Working Together
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Often the hardest thing isn't knowing what to do, it's knowing what you actually are, what you're really trying to build, and why anyone should care.
Most work starts with the timber - the plan, the deck, the strategy - and forgets there was ever a forest it was cut from. But the forest is where your life is, and life is what works. It's what people fall for deep in their bones, long before they can say why.
I keep you connected to it, while making sure everything stays coherent and moving as one. You still get the strategy, the positioning, the pitch deck, but it’s more alive because it never lost touch with the forest it came from.
"He got to the heart of us effortlessly, and skilfully wove all that's great about our heritage and prestige into all that's exciting and contemporary." Joe McKenna, CEO, Denmark Street Investments
“In an artificial world he brings the joy back into working with humans.” David Alberts, Co-Founder Bubbler Media, BeenThereDoneThat
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Once you know what you're really about, you need to make it real.
Stories, worlds, formats, experiences, the stuff people can actually see, use, and love. Something with dimension and feeling that people want to belong to, and tell their pals about.
The aim, wherever possible, is new IP.
I’m a writer and ideas person by trade. I can either lead projects end-to-end or slot into your team. I'm a collaborator through and through, because it's all collaboration in the end, and that's the best bit.
"An incredible creator of worlds and stories with a truly original perspective. Working with him is always a joyous adventure - feet on the ground, reaching for the stars." Katherine Templar-Lewis, co-founder, Kinda Studios
"He has the ability to ask the questions that will push, explore and evolve any project and the mindset to find true meaning in everything he does. A true alchemist.” Matt Holyoak, Matt Holyoak Studio, Photographer, Artist
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The most interesting opportunities are usually the unobvious ones. They lie dormant in an audience nobody's really looked at, or in the gap between two worlds that have never been introduced. They rarely show up in the plan, because the plan's only ever a plan, and the world's already moved on.
I go looking for what wants to happen but isn't happening yet. And because I know a lot of people across a lot of worlds, I can often make the connection, not just spot it. The unmade introduction that turns into a bona fide business, the asset that becomes a new revenue stream, the idea that was just waiting for the perfect collaborator to come along.
"Andy thinks strategically about longer term partnerships and opportunities and how to stay nimble and grasp the opportunities coming from the changes in distributors and financiers of content, and the creative possibilities emerging from that.” Ivana MacKinnon, BAFTA winning producer, Beast, How to Have Sex, Slumdog Millionaire
"His network and frames of reference are ridiculously deep and broad. That’s so useful." Marc Picken, Co-founder West Management (Massive Attack, Young Fathers, Soulwax, Richard Russell)
If you want to know why staying close to the forest matters, read my essay Back to Reality.
It takes a village
It takes a village
The most interesting ideas need the most interesting folks in the room.
I have a diverse and influential network of co-pilots and compadres across arts, entertainment, academia, brand, film, science, emerging tech, crypto, investing, democracy, and wellbeing.
Everything I do is a collaboration, sometimes formal, sometimes informal. Always drawing on and respecting collective wisdom. Always crediting where credit is due.
Clients & Talent Worked With
What People Are Saying
“I’m confident companies of any size or stage will find outsized returns from working with Andy. His brain and experience is such a force, applying deep cultural and theoretical nerdery with decades of hands-on experience. Andy will discover and multiply a business’s cultural and brand value and crystalise lasting differentiation in a world full of commodities.”
Fig, Co-Founder, Squid (DeFi Crypto Company)
"Brilliant mind, massive heart and seriously networked is what makes Andy an incredible asset for any project, especially as he combines all of that with a very grounded finger on the pulse of the emergent, and a truly gifted and ethical sense of style and story."
Tom Fortes-Mayer, Therapist, Creator, Freemind Experience
“Andy is an amazing creative and strategic collaborator and has been for years. He’s empathetic and patient with artists and can get the best out of them. He also knows a shit tonne of people who trust and like him across many different fields. That’s so useful. His network and frames of reference are ridiculously deep and broad.”
Marc Picken, Founder, West Management
“Andy is one of the all time great people. An incredible creator of worlds and stories with a truly original perspective. Working with him is always a joyous adventure - feet on the ground, reaching for the stars.”
Katherine Templar-Lewis, Co-founder, Kinda Studios, Uncertainty Experts
“Andy's input has been invaluable in helping position us and our brands in a noisy and challenging market. He got to the heart of us effortlessly, and skilfully wove all that's great about our heritage and prestige into all that's exciting and contemporary. He is a true master of his craft.”
Joe McKenna, CEO, Denmark Street Investments
“Andy is my go to strategic creative partner. He is both interesting and interested. In an artificial world he brings the joy back into working with humans.”
David Alberts, Co-founder, Bubbler, Answers Are Out There, BTDT
“Andy combines intellectual and strategic rigour with creativity to come up with unconventional solutions to business problems, using culture as the delivery mechanism. I love him.”
David Kolbusz, CCO & Partner, Orchard Creative, ex-CCO, Droga5 London
“I love working with Andy. He has a great sense of how film development and production works but he’s interested in the wider context and pushing the envelope. That said there’s also a simplicity to what he can do too - he brims with ideas, he’s got a nose and appetite for good story and writes very well. He’s also brilliant with people, can spot talent and has great taste.”
Amanda Boyle, Writer & Film / TV Director, Chloe, True Horror, Sirens, Skins
“Andy moves through the world with a wonderfully calm and welcoming demeanor, he’s 100% jargon free and more than anything he cares deeply for the work he does and the people he does it for. He has the kind of mind that connects the most un-suspecting references to create entirely new ideas that propel you forward into new spaces you previously would never have imagined. We are already looking forward to our next collaboration. Thank you Andy!”
Ben Gallagher, Co-Founder, The Possible
“Andy is part strategist, part creative, and part executive producer in the TV & film sense of the word, i.e. creative doing. He has a big and beautiful brain, compassion in spades, and he is 100% translator. Through empathy and insight, he has the ability to translate between genders, backgrounds, cultures, hierarchies, disciplines and industries. A rare and hugely necessary skill in today’s world.”
Chaka Sobhani, President & Global CCO TBWA Worldwide
“Analytically constructive contribution to a project coupled with emotionally nurturing contribution to a project. The ability to support in both ways simultaneously is quite rare and extremely useful. Andy is often better at understanding the work of a lateral thinker than they are. Which makes him invaluable in a creative environment.”
Ed Morris, Writer, Director, Photographer, ECD
“Andy thinks strategically about longer term partnerships and opportunities and how to stay nimble and grasp the opportunities coming from the changes in distributors and financiers of content - and the creative possibilities emerging from that as well as zeitgeist trends to be grabbed.”
Ivana MacKinnon, BAFTA winning producer, Beast, How to Have Sex
“A genuinely out of the box thinker.”
Professor Dominic McVey, MBE, Investor, Entrepreneur