Sergeant Walnuts is a creative agency based in Manchester.
Launched last September by ex LOVE senior staffers Gary Toal (creative director) and Richard Attwater (managing director), the duo each have 20+ years’ experience working across global brands including Umbro, Adidas, Under Armour, Nike, PlayStation, Amazon, Sky, Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Haig Club, Glenfiddich, Hendrick’s, BrewDog and Penfolds.
Prior to co-founding Sergeant Walnuts, Attwater’s most recent role was as Client Business Director at LOVE where he worked for almost nine years looking after many of the agency’s key clients. He’s also held senior account management positions at McCann Manchester and gyro over the years.
He shared how a recent week in his life went…
Monday
I trudge downstairs at some unholy hour to let the dog out into the garden. He stares me dead in the eyes whilst answering the call of nature, as if to say ‘You’re going to have to pick this up’. He’s right of course, but that can wait.
My children are soon on the scene and, despite the selection of cereal available to them not having changed within recent memory, they force me, yet again, to read out what’s in the cupboard. They ask if we’ve got *insert unhealthy sugar-filled cereal*, as they do every day. I manage to say ‘No we have not’, without also including a swear word and go about making their breakfast. I transport their bowls of cereal to the table, and manage to spill some milk onto my feet. It’s 7:14am.
What follows is 45 minutes of chaos as we attempt to get the kids ready for school, and ourselves ready for work. Nobody knows where anything is. Cardigans, shoes, school bags – all vanished. Accusations are flying all over the place, shoulders are being shrugged. Someway, somehow, we make them look reasonably presentable before bundling them out onto the street. My wife or I will walk them round the corner to school, then thoughts turn to work for the first time.
Monday mornings are always tricky as I inevitably have to deal with two things: 1) the emails that arrived over the weekend from people who are far more keen/diligent than I, and 2) the things I should have done on the previous Friday but ran out of time/steam. Not ideal. But deal with them I do, and I gradually tick things off from a seemingly unending to- do list.
We’ve got a big shoot coming up for a sports brand, so we’re speaking to videographers and reviewing potential locations. One of the reasons starting your own agency is so fun is that you find yourself involved in all aspects of a shoot like this. This takes up the majority of the day, bar a small break for lunch (and a trip into the garden to pick up the gift left for me earlier by the dog).
Tuesday
The morning starts exactly as Monday did (as do all days of my life, so I’ll skip to 9am).
Tuesday is generally the most productive day of the week for me. I’ve made my peace with the fact that it’s not the weekend anymore, and I’ve typically dealt with the more annoying tasks on a Monday (having not done them on the Friday).
I’ve got three proposals to write today – we’ve been extremely lucky since we launched to have had a steady stream of briefs/enquiries from companies big and small. I’ve developed a good instinct over the years for jobs that are never going to happen, and one of the proposals definitely falls into that bracket. I write it anyway, as it’s easier than saying ‘I don’t believe you have any intention of giving us this brief, and think you’re wasting my time’, before moving onto the two that feel more up our street.
Lunch is a big deal. When you work from home a lot, it’s a good opportunity to break up the day and have a rest. I’m a big believer in having a varied diet, so I try to alternate between sandwiches and bagels each day. Hula Hoops, Frisps and Nik Naks are also on permanent rotation, as are Kit Kats and TimeOuts. It’s all about balance.
In the afternoon I have a catch-up call with Gary (the other co-founder of Sergeant Walnuts). He’s working from Spain for a few weeks so it’s difficult not to hate him, but we manage to successfully navigate those ill-feelings and talk about the work we have to get done this week. For Gary, that’s a combination of creating a new brand book for an alcohol client, and working on some concepts for a comms campaign for another sports brand (not all by himself, of course, but he’s working alongside the design team). I take him through the proposals I’ve written, which he feigns interest in, before he departs (probably to go and eat some tapas or something).
