Teamspirit's managing director, Jo Preston, and group managing director, Adam Smith, were in high spirits when they joined our virtual meeting — and with good reason.
The integrated agency is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and according to the pair, celebrations are already well underway.
Teamspirit has served the financial services industry since its founding in 1995, successfully navigating numerous periods of significant change. To mark this milestone, Preston explains that the team has curated a wealth of content, using '30' as a central theme. This includes features on financial services terms, significant events over the past three decades, and even a playlist of popular songs from the period, alongside a detailed timeline illustrating key moments in the agency's 30-year history.
In the coming weeks, the team, joined by current and former clients, will enjoy a roof terrace party, with a further exclusive team-only soirée also planned.
Having a front-row seat during one of the most tumultuous financial decades the UK has experienced, not to mention witnessing the pervasive rise of technology, must have been exhilarating. Smith and Preston shared insights into their journey and what lies ahead for the agency.
How have you, and Teamspirit changed over your careers?
Adam Smith (AS): “I joined [Teamspirit] 17 years ago as an account assistant. I left uni just as the financial crash was happening, and I wanted to be a trader. There obviously weren't many jobs going. It was through a graduate scheme, as we were part of Time Group, that I joined Teamspirit, and I've been there ever since.
“I’ve always wanted to work in financial services [and be a] financial services specialist. I essentially worked to where I am now as group managing director, and we’ve seen huge growth in that time. It's the team, I just love the team.
“That’s my journey. I’ve loved every moment of it, I've worked with some really amazing people…it's great.”
Jo Preston (JP): “I think longevity is quite an important component of Teamspirit. We’ve evolved and changed. We’ve brought in talent, and we’ve changed the way we do business quite significantly, because 30 years ago social media wasn’t really a thing.
“There have been all sorts of changes. I joined 14 years ago, having worked at a lot of agencies before, as an associate director. I'd not worked in financial services before, and unlike Adam, did not think I was going to.
“It was coming to Teamspirit and talking to the team about what we really do, which is helping people think differently about money and transform the world of finance. That’s what got me really interested.”
You did a timeline of landmark financial events since you founded in 1995, to work during some of those moments must have been exciting?
JP: “Way back about 13 years ago, when auto enrolment came in, we were working with a company to gamify pensions and get people interested in signing up. We worked with [a large multinational retail group] with lots of employees that didn't think they needed it and didn't get it. We worked with them on an entirely gamified way of getting people engaged with their pensions, and that was way before people were talking about it [gamification].
“We did a social media campaign for a health insurer years ago before I started, about 16 years ago, called Healthy Cheer about giving people a cheer on Facebook if they had started a healthy habit. Sounds a bit naff now but at the time it was…wow.”
AS: “Our digital art director remembers that when Twitter first launched, I went up to him and said, ‘I think Twitter is going to be pretty big, you know’. But, we started doing campaigns with Standard Life on the death of retirement. We did not send a guy to the North Pole, he was already going…but, this chap was probably about 85 [going to the North Pole] and he was trying to run his own Twitter account on the way to show that retirement is totally different to what you think it is, and you can do anything.”
Obviously, AI has changed the game hasn’t it?
AS: “We are part of the VCCP group, and within the agency there’s Faith which is our AI business. They developed the AI scam granny Daisy, and when you’ve got teams like that in your business it's amazing. Having the capability to do that and experiment, that's where it needs to be headed. We just need people to stop [being risk adverse].
“In my view being risk adverse is ironically quite risky, because you’re just going to end up being more magnolia and I think financial services has been very risk adverse for many years. We need to think about how to catch attention because we are in the attention economy.
“People scroll through so much crap all day every day. So, to actually grab attention and get brand awareness and people loving your brand, is going to be very difficult.”
JP: “We are loving working with clients on AI. There are a lot of people working out how to do that, and it's sort of channel agnostic.
“PR is so broad now, it’s not just necessarily about a piece in The Telegraph. For some that's still really important and that's rightly so, but it could be a completely different route to market and that's really exciting. It's really important that agencies can do things in whatever way they need to to help brands reach their audiences, and I think our clients understand that and work with us. And it's very different for the clients, for some its institutional audiences and that's very different ballgame to talking to mass consumer, but it doesn't mean you cant be creative.”
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