Episode 17 – Natalie Graeme

This Way Up

“I was able to do things very differently that year [her year long gardening leave imposed by Sir Martin Sorrell], I spent a lot of time outside of the industry. Purposely, I wasn't trying to look at the industry. I was trying to explore how other people, other creative industries, and the world sees coms. As a result, I came back with renewed vigour as to where it is we can add value and what's exciting about it, but also where we waste a lot of our life. You know, there's so much faffing. And there's quite a lot of complicity between clients and agencies that use each other as a bit of a crutch.”

In this episode, I talk to Natalie Graeme who famously founded the creative studio Uncommon 18 months ago with partners Nils Leonard & Lucy Jameson, one of the UK’s only majority female-founded creative studios.

As per usual with the podcast we go in deep, discussing a variety of subjects and advice from how to avoid burn out to the importance of creating headspace in order to come up with ideas.

We also go through her amazing career journey and how she landed at the advertising agency Grey managing and leading over 550 people, along with the importance of putting a structure in place so you can let your team thrive and avoid micro-managing.

But most importantly, we talk about why it was so important for her to start her own agency. Starting with the famous year-long gardening leave imposed by Sir Martin Sorrel before her and her partners could open up shop. Uncommon is already a successful creative studio that has a different, and some might say unconventional, approach to creating better work.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it!