Episode 7 'Choosing an Agency' Season 2

Episode seven of Choosing an Agency featuring Fleurie Forbes-Martin out now

In the latest episode of Choosing an Agency Alex speaks to Fleurie Forbes-Martin from Stronger Stories (at the time of recording Fleurie was part of the Studio Republic team). 

Fleurie answered questions such as should potential clients speak to existing clients?; is it important how your agency responds to mistakes?; and what are some red flags in an agency? She also shone a light on how an agency can demonstrate its values, the credibility of awards as well as covering some indicators of a good partnership. 

Episode seven, series two transcript

Alex Holliman: Hello, and welcome to choosing an agency. My name is Alex founder of agency climbing trees. And I’m here to talk about how to set the right agency to grow your business. So today I’m joined Fleurie Forbes-Martin at Studio Republic

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Hi, Alex, thank you for having me on.

Alex Holliman: So for people who are just meeting me for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are? And what you guys do, please?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Cool. So who am I? God? That’s a deep question. Well, my role is Business Growth director. And the company I work for is Studio Republic studio Republic is a B Corp certified impact studio. So our skill set is predominantly website development, branding, creative campaign marketing, that sort of thing. But really what we focus on is leveraging those skills to empower causes with the means to directly impact lives to majority of our clients are charities, and sometimes they are kind of sustainability organisations, but everyone we work with has a clear purpose. And that purpose is good.

Alex Holliman: Oh, awesome. And then what’s your background? When did you first start working in agencies?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Right back at the start, actually. So I did my degree at Bournemouth University shout out to bu. And I did it in public relations. And I finished my course and said, fantastic. I know one thing that I don’t want to do that was that. So I learned a lot had a great time at uni, but didn’t want to do PR by the time that was done. And stumbled into a luxury ecommerce agency that was local to Bournemouth called folk, which is actually sadly no more. And that was like my first taste of agency. I didn’t, other than PR agencies, I didn’t know, like an agency existed beyond that. And I Yeah, from there tried a bit of everything actually. So went from luxury commerce to gaming studio created app games for Lego. Then I went to a popular iced coffee drinks brand and that did not work out. That’s a story for another time. Then I went to an advertising agency, a branding agency, I set up my own vegan marketing agency for a little bit in the medium, and then banded with studio republic.

Alex Holliman: Wow. So that’s quite a deep experience of the industry from like, sign up yourself small agency through to large agencies.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, and really learning with each job not only what I liked from companies and teams, but also what mattered to me. And when I left my previous agency to join Sr, was really the first time that I changed job, because it aligned with my values. Whereas before I was just kind of like this might be fun, that might be fun.

Alex Holliman: And then what sort of stuff do you do on a day to day basis.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: So my role is predominantly new business so sales for the agency, but I look after our marketing as well. So the way I position it, from a client facing point of view is helping clients to unravel their challenge their brief, a bit better, a bit more thoroughly. And then I work with everyone in my team to kind of figure out what that first strategy looks like before we’ve had time to get under the skin, which is a bit of a skill set in itself. Because there’s a bit of guesswork in there. There’s a bit of magic in there. But we get to solution that everyone’s happy with before they start the work basically.

Alex Holliman: Wow. So he’s really trying to help the client understand, because sometimes clients ask for something, but they actually need something else.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah. And it can be difficult to convince him of that even with the experience that we have. But we’re trying to get them to the right solution to solve the problem, right. So that’s our job.

Alex Holliman: Perfect. So then as a as a business was the project or piece of work that you guys are most proud of?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: So you had another question that that coupled up with this one, right, which is one and the same for me. So really proud of the work in the 2.6 challenge, because that raised 11 point 2 million for nearly 4000 charity, that’s amazing. But from a personal point of view, the project I’m most proud of, and the pitch in terms of it being very creative was for the National Deaf children’s society. I learned sign language and I was quite young, I originally learnt it at brownies and then brought the alphabet home, gave it to my dad, and he just took out and took off as a hobby went to level three to interpret for theatre shows and stuff. And then I picked it up again when I was at college as an evening class. So I haven’t used it for a long time, but I adore sign language. I just think it’s it’s so expressive and passionate. I just love it. And we have this opportunity to pitch for a website for Deaf young people to connect, reduces sense of isolation, talk about things that affect deaf young people specifically. So that project we won, which is amazing. And actually for the pitch, I got my my old man to give us a introductory video and BSL and I introduced the team and BSL and we got interviewed by their youth advisory board as well. So it was a really, really magical experience and one I’m really proud of.

Alex Holliman: Oh wow, that sounds awesome.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: It’s fun.

Alex Holliman: More thing signings and you always see on like, big conferences, there’ll be someone trying to keep up, keep up with some of the movements just absolutely fantastic.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, the more the more expressive speaker, the more expressive the sign language.

Alex Holliman: So my mom was wore hearing aid, and she was deaf a lot of life. And I know she really felt and like that people would think she was like simple or something as a result of wearing a hearing aid, if that makes sense, because there’s quite a lot of negative preconceptions that people can have. My mom was a really sharp cookie, and could tell you just about anything about anything, and frequently did

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: For the better, only for the betterment of you Alex.

Alex Holliman: So, the purpose of the podcast where we got today is about helping clients select the right agents was for them, and to get the most out of those that are working relationships. So what are the factors that you’ve seen included in the best brief?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Oh good one. I don’t actually think there’s one format. But I suppose the simplest answer is, the more information the better. Because the less that we are provided, the more assumptions we have to make. And it can be frustrating on both sides of the fence where we’re filling in the blanks, and we don’t fill them in quite the right way. So from my point of view, I want to know everything I can about the process, who’s in the room, who we’re talking to, who the decision makers are not just the person I’m speaking to day to day, that’s really, really important, as well. So understand where everyone’s priorities are. And we take an audience lead approach to everything we do. So the more understanding that a client can give us about their audience, not just demographics, and that kind of top level stuff, but actually, what their motivations are, what their challenges are, what the opportunities are to inspire and engage them that shapes everything that we do. And that’s something that we focus on a lot in our work. So the more of that we get up front, the better.

Alex Holliman: So really, it’s just about being as comprehensive as possible at the initial stage.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, I think so. I don’t want a dissertation essay. But, you know, there are some fundamentals that we need. And the more insight we can get on an organisation, its goals, its audiences, its competitors, you know, the usual stuff, the better because we get a better understanding of where we’re starting from.

Alex Holliman: And then, as an agency, do you guys respond to pitches and RFPs?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yes, we do.

Alex Holliman: And in terms of giving advice to clients about pitches, because there is quite a lot of debate about how that should be managed. And that kind of thing. What advice would you suggest?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Oh, another good question. So a real again, coming back to my previous point, a real struggle is when a client comes to us with a really desperate need, but they’re so busy doing their day jobs that they can’t really give the process enough time. You know, that comes back to the previous point about not understanding what each individual’s priorities are for that project, say it’s a website, you’ll have different teams that will need different things from it. And we need to get a really comprehensive view of what that is, before we can come up with a solution it works for them and loses. So it’s really important that we have enough time from the client stakeholders, I think it’s a really good idea to make sure you have at least two phases of that process, one being proposal, whether it’s before or after meeting, and one being a pitch. But we prefer not to use a pitch to just talk about clients. What we’ve tried to do in the past is make that almost like a collaborative, introductory type scoping session where we can use it to ask the kinds of questions that you can’t in a pitch because you have to seem like you know, all the answers, your clients get more from it, we get more from it, the proposal at the side is better quality, the kickoff point is moved further forward. So collaborative time with clients. And I guess just being open minded to ideas,

Alex Holliman: and then how do you feel with regards to number of agencies of clients should select and then things like getting feedback after the whole process? Positive or negative?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, really important. So really, we, we try not to pitch for anything, if there’s more than three agencies in the room, we have every, every agency that even makes eye roll, I’m sure still does, we don’t really have a choice, unfortunately. But it kind of says something about a client, it kind of tells us that you don’t have really any idea what you’re looking for, or you haven’t even, you haven’t even know where to start necessarily. We would love it if you have a smaller set you’ve taken the time to get to know the agencies you’ve put on that initial list, and you kind of know what to expect from us. That’s a good sign that you know what you’re looking for. And so we don’t have to explain the kind of basics and what was the second point Alex the feedback. Feedback is so I mean, for me personally in my role, it’s like it’s everything is so so important. So when we lose when we lose pitches, which happens, clients that make the time to come on have like, you know, 20-30 minute call with us after and speak as honestly as possible about where we fell down the things we didn’t cover where they didn’t have confidence in us, it immediately changes the way we go into the next meeting the way we speak to the next client. And I think it’s fair for clients to do that, because we’ve we’ve obviously put in so much time upfront.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely. And I think is that kind of, is almost linked to the input that you get at the beginning in terms of how comprehensive that brief is, if you have access to a client, and you can establish that collaborative approach, going into a bid situation, you can hopefully then elicit some valuable information on the way out of it, because there is nothing worse than pitching. And just telling you them winning or being ghosted, and just getting nothing from the whole process.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: That’s becoming less and less frequent. I’ll be honest, we’ve found anyway, clients are giving us the time and are being honest, which is good. But there’s, there’s an underlying theme here, which I just want to make a point from a client’s point of view. And that’s that, even though we’re the ones trying to win the work, and we’re the ones trying to get the budget, the way you write your brief, the way you manage a competitive process, what you choose to do in the pitch meeting as a client, you’re telling us so much about you before we’ve before we started working, and it is a two way street. So as much as we’re trying to, you know, show up and present, give great ideas and impress you the client. We’re also kind of examining you to see how you respond, will you make time? How good are you at your comms? Because that indicates to us what kind of relationship we’re going to have with you. So I think it’s important for clients to bear that in mind.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely, because there are a lot of client personas that you could identify in terms of how the relationship will pan out. And how a client conducts themselves in that pitch situation will underpin probably a lot of how they’re going to work on the other side.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Exactly, exactly.

Alex Holliman: So you touched me just briefly, how important is getting the budget from a client?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Extremely important because I get the chicken and egg thing with clients. But ultimately, we have the ability to flex up and down as an agency. And depending on the service offering and your need, we can give you a Ford Fiesta or we can give you a Ferrari. And we can give you the time and expertise to do that. There are many ways to skin a cat. And if we don’t have at least an indication of affordability, ie a budget from x to y, we have no idea where to position ourselves. If we went in the Ferrari and all the time, clients would say Well, no, we can’t afford that. Because they do have lower expectations. So it’s really important that was communicated to us as early as possible.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely. And then I guess that then sort of folds into part of the qualification process that you go through? How is that how important is that for you, as a as a new business person?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Everything is where we succeed or fail as a business. Because we are blessed to have lots of opportunities come through the door. You know, the one thing I guess that separates us from a lot of agencies is the impact piece, we can see immediately if a business is actually out to do good, or if they’re distressed. So, you know, cigarettes, for example. And so that’s really easy to say, No, we’re not the partner for you. But there are a number of points that we look at an agency and say is the relationship right? Do they understand what they need? How do they respond? Budget, the timing? Are they realistic in their expectations? These again, are all indicators of whether or not we actually think we’re going to make a good partnership or not. So yeah, everything gets codified in whether clients know or not.

Alex Holliman: So when a client is looking at an agency, what are the signs that that agency is going to be a good fit?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: I think there are a few components to this. But it’s got to be down to our kind of own visual comms, right? Where are we as an agency investing time to position ourselves is our blog content, talking about things that matter and are relevant to you as a client is our website, you know, full of case studies and language that resonates with you as an organization? And that’s obviously built on a foundation of purpose and ethics and then values and things like that. But I guess if I was hiring an agency completely cold now, I’d be looking looking around the website, looking at their social channels, looking at their blog content to figure out if they’re spending time thinking about the things that matter to me as a client. That’s a good indicator that you’re going to know where my problems are and how you going to help me.

Alex Holliman: And then how, in the sort of early stages of speaking to an agency, how important is it to get a feel for the team to say whether the team and the people behind the scenes are aligned with the public sort of face of the business?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, I mean, so important. One of the limitations I mean, so many limitations to zoom in terms of pitching is that you can’t pick up a body language in the room right but what is in has allowed us to do is bringing every single member of a client’s new project team to say hello, because we wouldn’t normally be able to ship 10 people up to wherever Oxfordshire to go and say hi, but we can do it on Zoom. So we have a core team, I obviously facilitate new business opportunities. And then we have core lead team team members that are in the pitch room and then need to project. But yeah, we bring on everyone at the beginning to say hello. So they can kind of put faces to names from the very start. And you know, people buy from people, everyone knows that. And when you can see into the whites of the eyes, your people, the people that you’re working with, you can get a good feel for what they’re gonna be like.

Alex Holliman: And you’re right about limitations to zoom, the oddest pitch that I had to do during lockdown was to three separate people in separate offices. And they said, we’ve got really bad signal where we are. So we’re going to turn our cameras off. And then you’re getting feedback. So turn the sound off. So we were then sort of like pitching in. It was quite funny. It was diabolical. Absolutely diabolical. But we did we delivered that presentation.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Did you win it?

Alex Holliman: No. I had to be honest with someone at that time, then went off and took some of the ideas we came up with and did it themselves.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Double whammy. But then you know that is a that’s a sign that it’s a sign. It was a sign.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d be able to say just straight up no to that, because you’ve done so much pitch prep. But I don’t know how would have responded to that.

Alex Holliman: It was something like six to eight days of man time we’d put into the getting that like global campaign, loads of different territories, keyword research numbers coming out of our ears It was such as life. So how do you feel when do you ever get clients or potential new clients want to speak to existing clients?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a client that we won recently, who, based on everything we’ve just discussed, was like, we can tell immediately, they were so so lovely, and are continuing to be very lovely. They asked to speak to two or three of our clients at the very last stage. So we’ve done proposal had a great meeting with them fantastic chemistry. And then after that asked to speak some clients. It’s not always essential. But I guess, you know, there shouldn’t be anything to hide for an agency point of view. And we always have clients that are willing to provide an honest opinion. And actually, you know, being brutally honest, there was feedback from the clients to the potential client that was not 100% glowing, but kind of like, oh, this is something that we’ve been working on with them, which was honest. And actually, that sparks a fantastic secondary conversation with that prospective client, about ways of working and what they would really like. And I think it gave us an opportunity to show how authentic we were, and be very honest, and they loved it, and, they wanted to work with us. So it’s not just about getting glowing reviews. But are you willing to put your cards on the table? Basically.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely. Sometimes in that whole process, there’s no agency in the land that runs optimally 100% of the time, of course, and sometimes when, as an agency, you falter or there can be a service delivery problem. It’s then how you respond to that I, when I first started the business, I said, really stressed out with mistakes. And I was just like, Oh, we’re going to like clients, it’s gonna walk in with a big gun and just fire a straightaway. But what we actually realised was very often it’s how we respond to those mistakes, and those issues and the values and the principles we bring to a problem and how we try and resolve them that actually earns more trust. And so in a really quite weird way, slight mistakes, the best possible thing because it gives us an opportunity to actually show who we are as people and respond to that problem.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Absolutely. And of course, you will realise now we’re not just talking about business. This is philosophy for life.

Alex Holliman: Muscle deep.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: It is

Alex Holliman: So, where do you where do you sit with agency awards?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Oh, I love an agency award me. Do I think that vital? I’m not sure. I’m not sure if I think they’re vital. If I was starting an agency again, I think maybe I would look to get one under my belt. Because I think it’d be it’s important credibility, maybe if you’re newer, but rather than it being from a client perspective, because I never, I’ve never ever in the history of doing this job in any agency had a client asked me for awards, what what our award record is never. But you know, it builds trust. It rewards the team. It kind of shows the team, what they’re capable of. I think that’s probably more important and it gives you something else to talk about from a marketing point of view. So as long as you don’t look at it as a new business conversion tool and more of a beneficial for all the other ways tool, then I think bear It’s worthwhile, what do you think?

Alex Holliman: Well because there’s quite a lot of disparate agency sectors. So we don’t do some of the sizeable projects that you would as Studio Republic would do, in our industry, I get emails every now and then saying well done differently would send a 750 pounds and then be like a gold winner of such and such an award in that class. And so I’ve always been ambivalent, and there are so many award winning agencies doing what we do is almost like the differentiation has gone. I’ve also always been ambivalent about. And I’ve always thought awards. This is nonsense. But I think that’s probably wrong and we’ve never entered an award, and so therefore, never won one. So we’re not an award winning agency. But I think that’s probably the wrong thing to have done. And so I think there’s two things and one you touched on was that if you’ve got two businesses that are exactly the same one, enters awards, wins awards, and the other one doesn’t, the one that wins awards and enters awards, will outperform the other agency, because I think there’s something psychologically that happens to an agency. But that has to be for an award that has real meaning and value, rather than just one, you can buy it for 750 quid,

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, agreed. And actually, going back on what I’ve just said, like Studio Republic history is 18 years old now. And you know, they’ve done a few awards before I joined three years ago, like a local sort of local, more locally oriented. After we launched the super six challenge campaign, which was absolutely staggering in terms of its results, we kind of had something on our lap to say that, it’d be silly for us not to try and get some more to this, because it was such a big deal. We want the hype to kind of continue and be able to show from an industry perspective that it was as good as we said, and we won, we won nearly everything we entered. So we won campaign of the year in the third sector awards, which is obviously a speciality for charity, we won campaign of the year in sport industry, which is obviously going into the sports sector, and we love working with sport for development brand. So that was great. And we won a few drum awards and things like that. So it was a fantastic year for work and a fantastic year to prove that we kind of work ourselves. So I don’t regret doing any of that. But I think from an agency perspective, it’s just as and when you think the work is there, rather than just going for them all the time.

Alex Holliman: Okay, that was a phenomenally important moment in the pandemic, wasn’t it because the 2.6 award was about

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: The 2.6 challenge was really, really fundamental kind of point in time, right at the peak of pandemic, we just found out that all the major events have been cancelled, the London Marathon have been cancelled. So over the weekend at the London Marathon, we basically created the two points challenge with London Marathon greatness around a human race, sport and also sports brands, as a virtual stand in for what would have been the London Marathon. So it was charity neutral, any charity in the UK to get involved. Anyone could get involved and basically do a challenge to the power of 26 or 2.6. So really kind of versatile in terms of creativity as well. And yeah, 4000 charities supported 11 point 2 million raised and lots of awards won. Cheers.

Alex Holliman: Awesome. So when a client’s looking for agencies, how important are the agencies values? And how can an agency sort of demonstrate those values?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Great question. And an interesting one. And this interesting one, is because we as a team are extremely purpose driven, we spent a lot of time cementing that we have a very clear proposition, a very clear mission. But actually, the values within that it’s something we haven’t looked at for a while, which is kind of like a unusual way of doing things. But you know, people understand the sentiment, you can’t find a piece of communications we’ve put out there that doesn’t represent our mission to help charities to change the world to create positive impacts. And I guess, you know, I would say it’s deeply important, but that’s because I’m in a hyper purpose driven agency and hyper driven, purpose driven space. For a lot of agencies, it is just a few words that they slap on the wall in the office. And there’s not much more than that. But I think it depends on the client, how important you know, what your what are your values, as the client in terms of the way people work the way people think the attitudes they have. And there’s no reason why you can’t ask agencies to present that kind of information in their proposals or in their pitches. I would love more clients that asked us why why our purposes or purpose and why it matters to us because, you know, we love talking about it. We think we’re, you know, focused on a really important mission. And we want clients that recognise and respect that as well.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely. I think you’re right. I think that there are those once we had a local agency who copied and pasted the values from our website, which we said bled through to the business and then put them on their own website. And so that was a really interesting thing to discover. And they’re our values are, it’s like agency awards. There’s something that anyone can wear. But I think when you get under the skin of them and start exploring what the origins of them are, and hearing about how people communicate and the passion that they have about them, I think that’s where they’ll sort of, really sing, I guess.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, totally agree.

Alex Holliman: So are there any red flags that clients should look out for when speaking to an agency?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Oh, well, I pride myself on punctuality, we’ve really covered the kind of way that we analyse how clients speak to us. But I suppose the way that agencies speak to clients is really crucial. Is the agency rep, coming back to you? Are they provide enough time for you, when you have conversations with you? Are they just talking about numbers and process? Or are they actually trying to get under the skin of the problem and understand more about your business through that discovery process? I guess, a great agency is one that has the confidence to stand up to you and challenge you. Even though a lot of clients don’t always like that, rather than just having a yes, yes, man or woman that will say, yeah, we can do that. This is how much it costs off you go. So, you know, above all, as I said, an agency that’s willing to put in the time to to understand you and your business, your audiences and your problem, and demonstrate that throughout the process.

Alex Holliman: Because it is that discovery phase of really understanding what’s the history of the client, what the initial plans are, what the initial perspective is, and then presenting back something meaningful, that’s really, really important. Rather than just be and not, as you say, being able to push back on certain points and always provoke soul searching so that you end up with a better endpoint.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, absolutely, put it in the same category as a buying your first house is so weird to me, I’m sort of setting we just moved to Brighton setting a new home, it’s lovely. But it’s weird to think that we spent less than, I don’t know, 20 minutes looking around this house before we forked out all the money we earn in the world to buy it. And it’s a little bit like that with agency and client relationships, you you don’t have that much time to really suss out the people that you’re going to be working with for the next six months, 12 months, two years, five years. So both sides need to take probably a bit more time to get to know one another and really get a feel for what their values are, what their attitude is. And if they if they care if they give a damn about what you’re doing. And if they can help you.

Alex Holliman: Absolutely. What agencies do you really admire?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: we’re very close to another impact led charity agency called manifesto, who are we kind of consider a bigger sister, they’ve they’ve been around the block a few more times, they’re a hell of a lot bigger than we are. But their heart is in the right place and their values in the right place. And they’ve got some fantastic real superstars in that team. I respect them, primarily because they look out for us when they don’t have to. And that’s a fantastic relationship, we’ve had a really good partnership with them. Actually, that that’s kind of a bit of a theme. Really, I’m sure it’s quite right for me to shout out climbing trees at this point, because prior to last year, we obviously didn’t know each other at all. And then fate put us in each other’s paths via lunch, because I think it was an out of nowhere, some genuine partnerships and relationships are formed. And suddenly, you’ve got someone else that’s egging you on and looking after you, you know, there to chat about good days and bad days and help one another out and kind of idea around stuff. And we’ve had a few of those sort of brand new partners that have come out of nowhere and suddenly quite key to our day to day life.

Alex Holliman: And I think for me, the interesting things speaking to yourself and other people in the studio public team is, I think in the initial phase of climbing trees, we were quite focused on making payroll, keeping the lights on. And then we’ve been through this sort of soul searching period over the last almost couple of years now, where we have retrofitted a lot of systems and processes just to make sure that simple things like that we’re doing like banking energy we’re using all of those kinds of things is foundationally correct. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from speaking to you in the guys at Studio Republic because you are so ethically sound.

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, I’ll take that. Not easy.

Alex Holliman: and it really isn’t. And sometimes to make a decision to do that you could carry on with almost business as usual and probably move faster through trying to do something different and conduct yourself in a better way is there’s a certain strength that comes from moving forward from that, I think,

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Yeah, absolutely. We often bounce around this question of like, if we were vegan chocolate company, and times got tough, would we start Selling big chocolate and start selling chocolate with cow’s milk in? No, because that’s not who we are that so you know we have a mission that’s very clear, this is what we do. And it’s not easy to say no to things because sometimes the work can be exciting or maybe the client is fun. But if it doesn’t contribute to our mission, the direction we’re going and doesn’t fit, so we have to be strict on that.

Alex Holliman: Excellent. This has been great. Where can people find out more about you guys online?

Fleurie Forbes-Martin: Head straight to our website, www.StudioRepublic.com. And I would definitely encourage everyone to sign up to our brand new marketing newsletter, which our fantastic new marketing manager came in and instilled relatively recently. It’s called take for gift for, we basically give you some fantastic, good positive news from the world for stories to give you a bit of a heartwarming moment. And then we offer the opportunity to give four pounds to a chosen charity of the month for an extra cherry on top a bit of purpose. And we’re obviously on all the main social media channels as well.

Alex Holliman: Perfect. Thanks for joining me today.

You can listen to this one now on www.alexholliman.com or your usual streaming platform.