OUGD602 - Creative Convos - The Pop Up Agency

Abraham Asefaw from The Pop Up Agency came in to talk about the work he completes. His talk was incredibly constructive, and a lot of what we learnt with him I will take forward into my practice. I learnt the importance of valuing my work and re-evaluation my ambitions. He also expressed the importance of having a mentor.

The creative agency travels around the world to clients and solves their briefs in 24 hours. Abraham spoke about his experience as a founding member of the agency and gave us advice on starting a business ourselves. He also focussed on valuing our own practice.

Contrary to most people advice, he valued experience over being payed in the initial stages of starting a career. As long as expenses are covered it is more important to build strong experience and a bold portfolio. To begin with he began working for friends and family to build clients which created a domino effect.

When talking about his agency, he stressed the importance of not focussing too much on roles. In a creative team you all have a role to play. It is important to have these three elements in our team.

Transparency
Reflection
Feedback

These three elements grow a strong team and makes working together effective. He also suggested a board of advisors was the most valuable and beneficial decision he made. Having professional advice only made their agency grow.

An anecdote Abraham used to demonstrate the importance of valuing your work and how to price it was an example of two identical iPhones, one costing £50 and the other costing £500. People would rather spend more money on the expensive phone, even though it is exactly the same. Because people see a higher price as a more legitimate product.

He explained how he charged for work and how it covered 3 parts:

Salary
Expenses
Savings

These three parts would ensure the business can keep running.

In the last stage of the talk, he introduced a technique to quickly generate ideas. To sit for a moment and write ideas down, then sit with your team for another moment and generate together, before then reviewing these ideas and deciding which will be most effective using, values, needs and success.

Abraham's talk was the most informative and constructive of all the Creative Convo's. Some of the advice that he gave I will be taking forward from now on.

- How to successfully create an agency following simple rules
- The importance of valuing your own practice
- The value of guidance and constructive feedback
- Price structure
- To just try things

I will take this advice into my practice, setting goals and ambitions and making sure to revisit and review them, designing the way I want to live, gaining strong experience and using friends and families to kickstart clients. But most importantly I will never  underestimate my capacity and value. I will also take this knowledge into consideration when one day forming my own agency/studio.