A week in my life: Prolific North talks to Mark Easby of Better

Friday

“This year we’ve had a strong focus on growth and maturity. The agency is 10 years old this year but, in some respects, we still feel like a start-up. As an agency with its HQ in the North East, we joined the DBA to feel connected to the UK design community and help drive our design effectiveness agenda. I joined the mentoring scheme in January 2018 and today is my last session on what’s been an amazing programme.

I’ve been super lucky to have had Debbie Longbottom (Group Finance Director at Elmwood) as my mentor for 12 months. It’s really helped to share our growth challenges and shape some major changes we’ve made in the business. This session is all about reviewing the progress to date and planning the next steps of the journey as we look at our strategy for the next three years.

It’s also about celebrating what we’ve achieved so far. So often in a small growing agency, it’s easy to beat yourself up about the day to day challenges and any derailments of the ‘grand plan’. Sessions like this really help to give some context and reinforce that we’re doing alright – it also gives us that timely kick to crack on and keep driving forward.

To finish the day, I’m with the client services team dialling into a board meeting to present a client’s new brand. It’s the big reveal of an idea we’ve been working on for months and the positive reaction is an amazing end to the week. The client loves the concept and can see how the last few months of the BetterBrandBuilder™ process has led to the final result. Next steps are to plan roll-out.

With a weekend full of family time, an exhilarating ‘Boro performance (always the optimist) and our regular poker game in the local to look forward to, the world looks pretty good to me.”