Manchester, Jun 10th, 2021

Dept is an international digital agency with over 2.000 experienced thinkers and makers in 13 countries across Europe and the Americas.

The agency unites creativity, technology, and data, helping clients to reinvent and accelerate their digital reality by creating experiences that people want and businesses need.

Brian Robinson is the United Kingdom Managing Director at Dept. In an interview with TIA, Robinson described his career path so far and the main elements that make Dept a successful agency.

He went through some of the recent projects he is most proud of and reflected on the challenges for the digital and tech industry in Manchester, where he’s based.

To kick things off, what’s one must-do experience in Manchester in your opinion?

I moved to the North of England from Birmingham in 2010, initially to Stockport, and now live in the middle of the countryside in Glossop. It was definitely the best decision I have made and I’ve seen Manchester grow in confidence as a city over that period. I always recommend people spend time in the various areas of the city to fully understand the energy and diversity it has to offer.

To experience the range of hospitality for a perfect night out, I’d suggest visiting the Northern Quarter to enjoy great craft ales, moving to Spinningfields for more refined dining and cocktails, and hitting Canal Street for a party atmosphere.

Tell us about your personal journey, how did you find yourself being the Managing Director at Dept UK?

I always say that my journey was one of opportunity and aptitude. I decided not to go into further education, and entered full-time employment from the age of 16 starting in the hospitality industry. I moved into a call centre role at an events agency, where I supported data tasks in the CRM team and worked my way up from there.

I progressed my career through some of the Midlands’ biggest agencies before moving to Building Blocks in Manchester (which subsequently joined Dept in 2016), where I rose to Client Service Director working across our US and UK offices.

After a short stint working at an agile software consultancy, I returned to Dept in 2016 and have since focussed on growing our local presence and diversifying our services.

What attributes do you want people to associate Dept with, and how do you align business decisions with your values every day?

Our culture is key to our success and something we happily shout about. Dept’s ethos of being ‘big enough to cope, small enough to care’ is really true. United by a passion for digital, we’re a collection of specialist agencies that have come together to form a strong, international brand.

With close to 2000 Depsters worldwide, we have the size and scale to work with any brand in the world, with the agility, speed and personal relationships of a local, boutique agency. We approach all interactions with our team and clients in an open, honest and fair way, which has led to successful long-term partnerships.

Smart teams drive agency growth. What’s your approach to hiring?

Smart teams drive agency growth, but a misaligned outlook and attitude can have the potential to destroy it. As such, cultural fit is just as important as skill.

In hiring, we focus on people and ability, not degrees and credentials. This has led us to make some amazing hires in roles where candidates may have needed more support than their counterparts, but through the opportunity, they’ve gone on to be superstars, progressing through the ranks, and continuing to grow with Dept over the years.

How can leadership create and then cultivate an inclusive workplace?

This really comes down to leading by example. As a leadership team, we are pretty diverse ourselves and our perspective on diversity is, in turn, reflected by the team. We have cultivated an environment where everyone can be themselves. Individuality is not just tolerated, but is celebrated. We are proud of the diversity in Dept, but also know we need to do a lot better.

Our Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team helps us to define key goals and strategies that are linked to local initiatives. For example, in Manchester we have launched an internship programme aimed at bringing in people from more diverse backgrounds, breaking down the barriers to entry into the digital industry.

We train our team on unconscious bias and run a faceless recruitment process so that bias cannot slip into the process. We are also proud to be supporting Pride, working with Gaydio Radio to amplify voices from our LGBTQ+ community.

Of all the recent projects your agency has produced, which one are you most proud of?

This is like asking me to pick which is my favourite child! I am proud of everything that has been delivered recently, but if I had to select a couple of projects to praise, I would give accolades to the teams who worked with the following clients:

• St. James’s Place Wealth Management: We delivered a headless microservice-based platform for the SJP Partners network that has scaled to over 3000 websites and counting. The change this has delivered for SJP is incredible, and together we won the UK Dev Award for the quality of this project.

• Triumph Motorcycles: We’ve been working continually with the team from Triumph on a digital transformation roadmap since 2016. In that time we have engaged in a journey that has moved them to a beautiful, globally scaled solution; significantly impacting the digital customer experience and delivering business value. This partnership has taken our services from initially delivering a Sitecore solution through to designing commerce and VR. We also won a Sitecore Ultimate Experience Award for our work.

• Coffee4Craig: Dept partnered with a local homeless charity, Coffee4Craig, as a pro bono project, donating the agency’s time, skills and expertise to support the charity with a complete brand refresh and new website. Our team elevated the charity’s efforts in the community with an engaging brand presence, adding digital storytelling components and simplifying the path to donating or signing up to volunteer.

We are living through the most important pandemic in recent world history. How has digital changed marketing product launches?

It has been quite a year! Working in the digital industry, we’re fortunate that businesses and organisations have turned to technology to reinvent offline experiences into online ones. We launched the Eurovision Virtual Village last month, bringing millions of people from all over the world together to celebrate the song contest. Dept also launched a digital showroom for GANNI and shaped a live shopping proposition.

Looking to the future, I expect physical product launches to return in a hybrid and experiential format. There will be a bigger focus on utilising digital channels to provide richer and longer term relationships with consumers.

With shopper behaviour changing, what impact do you believe machine learning and big data will have on the world of creative production?

I think we can expect to see an explosion in the creation of machine learning-based assets to power hyper-personalisation at scale. The old adage of ‘right message, right time’ was always thwarted by not enough time, budget or manpower to create the vast amounts of variants needed. Our Marketing Technology team is ahead of the curve in this remit with the innovation we’re outputting for clients such as Spotify and TikTok.

What do you think is currently the biggest issue facing the digital and tech industry in Manchester?

A talent shortage is the biggest issue facing Manchester’s digital and tech sector. Our industry is exploding and good people are hard to find due to challenges with filling skills gaps, hiring and retention.

We are also a young industry (no one’s Dad was working on TikTok ads in the 70s), so there are still massive shortages in certain skill sets. To try and overcome this we are focusing on growing our offshore teams and looking at how we can focus efforts on internal training and development. We have numerous routes to bring people into the business who are willing to learn.

In this industry or in life, have you had any particularly influential mentors?

I have been lucky to work alongside some very talented leaders in my life and I have learned something from all of them, but I’d have to say that my team at Dept has had the biggest influence on me. They’re the reason I enjoy going to work every day; they challenge and inspire me to become better in my role.

If you could travel back in time and give yourself one piece of career advice, what would it be?

The worst career advice I was ever given was: “maybe you should stop being so you; it’s not going down well,” (I completely ignored this).
So my advice is to do the total opposite: be you, be loud and proud and be the best you can be. You will find a place where your personality and your skills are appreciated.

Can you name a fun fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

I have two metal plates in my arm following a spiral displaced fracture caused by an arm wrestling incident in the office. As far as I am concerned, I won… but that is still a point of contention.

Thanks Brian!

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