Leigh George President of Freedom Marketing on creating an un-agency and new ways to look at a branding

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Rudy:               Hey, this is Rudy Fernandez from Creative Outhouse. On this episode I talked with Leigh George, the founder of Freedom marketing, a strategic branding firm in Washington DC. Leigh and I talked about what's not working with existing agency models and we talked about design thinking and evolving a brand and how brands need to fulfill a customer's mission and not the other way around. It's a great conversation about branding and really knowing your customers. Check it out. Welcome to Marketing Upheaval.

Earcon:             You're listening to Marketing Upheaval from Creative Outhouse.

Rudy:               Hey, thanks for listening to Marketing Upheaval. My guest is Leigh George, the founder of Freedom marketing, the un-agency. I first heard Leigh speak at a digital summit and couldn't take notes fast enough. She has some keen insight on branding and content, so thanks for joining me, Leigh. I really am excited about this podcast.

Leigh:               Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Rudy:               You've had leadership roles in strategy at Ogilvy and other agencies and now you head up Freedom, which you brand as an un-agency. So why? Why The un agency positioning?

Leigh:               I wanted to signal that I was different. And using the term un agency instantly gets people's attention. It's a, it's this big flag and it really invites conversations and questions, you know, why do you call yourself an agency? What's an un-agency? So it was a great, I felt it was a great way to get attention and get conversation going with people. Also wanted to signal that the way I do things in the experience clients have with me are different than what they would have at a traditional agency.

Rudy:               So they ask you just kinda like, I just did. So what do you think is different? What, what do you think isn't working about traditional agency models?

Leigh:               When I founded my company, you know, the reason I did it was because I sort of asked myself if I could work anywhere I could walk in any place and have the job of my dreams, where would I go? And I, I couldn't name any place. And so I realized that that there are a lot of things I didn't like and that in my own agency I wanted to try a different approach. So one is the billable hour, which I think is just, it doesn't serve clients and it doesn't help creatives be more creative. It really just drains staff of time and it irritates clients cause they feel like they're being nickeled and dimed. So I just take a flat fee approach and it's great. It has opened up a ton of time for me to work on my client challenges and it just makes it easier to build the relationship with the client instantly.

Leigh:               And then another thing I think that I feel like it's not working at agencies is there's a lack of flexibility and I think that's tied to the billable hour, right? Anything you want to do that's slightly outside of what you talked about is going to cost you more. And I just thought, you know, that's ridiculous because there's no project I've ever worked on anywhere that's gone according to plan. And if you look at your own personal life, right? Nothing, nothing you do ever goes according to plan. 

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