Tom Gent, co-founder and head of creative at Manchester-based Founder Creative.
Gent has had a storied career, formerly working as a creative producer for the BBC, a producer and director for Top Gear, and the director of the official 2016 Euros film.
He set up his own creative production agency, Founder Creative, in 2020 which was recently named as one of Prolific North’s Independent Agencies to Watch for 2024.
Here, he shares a recent week in his life…
Monday
Like most businesses, Monday is our busiest day of the week. We sit down as a team at 10am (either virtually or in the office) to do a bit of a creative round-up and catch up with anything we’ve seen on socials that caught our eye, or any standout sporting action.
With football, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, boxing and F1 going on we have quite a lot to catch up on at the minute! After that, we go through the agenda for the week and work out what each person has to do on various projects.
Tuesday
On Tuesdays, we’ll look to try and put some calls in with clients and brands that we’re working with, to have a little refresh for the week and align on what we’re doing going forward.
That could be reviewing edits or going through a brief and having a tissue meeting to ensure we’re on track. We are constantly delivering creative or on a production, so everyone knows their roles and responsibilities and it works likely a finely tuned machine. Having those regular check-ins with clients is so important to make sure everyone is on the same page and pulling in the same direction.
Wednesday
We regroup with our new business team and discuss brands that are making moves in the sports and gaming space on a Wednesday. We’ll look at the brands we would love to work with and take a fresh view on how we could make that happen. From there, our new business team will go away with a couple of brands in mind that we may want to speak to or grab coffee with. Having this meeting also gives us the opportunity to discuss work we’ve previously produced and decide how we can best use that to target new brands.
Thursday
Thursdays are our day when we’ll get together as a whole group, having worked mostly separately for the first part of the week on creative and edits. We do a big team check in to see if anyone else can feed into ideas or edits, or spot if we are missing any obvious solutions – after all, two heads are always better than one.
One of our major priorities internally is to ensure that everyone feels confident enough to have a say in the company’s projects. I take pride in the fact that one person doesn’t head off and run a project with no other input. We always like to feed in and it’s a very open atmosphere.
Another task on a Thursday is talking to our social media team to line up content for the next seven days to keep our Instagram and LinkedIn pages fresh and up-to-date.
Friday
We’re a family-first business, so we typically like to work from home on a Friday. If we’re running at capacity, we will come into the office – but there is generally a split between working from home and in the office on Fridays. If we have team members working remotely, we’ll aim for an early finish whenever possible.
Normally, we’ll use Fridays to send briefs and creative out before the end of the week to hopefully have a response on Monday and start the process all over again!
