watch more entertainment online than I do on television–and television was my job for 10 years. I’m a massive fan of TV commercials but now I’m watching them more on YouTube than television. We have television shows that tons of people in the U.K. are watching online. Digital has become mainstream. And the so-called digital agencies, the good ones at least, are doing brand thinking as opposed to just product thinking. It’s amazing to see all the ways that are emerging to use this new media to get a brand’s tone of voice across to audiences.
It’s ludicrous to think of agencies as either digital or traditional advertising agencies. Places like BBH and Fallon plug straight into digital.
At Work Club we go wherever we need to be for our clients. We continue with poster and magazines for the Oakley Sunglasses account. But now we are about to produce digital content for them next week, with a brand property idea that will run through all of Oakley’s communications, print advertising, public relations and online. On the TV front, we’ve done spots for Sony BMG for the launch of the new Dido album. (Teaser television advertising was a campaign component along with posters across the London Underground and U.K. rail network driving traffic online to a YouTube Channel and then fuller films on a special website where users could tap into the U.K. debut of Facebook Connect, social networking with their friends within the Work Club-devised online environment.)
SHOOT: What important lessons did you learn during your long tenure at Mother ? And have you applied them to your experience at Work Club?
Mooge: There are parallels between my experiences at the two agencies. When I joined Mother, we were 10 people. I’ll always think of Mother as that 10-person agency and they’re still the best in the business as far as I’m concerned. The parallel, though, is that you had a core group of people pulling together and thinking anything is possible. That’s the same familiar territory I’ve experienced at Work Club.
There’s also a meshing of digital and traditional here. Andy Sandoz and I are creative partners at Work Club. He comes from a digital background while I come from a more traditional background at Mother. We learn from each other every day and bring digital and traditional creative together, helping to integrate the two at Work Club.
SHOOT: What have you been up to most recently at Work Club?
Mooge: There’s been work for Nokia and Dido, but most recently we relaunched the website for TopGear, a popular show on the BBC all about cars. It’s very opinionated and has found an audience in the States, both on BBC Worldwide and as a popular iTunes download in the U.S.
We made these brand films which are sort of a fake look behind the scenes of the TopGear office and show. This is the first time I have launched brand films on YouTube, actually the TopGear channel on YouTube. We had 500,000 views in the first week.
The centerpiece of some of the brand films is The Stig, a white suited, white helmeted, faceless character who tests all the cars on the show. A mythology has been built about The Stig and the show. On Facebook he has 1.5 million fans in the U.K.
The films drive people to TopGear.com where the TV show’s point of view and personality is now available all the time instead of just once a week on television.
SHOOT: What attracted you to Work Club originally?
Mooge: I’m a massive fan of Mother to this day. I love their work. And once you’ve worked for someone you think is the best in the business, it’s impossible to work for someone else modeled after or like them. Whatever I did next had to be new and different and that drew me to Work Club.
Plus with Work Club there was the chance to have a piece of a business and from that perspective to learn how agencies and accounts really run which is both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
SHOOT: The recession is being felt on both sides of the Atlantic. What do you envision in 2009 for the industry in light of such a tight economy?
Mooge: You have to assume that the best people who do the best work will come out stronger. The answer is to be as creative as you can be as budgets are cut left, right and center. It’s a challenge but also an opportunity.
A lot of clients currently have an advertising agency and a separate digital agency on their roster. Our full service offerings encompass both these disciplines. It’s a leaner business model that makes sense for a client, particularly in difficult economic times.
The fact is that you need the brand thinking as well as the digital media expertise that gives consumers focus and ensures they are in the appropriate conversation with the right people. With our TopGear campaign, for example, we’re talking to tons of car fans rather than just a bunch of people who happen to be watching TV on a particular night.
