A Bulletproof plan for success in the competitive creative industries
Brand design agency Bulletproof was recognised at the Amazon Growing Business Awards last year as the Creative Industries Business of the Year. We found out why.
Bulletproof is a brand design agency that aims to deliver big thinking with an entrepreneurial spirit. It was founded in 1998 by two college friends, Gush Mundae and Jonny Stewart, and nowadays boasts 155 employees across London, New York and Singapore.
The company has delivered brand design for some of the biggest fast-moving consumer goods and consumer packaged goods companies in the world, including The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, Heineken International, Mondelēz International and Unilever.
At the Amazon Growing Business Awards in November 2017, the business was recognised as Creative Industries Business of the Year. We caught up with Stewart to find out how it came by such an accolade.
What is the ethos of the business?
We believe that people make the difference — different backgrounds, cultures and personalities with one shared Bulletproof vision. It’s inherent within our culture to recognise that every role within the business is crucial to our success.
People are our greatest asset, so we go to great lengths to ensure we select individuals based on their passion, ability, experience, aptitude and commitment which, when combined, create an “X factor” which fuels our diverse and progressive agency culture.
What is your USP?
We are driven by a restless energy and a fearless approach, with an intuitive and truly entrepreneurial nature. Strategically and creatively we shun the preconceived idea of expertise and instead opt for an intelligently naive approach, which we believe makes the world more interesting. This allows us to be more open in our thinking and ensures our creative work is unrivalled.
Our tribal nature is not for the faint hearted or weak minded. Our honesty with one and another — and our clients — is often piercing, but it results in some of the most creative and commercially successful work on the global stage.
We believe great ideas change the world; this belief underpins and unites everything we do. You can see it in our delivery and feel it in our thinking. It’s the very philosophy behind our name. When creating an idea, we always ask: “Is it on brand? Is it on brief? Is it Bulletproof?”
What has been the best thing about working in creative industries?
We are proud to be at the forefront of world-class design, working in an exciting and inspiring industry and delivering strategic creative for some of the biggest (and smallest) brands in the world.
What are your plans for the next 12 months?
We’ll keep our growth scalable with a flexible, strategic design process tailored to the needs of each client project, no matter how big or small.
We believe that people make the difference, so we’ll continue to invest heavily in our tribe.
What advice would you give to other businesses looking to get into creative industries?
Ensure you stand out from the crowd with a clearly defined culture and an easily articulated point of difference.
Would you recommend other businesses get involved in the Amazon Growing Business Awards next year?
The awards have given our agency fantastic exposure. They also allowed us to pause and celebrate our success to date. When we announced the win on social media, many of our clients congratulated us and one client even went so far as to send the details of our win to all of her global procurement colleagues while we were going through a roster review.
We would definitely recommend the Growing Business Awards to other businesses wanting recognition for business success.
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About the author
Letitia Booty is a special projects journalist for Real Business. She has a BA in english literature from the University of East Anglia, and since graduating she has written for a variety of trade titles. Most recently, she was a reporter at SME magazine.
