I’ve been fortunate in recent weeks to have more than my usual number of virtual coffees and conversations with fellow members of the community.
I try, wherever I can, to find as much time to have a proper chat with new members, and I thought I’d share a few observations from recent conversations.
Passion - there’s a furious intensity of passion and love for the work, behind most of the people I speak to. You can see this is more than just a job, but a calling. Yes, it can be frustrating - but that frustation comes from wanting to do good, motivating, inspiring work - and when there’s a mismatch between the drive and the opportunity, it feels hard work.
Curiosity - without exception, there’s a constant drive to learn, discover, uncover, challenge ones own assumptions. you can’t do this work without being curious. not just about the brief, but a general curiousity about the world, and desire to know more. not in the persuit of being smart, but an honest intrigue about stuff.
Pauses - bear with me, this is something i’ve spotted recently. people take time to think about their answer, to respond meaningfully. There’s no rush to have a smart snappy answer. There’s more breathing, more looking off camera and thinking, searching for thoughts. I love it. I’d far rather wait for a considered point, than a rapid empty one.
Struggle - there’s also a lot of challenge, hurt, worry, anxiety. Many people i’ve spoken to recently are here, less through choice but by circumstance. And naturally this comes with emotional weight.
I’m grateful to have the opportunity to chat with you, when I can. It means a great deal to me, and honestly, I’m in awe of you. I’m continually blown away by the amazing experience, insight, talent and just plain lovely folk you all are.
People will often thank me for creating this space, but really the thanks has to go to you all, for bringing the conversation, connections, and being the community for each other.
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Matt Bamford is an independent strategist and recently became the “re-founder” and owner at Milkman, an independent homeware and lifestyle brand.
Matt - tell us the story about how you came to be Milkman’s “re-founder” and what does that even mean?
Weirdly I’ve always wanted to start a candle brand, but found the process a little bit daunting. The world of fragrance and candle production has a lot of mystery to it and there are certain gatekeepers you need to navigate. It became a bit untenable trying to do it on my own.
Milkman is a brilliant candle brand that was launched by Benjy and Alex back in 2019. My business partner and good friend, Ryan, runs a store called Meet Bernard and he’d stocked the candles. They sold out almost instantly. We both loved the scent and the identity but also the work that had gone into the business. Benjy and Alex are both brilliant.
A year or so ago Benjy approached Ryan to say he wanted to sell the business and he’d love Ryan to take it over. Ryan contacted me and after a lot of discussion, chin scratching, and a few maybes, we said yes. Both of us agreed that we didn’t want to let such a great brand die and that it deserved to get even more visibility. Its potential is huge.
Re-founding also just seemed to suit me much better. There’s an immediate and obvious need for strategic thinking around what we keep, shed, do, or don’t do. There’s no need to come up with the original idea itself, it’s just about honing it. My view is that’s what we’re doing most of the time around strategy in agencies (which is where I’ve spent most of my life)
What are your aims for the business?
Our aims are really high for the business. The market is dominated by brands (some of which are very bland) that aim much more at a female audience, and although we aren’t ignoring that audience, we believe there’s a huge space for a masculine shaped, gender neutral, unconventional home scent brand. 74% of men we spoke to said they’d buy a candle for their home if the brand suited them, yet currently 95% of candles are bought by women.
There’s an immediate challenge now, which we’re trying to push through this side of Christmas. We’d like to sell out a bigger range but because of production time pressures the volume isn’t as big as we would have wanted. So instead we’re testing out a limited batch model to see if that’s effective, whilst also experimenting with ad models and creators.
Next year we’d like to scale through interesting bespoke scent collaborations, we’ve got Ennismore and Design Hotels on our radar so if anyone is up for introducing us there that would be great. We like the idea that hotels spend an awful lot of time thinking about soundscapes, but what about their scentscapes?
Beyond that we’ve already got a couple of very desirable fashion brands who we are talking with about collaborations. We’ve also got a plan to add two new scents to the range under a new sub-brand.
Our vision, which will take a bit of guts, luck and unwavering belief, is to take the brand global within the next 18 months. We have one eye on Japan at the moment and have a potential door opening up there, so that would be a beautiful experience if that happens.
I guess the main thing is that at the moment I’m doing something with a good friend. I’m intensely passionate about the brand and forever grateful for the opportunity to build it, and I hope that can continue long into the future.
What have you learned in taking on a business which sells “things” instead of ideas?
I think the major thing I’ve learnt is people say “tell me a bit more about that then…” when you’re selling things, not ideas. I’ve never really had people ask me “what’s it like to work at that agency?” It would seem that when you run a brand the conversations are so much more interesting (for both sides) and people are unafraid of getting under the skin. It’s actually very helpful because we learn how to tell the “things” story better every time.
Everyone finds the re-founder story quite unique and I think people appreciate it when you’re open about your struggles as well as being humble about success. We’re not perfect. I’m far from perfect, but we’re learning lots as we go.
Our complimentary skills actually suit this brand really well so I’m diving into spreadsheets about COGS, margins, contributions which is fun, whilst also trying to understand how much we spent on fragrance per candle. Ryan’s brilliant with our wholesalers and the production process. I wouldn’t be good at those things.
Ideas also have a client.
Things have a customer.
If a customer says no to our “thing” then it’s not like we have to start again, we just move on and find the right audience. If we’re not for you, that’s cool.
When a client says no to an idea, it can break you and force you to question everything. (We’ve all been there and I think that’s why that sort of role can be so draining physically and mentally)
I don’t take it as an insult if people don’t like the brand we’re building and the things we’re selling. HOWEVER, for whatever reason I always felt theatrically insulted when a client didn’t buy an idea or a strategy. An arrow of negative feedback through the heart to ruin the day.
How does this sit alongside your other work? You’re a strategist, you’re supporting sport organisations, and now this. Is this an intentional portfolio you’re building?
Yes, fair question and one which I let out a bit of a laugh to.
My view on work life has largely been driven by a book I read along time ago called Body of Work. It’s by Pamela Slim and rooted in the idea of “finding your thread”.
My work life has always been a collection of leaps of faith and completely mistimed jumps. Each of these has always been rooted in where I think my brain can contribute the most to any change and where my heart feels its right. I made one “completely mistimed jump” purely for money and it was the worst decision I’ve ever made, so my heartfelt recommendation is not to do that.
The strategy, sports work and Milkman are simply places where I see I can apply my brain, create change, and hopefully make some people happy. They all interconnect and the experiences power each other. If my body of work ends up looking like that consistently and it keeps giving me the energy it’s currently ?giving me, then I think I’ll end up living a pretty fulfilling work life.
» Discover Milkman here, or connect with Matt on LinkedIn or via the community
» Can’t go without a John Lewis xmas ad commentary, can we? This is the best I’ve seen yet. A frame by frame semiotic analysis of the ad. Only partially tongue-in-cheek from .
» And if you’re keen to look at ALL OF THE XMAS ADS check out ‘s epic google spreadsheet, going back to 1971!
» Have just stumbled across The Subthread - enjoying the read. And they’re calling for contributors including cultural strategists.
» Zohran Mamdani becomes NYC Mayor Elect. Lots of commentary around his use of social and design.
» Consulting Slop from NOBL (and parallels to beige, thanks Danny)
» Slow down to unblock. on gathering, thinking and noticing.
» on professional liminal spaces and evolution.
» David Burns generously shares his insight on creative pitching.
» Graeme Douglas, outgoing CSO and founder of Bicycle, launched a newsletter.
» Sustainablity experts network The Now Work, worth a look, as they have a talent community for independents in the space.
» On Strategy as a tool for resiliance. Thanks Uri
» Mailing people mobile phones. Brilliant bit of DM. Thanks Joel.
» Splitting attention further with clipping
» “Gen Z don’t have a shorter attention span, they have a shorter consideration span”. I saw this somewhere today, but couldn’t find it again to cite the source. Whoever said it, props. Brilliant observation.
» Getty win AI case, which might influence platform strategy around GenAI use. Worth watching this.
» is hosting a free workshop on finding your voice. Will be excellent advice in here on November 14.
» is hosting a Salmon Theory session on behaviour change on November 28.
👋 Hi, I’m Ed. I only sailed out under my own flag six months ago so it’s exciting new waters. I specialise in creative strategy for comms. Helping PR agencies and in house comms teams get their story straight and find eye-catching ways to land it.
I joined a fledgling PR agency in London called Red 30 years ago and amazingly stayed put until this spring. I cut my teeth in the rowdy world of 90s media relations - a tough training ground where pitches to jaded journalists taught you the importance of quickly getting to the point long before today’s fixation on the ‘attention economy’.
Over time I developed a reputation for mapping out strategy which led cleanly onto award-winning creative campaigns. Which meant I ended up leading the Planning & Creative function in the agency over the last decade or so.
I’ve worked on a UK and a global basis, on standalone comms and on integrated campaigns. I’ve had a satisfyingly eclectic mix of clients covering most sectors - from Nike and PlayStation through Cadbury, Barclays and McDonalds to the NHS and RNLI.
I eventually needed to scratch that itch for independence and set up Chalk to offer senior consultancy. I’m loving it so far.
A few years back there was the first flurry of ‘you’ll never guess what AI has done now’ stories. The field was crowded and any successful story needed to be quick to understand. And novel. We were challenged by client Huawei to come up with a way of demonstrating the AI in their flagship mobile device.
It was a one sentence pitch in an email I wrote. “Let’s finish Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.” We did just that, using AI and working with an Emmy award-winning composer. And then we gave a public performance with a full orchestra in London. The audience included media and influencers from across Europe, generating cut-through awareness. A tech and arts collab with a 200 year-old piece of culture.
We’re drowning in data and choking on insight. It’s never been easier to source and share.
The clients I work with are desperate for someone to beat a path through this and carve out a clear path to follow.
I offer ‘noise-cancelling thinking’. It’s easy to be complicated - contextual analysis, stakeholder mapping, channel sequencing. It’s so much harder to be simple.
Listen: I can’t sit and work without music so I’m always hunting for new tracks and artists. My latest obsession is the London duo Good Health Good Wealth. They’ve got a happy knack for turning everyday observations into maddeningly catchy tunes. And they seem to have swerved any easy genre label.
Read: When I started out on my own, one of the few subscriptions I kept up was The Economist. The house style means it’s just so, so well written - accessible, concise and sticks in your head. They seem to have adopted Elmore Leonard’s golden rule for writing - leave out the part that readers tend to skip
See: I’ve got an Art Pass (free / discounted entry into galleries) as a way of kicking me into more IRL cultural consumption. The last thing I saw was the Lee Miller show at Tate Britain. Some famously intense images but what caught my imagination was her extraordinary crossover where she applied fashion magazine sensibility to reportage of a destroyed 1940s Europe. Kind of more surreal than the actual Surrealist projects she did.
» Connect with Ed on Linkedin, or in the community.
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freelance creative strategist / copywriter (IN)
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freelance strategists with neobanking/crypto exp (ES)
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Freelance Senior Brand Strategists with healthcare exp (US)
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Freelance Senior Brand Strategist- Creative Branding Agency (UK)
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That’s all for this week.
mk✌️
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