Tom Morgan — Associate Strategic Director, Anti
Tom talks to TheNextGag about what changed for the agency since all the awards, what is their design process and what it’s like being a part of the best creative agency in Norway.
Tom Morgan is the Associate Strategic Director of Anti in Norway.
The reputation of Anti soared last year when the agency won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions in the Design category for their work for the International Festival of Bergen.
THENEXTGAG: HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE THE NAME OF THE AGENCY ?
TOM MORGAN: AN-TI, as in ‘to oppose something’. It stands for ‘A New Type of Interference’. So, it is a play on the word. We have some anti-ideals of the perceived boundaries of the creative industries. It fits quite poetically with our design approach, and our philosophy A New Type of Interference.
TNG: BY THE WAY, WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT THE INDUSTRY, WHAT KIND OF INDUSTRY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ?
TM: That’s a very good question, and actually comes to the heart of the matter. ANTI has different departments — and that in itself is ironic. ANTI is based in Bergen and Oslo, and in Bergen we’re primarily about communication design. However, not in a limited capacity; our work responds to the to the contemporary landscape of social and technological communications, low and high threshold. This ‘contemporary landscape’ is wide open, any barriers out there are perceived. Defining oneself by design output alone (print, web, whatever) isn’t relevant anymore, its all about the business service and value generated for the client. Our colleagues in Oslo are the same working with us in this capacity, and house ANTI Advertising, ANTI TV and ANTI Brandpeople (celebrity PR with a bit more to it), we also have a fashion brand ANTI Denim, a vodka and a magazine A New Type of Imprint — these are a kind of research and development areas which flow back into our work for clients — but for us its all ANTI.
I must say it can be beneficial to be described in the standard agency box, so-to-speak, we have to be accessible to our clint base who are yet to work with us. Actions speak loader than words, so our clients get ANTI without us explaining much. Ultimately we don’t see ourselves as constrained to traditional roles, for instance in art direction, graphic design, or visual communication, strategic planning, etc., it is much broader than that. That said, as with all creative practitioners, we take the craft of our fields and artistic excellency very seriously.
So really we’re a creative agency. We do advertising, we do graphic design, and we do corporate branding, and we do PR, we do TV, we do booze, we do print media, and have a few other things up our sleeve… so watch this space.
TNG: HOW BIG IS THE COMPANY AT THE MOMENT ?
TM: We are 60+ and growing rapidly. In Bergen we are a small very top-heavy team, with two executives and a senior design and strategy team. Oslo has a bigger office with the wider interest (TV, PR, Magazine, Fashion, etc.), nonetheless we’re integrated. Being in Bergen and Oslo is the perfect combination, the old Viking capital facing Westward and the modern Nordic capital toward the East.
TNG: IN WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU PUBLISH THE MAGAZINE ?
TM: It’s in English.
TNG: DO YOU SELL IT ONLY IN NORWAY ?
TM: We sell in stores across Scandinavia and the UK, with subscribers from Japan to the US.
Amazingly we’re only just publishing the second edition, typical to ANTI its all happening very fast. A New Type of Imprint has a great story behind it. in February 2014 we had a new intern, Norway’s top fashion blogger. She didn’t feel at home as an Art Director but instead of leaving she booked a meeting our CEO and proposed the concept of the magazine, he liked it, believed in her and the rest is history. At ANTI we live for serendipity.
TNG: TO GO BACK TO YOU, YOU WORK IN THE STRATEGY DEPARTMENT, IS THAT CORRECT ?
TM: Yes, that’s right, except its not a department (with a smile), I’m a director of strategy, you’ll find me next to the creative director, senior designers and perhaps an intern.
TNG: DO YOU WORK WITH PEOPLE IN THE OFFICE IN OSLO ?
TM: Absolutely, we’re seamlessly integrated.
TNG: I WANTED TO COME BACK A BIT ABOUT THE BERGEN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL PROJECT THAT PUT ON THE MAP. DID YOU HAVE THE CHANCE TO WORK ON THIS ONE ?
TM: Yes. But not at the start of it, I joined ANTI six months ago. However, it is a continuous project. So we’re working on it now.
TNG: SO WHAT WAS THE BRIEF EXACTLY OF THE REBRANDING OF THE IDENTITY OF THE PROJECT ?
TM: It was a holistic brief; a total new identity for the festival. The context in which the festival is working in is very interesting. The city’s international festival is something that is very important for multiple societal reasons. Its a soft power for the city of Bergen, as any sort art and cultural event of this size is. What has been a really stimulating challenge for us is the particular subject of the classic genre to new and young audiences. It is about engaging a wider community of people into the festival, making it more relevant, making it contemporary, while enhancing existing relationships.
They are fantastic clients, because they are really open to our vision, giving us creative freedom and that is something that we naturally try to attain with all of our clients, try to push their ambition. They came to us with a good ambition level from the get go and a great culture in their own organisation for being creative. So that was a super mix, supporting good client-agency discourse in breaking new ground together.
TNG: SO, CURRENTLY AS YOU ARE WORKING WITH THEM, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO LAUNCH MORE PROJECTS WITH THEM ?
TM: Absolutely, it is an ongoing relationship, year on year.
And going back to the original objective, this is about engaging people and making something accessible which is normally only accessible to an audience highly educated in that particular genre. So, we take into account multiple target groups, all are quite different in demographics. Therefore the identity, strategically, is quite complex. Well, the back-end of this identity is quite complex. The festival is committed to leading the pack on this so its important to keep it up, success lies only in time and space so while we may have cleaned up with the Cannes Lions Grand Prix, Red Dot Grand Prix, ADC Gold, etc. that was last year. You cant rest on your laurels.
TNG: I WAS GOING TO ASK YOU ‘WHAT HAS CHANGED IN THE AGENCY SINCE THE AWARDS ?” BUT BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T THERE, I WOULD SAY THAT YOU ARE THE CHANGE FOR ANTI SINCE THE AWARDS, BECAUSE YOU CAME, RIGHT ?
TM: Well, yeah. And many more. I am British, I moved from London to Bergen. And we also have Eric our creative director in Bergen who’s from Washington. Eric was working at ANTI at the beginning of the Festival project.
We are certainly more international than a couple of years ago, we’re now known internationally. This creates a luxury problem, with local clients knocking on the door. So the day-to-day has been a challenge in allowing us to be proactive with going out to international new biz. Most of our international clients are coming to us, which is not a bad thing. That said, my role at ANTI is to pick up on this and our growth is allowing more focus on the international business.
TNG: IN TERMS OF PROPORTION, DO YOU MOSTLY LOCAL OR INTERNATIONAL WORK ?
TM: Most of our work is Nordic-based, with a growing client base in Europe and the Americas. We are quite interested in the Asian market. There’s a strong connection with East Asia. The atheistic culture of Japan, for example, has comparison with Norway. There is a certain sensibility which is appreciated in both the countries. We offer our international clients a space to breath, an uncluttered perceptive, agencies in London, New York, Paris and Tokyo for example, can’t attain this in their red-tooth-and-claw markets.
TNG: YOU JUST NEED TO ADD SOME CALLIGRAPHY TO YOUR WORK AND IT CAN BE JAPANESE.
TM: Exactly; intact you should check out our Grillography campaign for Remi, one of Norway’s leading supermarkets… although not too sure if its the side of Norway that fits with Japan.
TNG: I WAS CURIOUS TO KNOW IF THE STRATEGY IN THE UK IS DIFFERENT FROM THE WAY YOU DO IT IN NORWAY ?
TM: Yes, absolutely. First, of all, there’s a different setup in organisational culture, and this is across the whole of the society not just the agency world; its quite Nordic. In general, things are working in a much flatter system; so hierarchy isn’t quite the same.
What this means at ANTI is the strategists and the creatives are working as an integrated unit. So in the scenario of a new project, when the client comes in, they don’t meet an account manager and a planner, they meet a holistic service team. So, the briefing process is integrated and the prototyping stage is rapid. We may have different specialities, but our point of focus is the same. Ultimately its about elevating the ambition level of the client, it is about engaging them in really profound thinking; who they are, what they are, and why people should care about them. And then, instead of working in a linear fashion, from one stage to the next, the initial strategic phase is highly visual, focusing on what the business objectives are, directly translated into design goals. These are two very important points for us: business objectives and design goals. And so by having the design strategists and the creative leads at the same time, in this sort of forum, means that we can build strong relationships (heighten the ambition level) and appreciate the dynamics of the project very quickly.
That’s something that wouldn’t be so normal in the UK with an agency of our size. Personally speaking this is a much more pleasurable experience.
TNG: WHERE YOU WORKING IN LONDON BEFORE YOU JOINED ANTI ?
TM: Yeah, I was. I was a founding partner of creativity and psychology consultancy The Curiosity Bureau, based in London and Manchester. I was also a design management academic running an undergrad programme and a MA in Creative Leadership.
TNG: AND WHAT MADE YOU TAKE THIS BIG LEAP AND MOVE TO BERGEN ?
TM: I moved for love, my partner is Norwegian, its quite cliché, London isn’t as cool when you have a child. It was nonetheless a big decision to make, she’s a photographer, in London working for the fashion industry, thus Bergen isn’t the first place a couple like us would move to.
But to be perfectly honest with you, while my move wasn’t career oriented it has been the best professional move I could’ve made. I’m exceptionally happy to have landed in ANTI, its definitely one of the most creative agencies in the world, in Norway you’re not supposed to boast but the awards and the rankings say so, so I think I’m allowed.
TNG: I JUST WANT TO FINISH BY TALKING ABOUT THE NORWAY LANDSCAPE. BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNEW ABOUT ANTI SIX MONTHS AGO, BEOFRE THE LIONS. BUT I KNEW ABOUT AGENCIES LIKE SMFB AND TRY/APT. WOULD YOU SAY THAT THESE ARE YOUR MAIN COMPETITORS ?
TM: Not really. We have an interesting take on this, I hope not unique. To jump back a bit, just to give a bit of context about ANTI, our approach and philosophy, what it means to work at ANTI and how we think, is really based upon systems. This can be seen in the way the teams are integrated. We think and work systemically — we see things as a system and we look for pressure points. The identities that we generate are visual identity systems, which are more adaptable and much more coherent and sophisticated across a landscape of multiple and even not yet known media platforms. So, being that we think in systems and we play with systems, we think about what could be traditionally known as our competitors, in the same way, even the competitors of our clients — the nature of competition in general.
Our approach and the results we generate has forged a very strong value proposition, different from our ‘competitors’. So we are comfortable in our perspective, however we take our responsibility in the industry very seriously when it comes to educating, for want of a better way of putting it, both our clients and public bodies in how to commission creative agencies in a much more intelligent way — in a more sophisticated, effective and efficient way. We work with our industry partners, to develop clients, to make the overall economy more creative and more stimulating, to make customer experiences better.
In the past, we have worked collaboratively with other agencies. For example, for DNB, the largest financial group in Norway, and one of the Nordic’s largest financial institutions, that was a joint project with Snøhetta, the architectural practice. This year, the two of us, we were placed by Norwegian ranking as the two most creative agencies in the country. Sparring partners are important but they don’t define us, we do our own thing and share what we know. Interestingly, and I think very importantly, to the Ancient Greeks the term ‘to compete’ was to ‘train together’, so that’s what we think of it as.
Tom Morgan
Associate Strategic Director
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