"Back yourself and your ideas": a day in the life of Founder Creative's Tom Gent

One of the things I love most about my role is that there’s rarely a day that is the same each week. The variety is what keeps things fresh and exciting. Day-to-day I can be developing ideas for a pitch, chatting to new prospective clients, working closely with a director as a treatment comes together, feeding back on an edit or being out on location for a shoot. It’s a broad range in my role as Head of Creative, so every day is so different and that’s why I love what I do.

I’d say my journey into the industry properly began when I moved down to London and started at MTV in 2003. It was such an exciting time to be working there and was still seen as a leading creative content maker. Camden, where the office was based, was an incredibly vibrant and creative place, and around the early 2000s was an amazing time for British acts.

At MTV, you were often plunged in at the deep end. Interviewing A-listers was a weekly challenge, and being given a crash course in how to shoot on a PD150 and sent to a red carpet Premiere was something that happened frequently. It was the best learning experience looking back, as you were given permission to do something different, and also given what felt like a lot of responsibility. It was daunting at times, but a brilliant learning curve and a catalyst in forging a creative career.

Music and sport are my two passions, so to have the chance to cut my teeth at the best Sports broadcaster in the world was a dream come true.

There was a pecking order, in BBC Sport and you had to earn your stripes and prove you were good enough for certain responsibilities. It was a little bit old school in that respect. Over time I was able to work on some incredible events. From summer and winter Olympics to World Cups and everything in between such as Match of the Day, F1, Ski Sunday and Wimbledon.

It had always been a dream to start up my own agency and bring my own bigger ideas to life, but the timing never felt right.

Having sat client-side during my career, I often sat in pitches from major agencies thinking that I had a load of creative ideas, too. I moved back from Vancouver after leading Creative for EA Sports FIFA, and I thought 'it’s now or never’ if I was going to go for it. I always thought if it didn’t work out I would go back to working for someone else and it felt quite low-risk at the time, which was possibly a little naïve. It’s certainly not for everyone.

But five years on, I’m so glad I took the plunge.

Founder is an award-winning sports and gaming focused creative agency and production house rolled into one. Creative, strategy and production under one roof, which not only streamlines the process to make it quicker and easier but puts more of the client’s dollars on screen.

We are very deliberate about remaining boutique and keeping the core team concentrated. This is because we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all solution; We draft in expert teams tailored to each project, so the client gets the very best fit to bring their vision to life. We also don’t like the idea of handing projects off to junior team members or people who are disconnected from the project once a pitch is won. The aim is to work with a handful of brilliant clients we enjoy working with and who like making creative, fun and interesting work together.

This approach means we can service any requirements a client might have in the best way possible, but also future proofs us against any volatility in the market.

We recently shot at 18 top-tier football clubs across the globe for EA Sports FC Mobile’s new season launch. We had to be reactive and able to adapt to constantly moving parameters, but still deliver quality content. Often, we’d get 72 hours’ notice that we had to be in Madrid or New York for a shoot, so having a core team across all the shoots to parent with our local teams allowed us to be well-drilled in terms of what was required.

After a couple of shoots, our core team was able to turn things around quickly and to quality. It was an incredible challenge, but one that we loved being a part of again. It’s been immensely rewarding to see those assets going live over the last month or so.

Back at the start of the year, we partnered with Axis Studios and the David Agency in New York to bring Erling Haaland to life in Clash of Clans as a playable character for client Supercell.

It was the first time that Supercell had ever created a part-live action, part-animation collaborative commercial in that way with an elite athlete. It proved to be a huge success for the game and was brilliant for us to play such a pivotal role. The film garnered over 150 million views across platforms, was picked up by international news outlets and has been picking up numerous awards with hopefully more to come.

Ultimately I think it’s the level of access. If you have great access, you can tell a great story. Whether that’s old unseen archive or shooting there and then where you don’t normally get to see. That, coupled with characters that you care about as key contributors throughout the film will keep viewers engaged emotionally in the journey. No mean feat in this modern age where short-form snackable content rules on social media.

If you can bring all of those elements together I think you have the recipe for a captivating film.

The industry could do so much more to bring through new talent, especially talent from different socio-economic backgrounds. It can be hard to break into the industry and get that start to prove yourself.

At Founder Creative we’re currently working on an initiative to hire talent from different socio-economic backgrounds in the North of England and trying to nurture talent and give people that first step on the ladder.

Slack and WhatsApp are our saviours, especially as we often have multiple teams running different projects at any one time.

Frame.io is also a brilliant tool for being able to view edits and give speedy feedback. Nice and easy in terms of seeing all feedback in one place and being able to keep things moving. Viewing things on trains and on location is often necessary, so it’s an awesome bit of kit when fast feedback is needed.

AI is clearly going to play a huge role in video production and the industry as a whole. We know that other agencies are using AI already to put together pitch decks in half a day as opposed to weeks, which is incredible to think of, and a bit scary.

AI is currently in its infancy, but it feels like it’s going to be quite an incredible journey over the next couple of years in terms of how it’s going to shape the industry and transform the way we find ourselves working. I think there should be a little bit of caution applied though, and there’s always a need for humans in all of this in the end.

A dream project would be taking a leaf out of the Nike ads from the mid-90s and early 2000s, to bring together amazing footballing talent and do something that puts a smile on people’s faces.

Everybody loves creating a piece of work that sticks with people, but this is even more challenging nowadays due to the sheer amount of content out there. But those ads are so memorable, so being able to pull something together like that for this generation is a dream of mine.

Back yourself and your ideas. Value your own time. Try to say no to things if you don’t fully believe in them and speak up. Don’t stay in one place too long or ever feel like you’re standing still. Look to try and do something different which gets you noticed would be a big one. It’s important to back yourself and know your worth.