Fed up with “lip service” in marketing and a lack of accessible opportunities for diverse creatives, Gymshark’s ex head of social and a founding member of Social Chain came together to change things a year ago.
With their new creative agency Butterfly 3ffect reporting turnover of £2m+, it’s seemingly already an impressive start one year later for co-founders Elfried Samba and Michael Heaven.
Speaking to me from Glasgow, where the team were pitching to a brand, I wanted to find out more on why they’ve appeared to slip under the radar until now and where their desire to shake up the creative sector came from.
“In the world of marketing, there’s a lot of lip service but there’s not a lot of execution. What we wanted do is make sure that we had a solid foundation so we can actually execute to the highest level,” Elfried Samba, CEO and co-founder at the agency, tells Prolific North.
“I always see the same headlines. It’s x company and founders are doing x agency, they project this much revenue. We didn’t want to do that,” adds Michael Heaven, co-founder and managing director.
“We wanted to tell the story of what we have accomplished and have some results under our belt before we even start talking about what we’re doing.”
Working on major campaigns for global brands like McDonald’s, Bumble and Netflix, that’s certainly what they’ve been doing.
For Bumble, the dating app wanted a ‘social-first’ campaign that celebrated the experiences of Black women across the UK.
Discovering 53% of Black people in the UK did not see themselves represented in images of love in mainstream online spaces, especially Black women, they set out to tackle this through a campaign video. The video focused on real women and their dating experiences, calling out preconceptions they faced while online dating.
It’s work like this that’s helping Butterfly 3ffect land with a bang onto the creative scene. And it’s entirely intentional.
“We’re trying to showcase that diversity, and diversity of thought, makes business sense,” explains Samba.
“If you’re trying to navigate a cancel culture world, especially where you can be tone deaf, you can’t really cross your t’s and dot your i’s. You need people that can look at things from different perspectives and that challenge your thinking. That’s what I think is the challenge with the creative industry.”
But it isn’t “just about racial diversity”, explains Heaven. “There’s definitely a broader spectrum.”
Creating opportunities for diverse talent can create “great results” not just for those individuals but for the brands to tap into new opportunities, ideas and reach new audiences.
“The creative industry has been gated”
Recognising a critical gap in the industry with a lack of relatable role models and accessible entry points for diverse creatives, the team behind Butterfly 3ffect say they’re driven by creating positive change. It doesn’t seem like just an ambition here.
“I actually started off in an apprenticeship at Juice Academy,” explains Connor Jones, vice president of marketing at the agency. “It was a really good entry point and gave me an opportunity because I was actually at A Level studying to be a dentist. So, it was obviously a bit of a career pivot!”
“The creative industry has been quite gated. When we look at some of the new emerging platforms across tech and AI, it can seem daunting to get into them.”
It’s why the agency has plans to launch Cocoon next year, a programme to empower the next generation of creative talent to enter the industry.
“For us, the next generation of diverse creatives includes all of the spectrum within diversity. For us, being able to provide a gateway for those people to get into those industries is really important, especially giving opportunities to people who are passionate but also may not necessarily know about how to get into those industries.
“Universities may be great for some people but it’s not the only route.”
Although they are keen to get started, they don’t want to rush pushing the Cocoon programme out until it’s ready.
“Our goal over the next year is to build that platform where we invest resources to make sure our first cohort of people will be set up in success. Until we have that right, we want to incubate the idea a little longer,” explains Heaven.
Pointing to what they refer to as some of the most influential brands emerging from the UK, from Gymshark in Birmingham to Represent in Bolton, the “majority” don’t hail from London. It’s why the agency is keen to demonstrate the value in its remote-first model and how it can break down diversity barriers too.
“If you’re able to bring people in from the London region but then also unify them with people across the UK, you are able to provide a much more universal approach which is why we don’t have an office. It’s how you prevent people from coming together and it creates borders,” says Samba.
But they’re not “dogmatic” about this approach and may consider dedicating resources to opening a hub closer to a major client one day.
“We just have the fundamental building blocks where our team can work remotely. They can connect wherever there’s Wi-Fi and we have systems in place if someone is in a different time zone. They can still collaborate and contribute in a way that’s not going to be disruptive to the business,” adds Heaven.
Social Chain meets Gymshark
Despite having a team of 12 staff and a pool of freelancers operating across New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Manchester, London and Dubai, Butterfly 3ffect has its roots firmly planted in the North of England.
It all started at a university in Birmingham, where Elfried Samba and Michael Heaven bonded over a student job involving street-level marketing for a local nightclub.
Pounding the streets and chatting to passersby for promo nights, they soon became firm friends thanks to their love of Arsenal football.
Although their careers led them in different directions, the duo both ended up working for fast-growing companies with Samba landing a role at global fitness brand Gymshark and Heaven becoming one of the founding members of Manchester’s Social Chain.
Connor Jones, who joined Social Chain as a campaign manager back in the agency’s early days, first met Michael Heaven there and later met Elfried Samba, when he left to join Gymshark.
It wasn’t long until the trio all crossed paths while on the hunt for something new.
“I had a call with Elfried about the agency landscape, challenges and opportunities we could see. It was really innocuous,” explains Heaven. “We were just on the same wavelength.”
Pondering his next move after Gymshark, Samba knew he wanted to do something in the creative industry. The first person that didn’t make him feel “crazy” was Michael Heaven.
“He understood where I was coming from and the first person that put into practice our vision of a house of creatives. It went from being an idea to actually, we could potentially make this happen.”
After being approached by Ioconic, a venture company that wanted him to leave Gymshark and join the board as a chief community officer, Samba told them he was keen to start up Butterfly 3ffect.
Ioconic agreed to invest under $1m in exchange for services, enabling Samba to build up his team whilst working on some of the Ioconic brands.
“It gave us the ability to bring Michael, Connor and the rest of the team on board and gave us the runway to get started,” he says. “It would have been an idea, if it wasn’t for that conversation with Michael.”
How personal brands have been crucial for success so far and future ambitions
Aside from a talented team being key to the agency’s success so far, the visibility of Elfried Samba’s LinkedIn presence has been “great” too.
“It’s easier to share the successful campaigns we’ve done and attract other opportunities because there’s a large platform you can reach out to,” explains Heaven.
With around 184,000 followers on LinkedIn, after some recent number crunching Samba discovered his page receives anything from five million to 12 million impressions a week.
“It’s almost like going back to our nightclub days. You can have the promo team all you want, telling you that this nightclub is great. If you go in and the music sh*t, the vibe is off, effectively people will leave through the back door and tell everybody else not to come back.
“We needed to make sure that we have a nightclub that was great so that when people go in, they’ll share with their phones, they’ll talk about it online before we even had the promo stuff outside.
“It was a basic logic we understood, which is why we’ve been so quiet in the early stages, because we had to make sure that we had that market fit. So as market fit, we had to make sure that we trusted what we’re doing and what we’re delivering to make sure that our credibility spoke for itself.
“Now we’re at a point where more people should know about us. Even with personal branding, we didn’t really speak as much about ourselves as we could have. Now, because the work is starting to come out, you’re going to see us all more visible.”
It’s still early days, and although the trio shies away from sharing future plans with the belief that the “proof is in the pudding”, the agency is clearly gearing up for success.
Already based across three markets including in the UK and US, the agency has a big focus on expanding into Latin America as well as the Middle East and North Africa.
“The ambition is to connect diverse talent with exciting brands and do that at a bigger scale,” says Heaven.
“Although we are an agency at present, we called ourselves the B3 House because this is the house of creatives. If you’re thinking about a house, you’re thinking about the likes of LVMH and WPP, a house of brands,” adds Samba.
“The goal is to not be restricted to a region, it’s almost like a platform for creatives globally. Those that have the audacity to believe that they can be the best in their craft, those are the people that we want to attract.”
