Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut or shortened due to rights issues.
Good morning this is Jazz Shapers; it is where the Shapers of Business join the Shapers of Jazz, Soul and Blues. My guest today I am very pleased to say is Jenny Biggam; Co-founder and CEO of the7stars, the UK’s largest independent media agency. Stubbornly against going to University, Jenny says she entered the industry by sheer fluke. When the school careers advisor told her only the advertising or retail industries would accept her without a Degree, Jenny fired off letters to both and soon found herself at a small marketing agency in Soho. “I started off making tea and coffee” she said, trying to learn the ropes. After roles at Zenith Media and as Director at media buying giant, Carat. Jenny quit her job to Co-found the7stars in 2005. As she says. “I had been at Carat for over a decade while the big media agencies had all the benefits of scale and resources, they didn’t always offer the best service or the smartest thinking.” The7stars was built by spurning tradition, they started by ditching job titles to create a completely flat and open structure and they introduced equal profit share meaning Co-founders and school leavers get the same bonus. They also banned bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork including holiday forms, as Jenny says, “staff get unlimited holidays, whether you want to take time off for a new baby, a honeymoon, a trip around India or a floristry course, the policy is the same – take as much time as you need.” It sounds pretty good; I’ll be applying for a job soon. “People are judged on their output” she says, “not how much time they spend in the office.” We will be talking to Jenny in a few minutes about all this and her passion for workplace culture that has led to the7stars being listed in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For consistently for the last 6 years. Also in Jazz Shapers today we’ve brilliant music from amongst others Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga and Art Pepper. Before all that here’s Junior Wells with What My Mama Told Me.
That was Junior Wells with What My Mama Told Me. Jenny Biggam is my Business Shaper here on Jazz Shapers and she is the Co-founder and CEO of the7stars – it’s lovely to see you, hello.
Jenny Biggam
Hi.
Elliot Moss
It is very rare that people who are involved deeply in the media like you, who are behind many big brands, big clients and you can see all of those on your website, get to do this, get to be centre stage, front stage because usually it is your client’s isn’t it?
Jenny Biggam
Yeah I suppose so yeah. The media agency role particularly I think is you know, something that the consumer and the rest of the world doesn’t really see because our role really is to help advertisers work out which channels they should be using, which audiences they should be reaching and then we do the negotiation with the media owners, so whether that’s ITV, Facebook, Channel 4 whoever and that’s the bit I suppose that you don’t see. We are not really responsible for creating the ads that everyone sees, we are just responsible for making sure the right people see them, at the right time, in the right place.
Elliot Moss
But actually that’s a lot of money that’s being invested, its hundreds and hundreds of millions if not probably towards a billion I guess under your management as it were?
Jenny Biggam
Yeah our billings this year are around 400 million so it’s, yeah it’s a big responsibility when you look after that much of other people’s money so making sure it ends up in the right… being spent in the right way is absolutely a core responsibility for us.
Elliot Moss
I said earlier it was sheer fluke that you ended up in the world of media. Why was that then?
Jenny Biggam
Yeah it is interesting though, when I talk to other people in the agency a lot of people aren’t aware of media agencies as a career so I think people might apply to ad agencies particularly if you have been studying you know, a creative type course at University or something like that but media agencies are kind of the you know, we are big employers actually in the advertising sector but we are probably less well known than our creative cousins so a lot of people end up in, working in media agencies by fluke. Myself included. I think my only intention at the age of 18 was not to go to Uni but to go out and get a job. I was just keen to go out and earn money and start learning about the world of work and I kind of did that, you know, I literally was advised that it was going to be difficult to get into most industries without a Degree with a couple of exceptions, one of which was the ad industry so I am old enough that it was literally writing letters to people. So I sent letters off to various different you know, ad agencies, media agencies and retailers as well because I was advised that that would be an easy category to get into without a Degree and I you know, at that time I genuinely didn’t mind. My intention was just get out, learn what it is like working, earn a living and crack on.
Elliot Moss
And why didn’t you want to go to Uni? What was the reason if you can remember?
Jenny Biggam
I think my birthday is September so I was always the oldest in my school year and I think I just felt by the end of Sixth Form I was kind of over studying and I wanted to, I was just keen to, to get out and work and I think for me at that age thinking about another 3 or 4 years of… before I could actually go out and work, I felt like that at the time seemed like an age. Now it seems like nothing of course but at the time I thought “wow I am not going to be able to get a job for 3 or 4 years”, it felt crazy to me I just kind of couldn’t wait to get out and work.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper today, that’s Jenny Biggam, she will be with me for the rest of this hour. Time for some more music right now, it’s the brilliant duet of Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga and Anything Goes.
One of my favourite duets, Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga and Anything Goes. Jenny Biggam is my Business Shaper today; CEO and Co-founder of the7stars. A really good name by the way, how did you come up with the name do you remember that?
Jenny Biggam
I do remember that. I will tell you the very honest answer is we named it after a pub so…
Elliot Moss
Just near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, round the back? Near the Royal Courts of Justice.
Jenny Biggam
The very one.
Elliot Moss
Wow.
Jenny Biggam
So…
Elliot Moss
Which is a lovely old pub, full of Judges and lawyers.
Jenny Biggam
It is.
Elliot Moss
If you like that kind of thing.
Jenny Biggam
Not, not a normal medial haunt.
Elliot Moss
No.
Jenny Biggam
But it was a pub that was near enough when myself and my Co-founders were working at Carat, it was near enough that we could get to and from the pub at lunch time, have a chat about whether we were or weren’t going to jump ship and set up and then Gareth who is one of the Co-founders, I remember messaging us after we had left saying “if we do this we should call it the7stars.” So it became kind of the code name, the kind of joke name if you like and then we couldn’t think of anything better so we went with it.
Elliot Moss
Now let’s talk about this moment when you, as you just said, we were thinking about doing it and eventually we made the leap, we made the jump. If you can recall what made you actually go “this is it, we are going to do this.” Because you were in a very big agency, one of the best media agencies in the world, probably pretty secure, nice senior role all that. All the trappings, a bit like a good bit of Christmas turkey, all the trappings or is that the trimmings? But anyway we can do trappings, I think the turkey should have trappings now, it’s definitely got trappings. But what eventually made you go “I’ve had it, we are going to do our own thing”?
Jenny Biggam
I think it was, it was less I’ve had it, it was more a you know, there was a big opportunity here so I think as we chatted it through there were a variety of reasons for doing it. One is kind of a personal thing, just proving to yourself that I can do this outside of the comfort of a, as you say, a very safe, corporate environment. Partly it was just a way of working with advertisers slightly different to the way that the big corporates will deal with advertisers so you know, just being able to service advertisers maybe with more local requirements or more UK only requirements or advertisers with maybe medium sized budgets rather than the huge multi-million budgets and partly it was about creating a place to work for people that was a bit different. So while the corporate agencies in our sector are very good employers and have lots and lots of the good sensible things about employment practices and being, being responsible employers and great diversity initiatives and great training courses and things like that, we wanted to set up something where we would take all of that good stuff and replicate all of that but to treat our team in a slightly less corporate way. So some of the things you talked about at the beginning of the programme were absolutely intrinsic to when we set up and are still part of what we do today so I would describe it as all about treating employees or team members as I call them as human beings, responsible adults so things like I don’t need to keep count of their holiday because they are adults, they know they have got a big job to do, they know how much time they should be on the beach and how much time they should be at their desk. They can work it out for themselves how much time they should take off work versus being in work and they work that out within their teams and they you know, it just kind of self regulates and I think there is lots and lots of things that you know, if you think about a business, there is a lot of kind of corporate red tape things that we do even internally within businesses that you can take away and create a better place for people to have better careers, to be able to develop themselves in more creative ways and more fulfilling job roles really. So that was a big, big part of it.
Elliot Moss
And just give me one example of taking away red tape?
Jenny Biggam
So we don’t call people by job titles so if somebody starts straight from school or straight from Uni for example, they don’t get called an assistant and then move up to an exec and then senior exec and then a manager and then an associate director and then a director or anything like that. We just call them by their name. So if you start at 7stars you will be called Jane and your job is really to be the best version of Jane - if your name is Jane – that you can be. So we try not to kind of narrow class people, we try not to make them think about their careers in a linear career ladder, what’s the next rung for me basis. We try to make them think about you know, how they can develop themselves in maybe areas that are outside their core job role, maybe people moving around the agency more fluidly, maybe people taking responsibility over and above the day job and that’s what we try and encourage so it is about kind of being your whole self rather than how can I get to the next level. The other benefit we find in doing it that way is we take away any competitiveness about job roles so it doesn’t become a case of you know I want to be at that level and that persons’ at that level, why am I not at that level. It just becomes a case of I want to do more and grow as an individual, what else can I do at 7stars that will help me to grow.
Elliot Moss
And just really briefly I want… because I want to come back to a lot of interesting things you’ve said. The Uni versus school thing, obviously you came straight from school, what percentage of the people you employ come straight from school? If you know that? And is there a difference to you or do you just not care?
Jenny Biggam
We try and encourage people to come in at both. A very high percentage of the people we recruit come new into the industry either from Uni or from school and this year we have really kind of dialled up the number that come in straight from school and that is for a variety of reasons but you know, we’ve had some really, really great people that have come in straight from school that have turned into fantastic people and 2 or 3 years in it is hard to actually tell the difference. We do try and recognise that people who have been to Uni are that little bit older, they’ve studied and they’ve achieved something over that period of time so they probably join the agency at a, if you like, with a slightly bigger role, they have slightly more advanced training to start off with things like that but within a few years it levels out and some of our people who joined straight from school are now running big teams, responsible for big parts of the business.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my guest, Jenny Biggam, she will be back in a couple of minutes but first let’s hear a taster from the latest News Sessions Podcast which can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Hayley Geffin explores the world of Blockchain and how it affects you and your business.
There are many ways for you to enjoy all our former Jazz Shapers and indeed to hear this programme again with Jenny. You can ask Alexa to play Jazz Shapers and there you can hear many of the recent programmes, or if you pop Jazz Shapers into iTunes or your preferred podcast platform, you can enjoy the full archive. Back to today, it’s Jenny Biggam; Co-founder and CEO of the7stars, also a great pub, the UK's largest independent media agency. So numbers of people, you said 200 and, 250 ish?
Jenny Biggam
Yes, yes just under yeah.
Elliot Moss
Right. When you set this up in 2005 did you think you would be responsible for feeding 250 people? I bet you didn’t. Or did you have that… what was the ambition at that point?
Jenny Biggam
I think at that point we did a 5 year plan to get to 100 odd people or something and we didn’t really think much beyond that. I think you know, and to be honest our business has changed so fundamentally in the 14 years that we have been going so I always use the example of digital media. So in 2005 when we launched I certainly had never even heard of Facebook; YouTube hadn’t launched in the UK; Twitter hadn’t launched and you know, today we’ve got teams and teams of people who are just working on optimising Facebook and Instagram campaigns, YouTube is a big supplier of ours so the kind of shape of media in general, the shape of our agency has changed fundamentally in that period of time so when I look back on our business plan, a lot of the principles are the same around how we work with advertisers, around our values, around what we are like as a place to work but the actual work has changed beyond recognition.
Elliot Moss
Wow and that makes the point doesn’t it, as you said, principles are the way you want to operate, principles are the way you want to treat each other there but the digital revolution which has impacted everybody, whether it’s a law firm or a high street retailer or an advertising agency or a media agency is fundamental. The industry around you, the media industry and specifically the advertising industry I am thinking has really been thrown. I mean how have you managed to navigate and ensure that you are still delivering a desirable product at a price that you want to be at?
Jenny Biggam
That’s a really great question and it is something that we have to, we have to adapt kind of literally on an ongoing basis. So the way we run the agency at the7stars is we rewrite the business plan ever year. So our business year starts at the beginning of April, we spent Jan to March as a leadership team thinking about what we want the agency to be like for the year ahead and then once we have decided that we get the whole crew together, we get the whole agency together and we share that vision if you like and you know, digital specialists in our agency is the biggest single team now so people who just focus on 100% on digital and tech, is our biggest investment and we just have to keep the momentum going. What tends to happen is that we move with our advertisers so we have to talk to our advertisers about what they want. We do a kind of agency of the future with advertisers and ask them what they are going to want from a media agency, not today but in the future and again media tends to move with consumer behaviour. So as consumers have become much more digital, much more mobile, so the media spend has followed consumers’ eyeballs. So we just have to keep listening to advertisers, keep investing in the new areas that are important to the advertisers we work with and keep ourselves ahead of the market.
Elliot Moss
Is adaptability something that you’ve always been comfortable with? When you were younger was it like “well okay I’ve got that issue and there’s a situation and I am doing this, and I doing…” and did you just… is it water off a ducks back? And is that the reason why you are able to cope with this I suppose, incessant change?
Jenny Biggam
I think I am comfortable with change and I suppose the biggest change I made was moving from a corporate job into having my own agency and I feel like if you have, because I have managed to achieve that and achieve that successfully almost nothing else will scare me now. But equally it’s not really about what I personally want because you know in order for me to change, a whole group of people have to come with me so it is about bringing people along the journey and how we adapt and grow as a business.
Elliot Moss
And how have you done that? The followership thing, how do you ensure that people go over the breach… into the breach dear friends with Jenny leading the way?
Jenny Biggam
It’s all about communication and being completely open about everything. So for example we have a commitment to get the whole company together every single week without fail. We do it on a Wednesday morning, it’s one of those things that we did when we were 2 or 3 people, we would catch up on a Wednesday just because we got to the middle of the week and wanted to know what was happening and we still do it today. So it has moved from a group of us sitting around a picnic table to you know, 200 people all at the top floor of our office with microphones and PowerPoint charts and things like that but it is all about communication and it is not a, kind of all hands meeting where me and the senior people talk to everybody else, it’s actually everyone talking to each other. Each team will update what campaigns they are working on, what new ads are breaking, all of that stuff. We will share the numbers of the business or share the finances, we’ll share absolutely everything. We will welcome new starters, we’ll announce when people are leaving, we just keep it all completely open so I think the more everybody knows, the more they will come on side and I think again it comes down to what I talked about earlier about treating people as adults, you know, you don’t have to hide from them if you are having a bad year financially or you’ve you know, you’ve got some problems in the business or something like that, you just need to be very open and say “we’ve got a problem with this and this is what we are trying to do to get out of it.”
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for more from my Business Shaper today here on Jazz Shapers, it’s Jenny Biggam talking about the power of open communication. Time for some more music right now, it’s Art Pepper with Mambo Koyama.
That was Art Pepper, interesting it was too, Mambo Koyama. I hope I said that properly. Jenny Biggam is my Business Shaper and she is the Co-founder and CEO of the7stars. The picture you paint is a very idyllic one and I know that business is tough and you have got 250 people and you talked about we don’t have titles, they have holidays when they want and so on and so forth. People are often defined by their title, they are often defined by their job spec, they are naturally, we are all naturally quite competitive. How do you manage the rubber hitting the road of people going “yeah but I don’t know what they are paid Jenny but I should be paid the same or more” because at some point someone puts a kind of title, a thing on their value, they’ve got to value themselves and titles do that to a point, not very well arguably, money does that to a point, happiness does it to a point but how do you manage that where people just aren’t happy or aren’t as happy as they should be?
Jenny Biggam
It’s not just without titles, it’s without kind of the, all of the corporate constraints that go with that so I think what we are able to do usually is satisfy people’s ambition in different ways. So the way I describe it to a new starter coming into the agency is I will always say “you are here of course to do your day job but that’s the most important thing but you are also here to help us to build the business” and you know we really want the agency to be a place where people’s ideas are listened to and where their initiatives we can make happen or they can make happen so we have all sorts of things in place so that people can get involved with the business over and above their day job, for example we will have what we call leadership teams which isn’t a seniority thing but just all, everyone in the agency put into different teams of responsibility for different elements of running the business. So that could be a team of people who run the graduate recruitment day, a team of people who organise people into sports teams, a team of people who are responsible for presentations to clients, all that kind of thing. So we have kind of the 17, 18 of these different kind of virtual teams so people belong to a regular team where they do their work and then they belong to you know, one or two of these virtual teams. Some people really, really flourish in the virtual teams and we can see them really, really develop into brilliant ambassadors for whatever that virtual team is responsible for. So that’s just one example but we have all sorts of different initiatives that basically encourage people to come up with ideas, we have a value called Be An Entrepreneur and we say being an entrepreneur is about coming up with an idea, making the agency better so people can come up with their own ideas and almost like create their own careers.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Jenny Biggam
Their own career path so it’s not, it’s not me saying “your next step is this”, it can be them saying “I would like to get involved in that.” There are lots and lots of examples of people who have just got different roles, maybe roles that I never imagined that we would need or want in the agency, people just get involved in different things so we just try and, try and encourage people to tackle career development in a creative way, not in a formulaic corporate way.
Elliot Moss
And what about Jenny Biggam’s career? I mean Jenny, you, have you know founded this, Co-founded this agency. You talked about you know, your school leavers learning in those 2, 3 years, not… it’s a different set of learning things versus someone that has gone to University but continuous learning is a big thing for all of us in life especially as we all work longer and it becomes much more fluid. What peaks your interest? What keeps you going? What are the things that you look to learn about that ensure that you are fresh and hungry and all the things that you need to be as the leader of this business?
Jenny Biggam
We have probably talked about it a lot today, as you’ve probably gathered but I think the thing that I get really excited about is workplace cultures and how you can do that in a different way. If I am invited to something that is about culture or about leadership or about how you can you know, do things in a more modern and progressive way I will always go and attend that above anything else. I do need and all of our senior leadership team need to keep up-to-date with technical skills so that means you know, spending a lot of time with you know people like Google and Facebook and you know, who we technically call our suppliers but really, you know, very important media partners for us so I suppose that would be how I would answer that question.
Elliot Moss
Okay. Good well we will come back and there may be a bit more. I have got a feeling there is a supplementary coming. You will hear that in our final chat with Jenny, plus we will be playing a track from Rodney Franklin. That’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
That was Rodney Franklin with The Groove and Jenny Biggam is with me just for a few more minutes and we’ve been talking about workplace culture and communication. We haven’t spoken about money. You are, I don’t know if you are a profitable business, I imagine you are a relatively profitable business, the business has grown, you’ve got more people, as we said you had a couple of people around the table, now there are 250 of you. Does the money excite you? Do you care about it or is just a by-product of what you are doing? For you personally, I don’t mean for the business?
Jenny Biggam
For me personally it is definitely a by-product of what we are doing and I even say this to people if I walked into the agency every day and everyone looked miserable and no one was having a good time but the numbers were still good, I wouldn’t be achieving what I set out to achieve 14 years ago.
Elliot Moss
And the Gucci bag on the left shoulder and the Yves St Laurent on the right one, that wouldn’t go down well. I am joking, she has neither, well she may have them but she doesn’t have them here with me now. So but it must make you happy that people’s lives are kind of in your hands, not… it’s a bit like the policeman, you try not to think about it. But there must be an inner sense of deep satisfaction that this thing is going and continues to go?
Jenny Biggam
Yeah I mean genuinely that’s one of the biggest buzzes I get when I see even people coming in and making lifelong friends and things like that, just building relationships within the agency because it is a weird thing for me because I keep thinking if I hadn’t done this in 2005, all of this wouldn’t be here so it is yeah, it is a kind of a… it’s a really, really rewarding thing for me and seeing people do well, getting positive feedback from the team just means everything to me.
Elliot Moss
And you keep the twinkle in the eye. I read somewhere that you got caught bunking off Brownies to eat chips. Are you still doing the same? The equivalent. Where did you get that Elliot? Ahhhh….
Jenny Biggam
Where did you get that?
Elliot Moss
I told you I’ve got good researchers. But seriously is there still as sense of the “well let’s just try it who cares, I mean let’s just be a bit naughty.” Do you still do that?
Jenny Biggam
Yeah absolutely. I mean fun is absolutely in my personal DNA and I think it’s in the agencies DNA as well so we have a responsibility to our advertisers, we look after a lot of other people’s money and we don’t forget that but equally there is no point in doing it if you are not enjoying it and having fun and if you can do it in a non-corporate and more of a fun way, then you know, jobs a goodun.
Elliot Moss
It’s been great talking to you Jenny. Good luck with the next 14 years. I am sure it is going to be a good one if you continue to adapt and innovate the way you are. The world is changing around us but it sounds like you are more than coping with that.
Jenny Biggam
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Jenny Biggam
When we talk about having fun one of the perks of the media industry is that we do get to do some amazing things and one of the things that in the last 10 years that I was absolutely blown away was I was invited with Channel 4 to go to the Para Olympics in Rio. Not only did we have a fantastic trip, the Para Olympics was absolutely astonishing to watch first hand and to witness first hand but we stayed for a couple of days in Rio, we were lucky enough to have a beach just on Copacabana beach and even the name of the beach so…
Elliot Moss
Stop this is upsetting me.
Jenny Biggam
…lovely morning walks along the beach inspired me to pick the Girl from Ipanema.
Elliot Moss
Well here she is, Girl from Ipanema, Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto.
Lovely.
That was Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto with the Girl from Ipanema. The song choice of my Business Shaper today, Jenny Biggam. She talked about the importance of communication; she talked about the importance of openness and she talked about the responsibility she felt for investing her client’s money and as she called it “other people’s money.” That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a great weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You will find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive. To find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.