The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Sarah Jennings - Part 1
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Sarah is the CEO of Oban International. In this first part of two, she talks about her early years in Harlow; the joy of "Topic" at school; switching from teaching to media planning; learning "the Ogilvy way"; an influential mentor and colleague; and discovering that not all work cultures are alike.
Hello and welcome to the Amber Moment, a podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howarth. My guest today is Sarah Jennings, the CEO of Oban International, an award-winning digital marketing agency specialising in international growth and performance. Before Oban, Sarah was the co-owner of Spark, a communications consultancy offering marketing strategy and media planning to large blue chip clients and also SMEs. And prior to that, she held senior positions in a number of large media planning and buying agencies. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. How are you today?
SPEAKER_00Fine, thank you. Just enjoying the fact that it's a beautiful sunny Friday morning.
SPEAKER_02Isn't it? It does feel like we haven't really seen the sun for several months, but hopefully we're emerging into the lovely spring air. Yes, so thank you so much for your time. It's great, it's great to see you and to chat to you. What we're trying to do here, or what I'm trying to do, I suppose, on the amber moment, is to tell some great stories of people and their remarkable careers. And to my untutored eye, yours is certainly a remarkable career. So, you know, every story starts somewhere, and every hero of every story, and you are the hero in this instance, just for clarity on that one. Every hero has his or her origin story. So I'd love it if you could start by telling us a little bit about your uh childhood, your upbringing, your education, and any early influences.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So I was born in Harlow in Essex, which was a new town built to take people kind of displaced out of the East End after the Second World War.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh my parents were there because my dad was an engineer up in London. My mum had qualified as a teacher, and Harlow was desperate to recruit teachers, and so my mother got a call to say that this was somebody from Harlow Town Corporation, which I presume was the equivalent of the council. Yes. That if she would come and work in a school, they would get a council house. So up they went to Harlow and settled into a council house, and my mum went to teach in the local school.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_00So I spent the first five years living very happily on a busy estate, playing with all the other local kids and going to the local primary. And then when I was about five, my grandfather bought my parents a plot of land for them to build their own house. And there was an area just on the edge of town that had been allocated for home bills.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And so my parents decided that they would build their own home and they spent the next five, six years of our lives doing exactly that. So after school, we'd get on the bus, go over to the plot, and a tiny wheelbarrow with my brothers, and my mum would have a slightly bigger wheelbarrow and we'd wheel bricks around and put them in the right place for my dad to lay them at the weekend. And it was funny because we were one of the very first people to buy a plot, but we were absolutely the last to finish, because all the others were bought by people that were builders and threw their houses up in you know three or four months, and my parents had to learn how to do everything, and this is before the days of YouTube.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02So you were you were employed doing hard labour from a very early age.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we'd have um, I was always given jobs, which at the time felt very exciting to me, but in hindsight I can tell they were deliberately planned, so my work would not be on shows. So I was always given jobs like painting the inside of a wardrobe with about seven coats of paint.
SPEAKER_02Hopefully, with the doors open otherwise.
SPEAKER_00Which I and I really enjoyed it. And there were you know just over 20 houses in the road. It was a cul de sack, everybody was of a similar age, nearly everybody had two kids. So we had you know a group of 30 or 40 children of a similar age, and we just played out, ran around in the woods. We're all great friends, and we're still friends with some of them to this day. Oh, how lovely the ready-made community, a very ready-made community, and because it was a cul de sac, um, yeah, not much danger of running outside in the road apart from accidentally kicking your football into Malcolm's house, which is the one you're always worried about because he's told you off.
SPEAKER_02Malcolm Malcolm's a bit scary. If he comes over again, I'll put a knife.
SPEAKER_00The other parents just tolerated it.
SPEAKER_02And then what about your education? How did how did that sort of proceed?
SPEAKER_00So the first primary school that I started off in was a very traditional school where you sat in rows and chanted your times tables and got a red star if you did a good piece of work. And then as we got closer to the house being finished, uh, my parents, I think a little optimistically thought they might get the house finished a bit sooner. So they moved over and put us into the local school for the new house. And that was a very sort of 70s-type school. It wasn't a Montessori school, but it could have been for all intents and purposes. I absolutely loved it. So we had, you know, kind of rush mats on the floor, bean bags, book boxes, little lemon tree in the corner. And you were given a kind of timetable of work that had to be done. Yeah. Once it was done, you were given two choices to fill the rest of your week. You could either read or you could do something called topic. And topic was you could pick anything you were interested in. You're given an exercise book, and you had to research and study it and fill the exercise book. So I used to rush through my work on a Monday and Tuesday, and then spend the rest of the week doing reading and topic, and to pick lots of lovely random things from 18th century costumes to hamsters as my topic, and uh spend the rest of the week working away, filling my little book up with surrounded by the Encyclopedia Britannica and things. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant training for later on becoming a media planner because it's right, yeah, interested in lots of different topics to get quickly under the skin of them. So yeah, I really enjoyed uh really enjoyed primary school. Yeah and then I then my parents were very keen for me to go to a girls' grammar school. It wasn't a place that automatically did that, but you could organise for your child to take a an 11 plus. So I found myself rather bafflingly when I was about 10 or 11 sitting in a big hall on my own taking a test. On your own? Yes, because nobody else wanted to go.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that was heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_00And I wasn't quite sure why I was taking the test or what was happening, but I got into the local girls' grammar school. When I say local, it was probably about 10 miles away. And then I started, you know, the next seven years at the grammar school, which involved two-mile walk each way to the bus stop and a bus up to Epping and then a tube into the edges of London and off to the school. Yeah. But I absolutely again very lucky, lovely school. I was in a really nice class and had you know a very kind of happy education through the grammar school. So stayed on there until I was 18, and then I was encouraged to do Oxbridge. And Oxbridge you did in your lower sixth. So there were two ways of getting into well, any university. One was to stay till the end of the sixth form and get a fantastic set of results, and the other was to take a punt on doing an exam in the lower sixth, and if you passed that exam and got offered in, then you didn't have to get very good grades A level, and that appealed to my uh lack of wanting to put myself under pressure in the sixth form. So I did the Oxbridge and got into St. Edmund Hall, which was a college up in Oxford. Yeah. Second year that they took in women and uh a very sporty college. Yeah. So I went there and had a fabulous three years studying English, reading every week, of course, which I really enjoyed, and you know, lovely college, very nice people, really had a very happy time there, um, learnt how to you know live away from home, uh got exposed to lots of different types of people, very enjoyable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then I really didn't want it to come to an end, and everybody else seemed to know what they wanted to do. Um, and at college with me was a guy, I don't know if you know him called Mark Earl, who's I nickname him the herdmeister, who's a fabulous planning guru. Yeah, um, and Mark said, Oh, you know, I'm going to take a teaching course and so on for an extra year. Why don't you do that with me?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I applied to do the teaching course. He had a change of heart and went off to advertising teaching. So I stayed on an extra year and got my PGCE and then went to teach in a comprehensive school.
SPEAKER_02Oh, amazing. Can you just rewind a couple of years? So you said you were the second year of uh of St. Edmunds Hall taking women. Yes. What was that like? I mean, how how did that play out at the time? Were you aware of it even or or um no?
SPEAKER_00I was quite, I mean, absolutely naive about Oxford and Cambridge. So I was sent on a day, took a friend with me, and we went to have a look around the colleges, walked into St. Edmund Hall, which is nicknamed Teddy Hall, walked in and it had the prettiest quad. Yeah. Uh beautiful old buildings, you know, a lovely tree. It was a sunny day, and I just thought, oh, this is the one I'd like to go to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I wrote my application out and said, um, made that my first choice and picked two other colleges to follow on. And I had a very charming letter back from them saying, Thank you so much for applying. But currently we are a men's college.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_00We are considering taking in women, and we'll let you know if that change changes. So I was really embarrassed that I'd accidentally, you know, not even done my homework well enough. I thought, yeah, no way anyone's gonna offer me a place if I can't even tell whether it's a college that um takes in girls or not. But then I got a letter back from them a few months later saying we are going to take girls in starting from next year. So if you'd like to keep us as your one of your preferred lists, we're happy to uh offer you an interview.
SPEAKER_01And yours is the first application we've ever. Yeah, you're front of the queue. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Brackets, idiot. So um, yeah, so I so there were about probably half a dozen girls, maybe that had been in the year before me. Yeah, and then there were maybe 15 or 20. So out of you know, three or four hundred uh students, there were in total 25 girls, I think, when I got there.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So you you had you had a good three years there, you did your PGCE, and then you went off and taught in a comprehensive, you said? Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so um so what tends to happen is you do your teacher training in various schools, and either that school offers you a place or the teachers there kind of recommend other schools to you, and I was recommended a school that was fairly close by, and they had a vacancy for a teacher of English and drama. Yeah, um, so I I'd done my PGC in English and I had picked two secondary subjects that often get put with English, one was drama, one was special needs. Yeah, so I thought, well, I'll have a go at applying for English and drama. So I turned up at this school, which was on the edge of Northamptonshire, okay, a newly built comprehensive school, um, just full for the first time. Their first you know, time their intake was full right way through to sick form. And I funnily enough, I turned up for my interview, uh, bearing in mind this is a long time ago, with a red blouse and a navy blue suit, yeah. Um, you know, kind of dressed to impress for my interview. And I was sitting outside the head's office waiting to be called in, and a sort of busy bearded guy bustled past and sort of snapped at me, you know, take that necklace off, that's just not safe around school. And I thought, oh, okay. So I took it off and I thought, you know, probably there's lots of rules about what you can and can't do. And then when I went into the interview room a couple of minutes later, he was sitting as part of the interview panel and he burst out laughing when I came in and said to me, Follow me, and you'll see what I said to you about your necklace, and opened the door to the hall, and there was a whole sea of children in red shirts and navy blue suits and uniforms.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. That is terrific.
SPEAKER_00So I think I don't know whether they were more entertained than anything else. Again, nowadays you would have websites and brochures to find all these things out, but I had a written job description, yeah. Uh no pictures to go by. So, yeah, so I did the interview, got off of the job, and started there a month or so later.
SPEAKER_02And and how how did your how was how was your teaching career?
SPEAKER_00I did it for three years and um I really enjoyed it. I think I was good at it. So really liked the children. It's a very rewarding thing to do. It is incredibly hard work. I mean, people that think a teacher's life is easy obviously have never lived with a teacher or know the life of a teacher because it's a long day, lots of marking, lots of preparation, and those fabled long holidays are used up by you know being given lots of extra things to do in prep and everything else uh in the holidays, too. And I and I you know I really enjoyed it very much, but when I got to about my third year, the teachers were going on strike a lot at the time. Yes, and um they kept docking our pay every time that we went on strike, and it's very difficult in a school you can't not go on strike if everybody else is going on strike. And I think one month I got my paycheck in and I had so little money in it that I thought I'm just not going to be able to continue to do this. Yeah, I was supportive of my colleagues who were trying to run families on a teacher's salary, but for me as a youngster starting out, probably the salary was okay to live on in the area that I was in, but I definitely couldn't live on 20% of it, so I was really struggling. So I thought, oh, time for a change. So I telephoned all my friends to find out what they did. And teaching is emotionally engaging and emotionally draining. There's a lot of sort of social work aspects to teaching as well, and I think as a youngster, some of it was a bit kind of overwhelming sometimes. And you know, a lot of the friends and colleagues were a lot older than me. I mean, you'd sort of go to a party and it would be more like a middle-aged group of people partying. So I rang all my friends to ask what they did. You know, I know you're a stockbroker, but what does a stockbroker actually do all day? And one of my friends was a guy called Neil Quick, who was a media planner at Ogilfe's, and he described what he did, and I thought it sounded really interesting. So I thought, that's what I'll do. I'll go and be a media planner.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I wrote a slightly cocky letter to the media director at Ogilfe's saying that I met Neil and he told me what a media planner did. Yeah. And drawing analogies between teaching and really children and a media planner. And I think he was quite entertained and invited me in for an interview. So I went straight to the media director, was interviewed and offered a job, and then realized later that you probably were meant to go in through the kind of graduate scheme and go through a different process and get allocated out into departments. But I just went straight for the one I was interested in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You can't beat a good cocky letter from time to time. Seems to have served you well then. So so from there then, Sarah, can you can you maybe give us a a sort of career synopsis? You know, how how how you you've sort of mentioned how you started out, but what happened, how did you get to where you got ultimately?
SPEAKER_00So I joined Ogreface, and you know, in in an interview they said to me, because you've been at work three years already, you know, how are you going to feel about coming in and working for people who maybe will be your age or younger than you? That didn't bother me at all. I just wanted to go in. I was quite confident if I went in and did well, yeah, yeah, then I would move through as well. And I that that certainly wasn't you know kind of a problem for me at all. So I started off the and Ogilvis at the time had separate media planners and buyers. I was very lucky. I was put with somebody called Mandy Pool, who was fantastic and was a brilliant kind of coach and mentor, very well regarded. Um, you know, you learn, don't you, from watching people that you you know think are great and that uh you kind of feel that you'd like to model yourself on. She was you know interesting, she was interested, she was always calm. She very rarely kind of um flapped or got anxious about anything. So I just kind of modelled her style. We worked on some really interesting accounts I had at Portfolio that I was you know really fascinated by and liked working on. Yeah. And I just kind of plugged away and you know started to learn my craft really and trying to you know kind of understand it was back in the days when you didn't have to do you know all your own kind of data research, instead you handed your questions to a research team that came back with big computer printouts and look at. Um, but it was an opportunity to you know start to really think about what makes people tick. Um, I think I'd been lucky in my life up till then that I had been exposed to a very broad church. You know, I'd had people from all walks of life, have been in the public sector, now I was over in the private sector, yeah. I'd been in a you know, kind of state schools, I'd been in Oxford. So I'd had a very good kind of grounding of meeting lots of interesting people of all types. Yeah. And I was just really fascinated by what makes people tick. You know, what makes you one day want to buy something that you didn't want to buy the day before? What makes you choose that particular product or brand? And what could I do to make it more likely that you would buy it? I found really interesting. And back to my topic. I like the variety of sectors and segments to learn about. I'm really interested in businesses. So I liked understanding of MCG businesses and car tire businesses and yes, alcohol businesses, and yeah, financial businesses, and you know, how they all behave differently and people buy from them.
SPEAKER_02And you mentioned Mandy as being quite influential at in the early part of your media career. What what was it? I mean, you've you've spoken a bit about what you know to what extent did did she influence your behaviours at that early part of your career, do you think?
SPEAKER_00I think that, and yeah, I don't know whether this was just an innate skill that she had, but she would give you just the right amount of guidance, but she would let you work on your own and do things on your own and learn from your mistakes. So she she wouldn't let you, you know, kind of fall over, but she stretched you. So I definitely wasn't over-supervised.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00And she was very encouraging. She gave you lots of good positive feedback about things. You know, she picked up on where you put lots of effort in. And she would have interesting conversations about why you thought what you did. Yeah, she would really make me think about why had I picked that or why had I done that. So she was, you know, kind of intellectually curious as well, I think, and asked very good questions. I absolutely loved working for her, and she she went you know up through the business and eventually was the CEO of the whole place.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00But she uh went once it became mind share, yes, um, and then went on to Cantar afterwards. But yeah, I really enjoyed working with her, and um, you know, she was also good fun as well. She was very kind of warm, yeah, warm northern personable and incredibly likable person. And she went on maternity leave at one point, and I worked for a little while with somebody else who was also you know very talented and very nice to work with, but was much more kind of this is what I'd like you to do, this is how I'd like you to do it. Right, okay. And when she came back from maternity leave, I sort of wore out you know the carpet between our two desks for the morning saying, Is this okay? Are you happy with this? And when it got to about 11 o'clock, she shut the door and said, Now sit down. Now what's happened?
SPEAKER_01Right. Yes.
SPEAKER_00You know how to do these things, you don't need to be asking. Yeah, you're perfectly capable. Yeah. Think for yourself about what to do. Um we slid back into our old routine again. So yeah, very lucky to work with her. Yes. Um and then the other person who I found very uh inspirational, but for a completely different set of reasons, was the media director, who was a guy called Bill Patterson. Um Bill was a Geordie, formidable character, tall, and kind of very kind of direct in his style. And I think he was quite a marmite character, but I absolutely yeah, I loved his Hutspur, I found him very motivating to work for, and I liked his kind of he was very clear what he expected. Again, didn't sweat the small stuff, um, and I I learned a lot from him watching his sort of slightly cheeky style of running business, I think.
SPEAKER_02And and how did all those sort of formative experiences and relationships how how did that help you, do you think, to get to where you got in your career?
SPEAKER_00Um I think it gave me a really good solid grounding in you knowing what I was talking about. Um I really liked the culture at Ogilvie. It was a very you know, clearly still impacted by David Ogilvie's ways, but the modern layers of management had put their own overlay on top of it. So there was a very kind of clear expectation of how to get on, how to behave, and I I kind of took that set of values, I think, and thought you know I like the fact that here you are expected to behave a certain way in order to manage other people. You're expected to not behave a certain way, you know, if you want to get on. And they didn't reward bad behaviour.
SPEAKER_02And how how codified was that then? Were they like rules or was it more unspoken? How did it work?
SPEAKER_00Uh there were some rules, I suppose. You know, you were given books, you know, the Ogre V How to Write Well or the Ogre V way of pulling things together. We had some kind of agreed processes within our team, although those kind of processes were always set up as this is here to help here to help you. Right. Do it another way, that's fine too.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Not spoken in some of the codified things, but I suppose in some of the ways they rewarded there was the Francis Ogilvy Award every year where they'd pick somebody from each department. Okay. And uh you'd all go to a big theatre in London. Yeah. And you know you'd hear what the plan was for the next year. And then each department head would talk about the person they picked and why they picked them. Right. And what it was about them that you know made them worthy of the award. So I suppose in one sense it was modelled all the time. What does good look like? What does successful look like why are we promoting this person to be a manager? Why we're promoting this person to run a team.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Which you know I thought was a very good way of doing things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Because we talk we talk a lot these days don't we about values in marketing broadly and it sounds like there were a strong set of principles and values there. Would would you be able to articulate what they what they were those values?
SPEAKER_00So um at the time at the I would have said running through very clearly was respectful. Yeah respectful of colleagues respectful of clients you know a kind of do your best mentality you work hard work well for somebody to uh try and push for things to be better. Yes that you were definitely always expected to see if you could make things better than they had been previously and be successful. But I think a lot of it was sort of around underneath that kind of um whole David Ogilvy of having respect for the consumer ultimately thinking yeah sort of valuing what you were doing and moving away from the sort of salesy shyster style of reputation that advertising could have.
SPEAKER_02Yes I must say from the outside Ogilvy always struck me as very proper sort of a place yes we do things the right way managed yes um you know that that was very that was certainly very true and and I really flourished there I was there for seven years got on well really got liked all the people that worked there you know had been there a long time I liked the way people were treated um so yeah I stayed and I worked with some other fabulous people um Scylla Snowball was the new business director yeah I learned a lot from her about how to work on new business andrew Robertson was one of my account directors I learned a lot from him about how to look after clients there were some other fantastic cloud servicing people as well that I worked with so yeah some brilliant planners yeah brilliant account planners it was a good place and then thinking personally Sarah and I I like asking people this question um well because I'm nosy basically but but if you think back if you think to the sort of start of your career and that could be when you set out teaching or it could be when you got in into media were you aware of having anything like uh you know what you were setting out to achieve did you have a sort of a plan or or what sort of drove you back then?
SPEAKER_00Do you know what I really didn't I really didn't what what used to happen with me was I would start doing something and then I set I'd suddenly realised what the next thing I wanted was but I never really had a where I'd like to get to in the end. So when I started teaching I wanted to get a promotion I wanted some responsibility for the drama team. Yes and then when I got responsibility for drama I then wanted to have a bigger position in the English department. Yeah it was sort of one step at a time when I was planning to start with as a media planner I think my first ambition was to get my own accounts yes and when I got my own accounts I wanted to win an award for them and when I'd won some awards I wanted to manage somebody yeah and when I got somebody to manage yeah I wanted a bigger portfolio but it was always one step at a time just that next step yeah yeah but I never sort of sat and thought one day I want to be the media director or the managing director uh none of those much further distant roles.
SPEAKER_02But ultimately you did get there. Yes but just by always being the next thing just game one step it's always the next game that football analogy isn't it? Yes one step at a time exactly and and I'm gonna ask you just to put to one side your your natural modesty now because clearly when you do well in business as you undoubtedly have lots of things can can help you but I want you to think about the kind of your skills or knowledge or talents or character traits that have helped you to succeed in your career that perhaps other people don't have so much.
SPEAKER_00I don't know that there's anything that nobody else has but I suppose there's a combination of things aren't there so I'm intelligent I think that helps yeah I see quick ways to do things I can quite often see an answer somewhere I'm quite talkative I think that means I can persuade people I can find a way of expressing what it is that I think or kind of getting heard and curious like you're quite nosy I like the stories I like to understand you know what uh what makes people tick and what makes business tick. Yes I worked very hard and I had a lot of energy I think you know my mum had an adage about if you want something done ask a busy person. Yeah and I think yeah I was always a busy person and I always made the time to do things and fitted time in and worked really hard and that never worried me. You know I didn't find that a difficult thing to do I'm quite good at motivating myself to just come in and crack on with something and get it done. Yeah so that that really you know kind of helped me I think build good relationships with people um I'm quite low ego which I think helps a lot getting on in uh in agencies you know if um other people might have a difficulty working a certain way or in a a certain place I'm quite happy to kind of be quite flexible around a lot of those things you know actually quite collegiate. Yes and I think also I'm very honest. So my one of my core values is honesty and um you know and fair. So I I like to do things I've probably got that ovary properness about me. I like to the right way you know tell the truth do a good job for somebody own up if something's gone wrong yeah yeah treat people fairly and evenly and do what you say you'll do. Yeah and I think that kind of stick of rock value works to build good relationships with people.
SPEAKER_02And and thank you for that that's uh that's that's great. Um I I want to ask so how think about the second half of your career I suppose and and how those early experiences took you to those more senior positions in media agencies and then setting up on your own and then how you've got to where you are with with Oba.
SPEAKER_00Yeah sure so um so I was put up to be a director at Ogilvre's and I was told that I'd been put up to be one very young which was unexpected and I think I was sort of told you've been put up to be a director not yet but well done for being nominated and that put the idea in my head of nice to be a director. Yes. I think because I then thought that sounds thing to do and I went for an interview and got a job at another big agency to go and join there as a planning director so to be on board and also have responsibility for a large portfolio in terms of planning and quite a big team to manage. And I think that was my first big lesson in don't confuse structure and culture. I think it's another big multinational you know similar kind of client portfolio but the culture was incredibly different and as soon as I arrived I just thought ah okay I think this place potentially is not for me. I also had the rude awakening that you have when you've come from somewhere where you know everybody and everybody thinks you're great to arriving where people know nothing about you at all. You know you're working on some of their big important accounts and they can't see what you're made of and I felt incredibly kind of overchecked and supervised to start with there was lots of you know can I see that before you present it kind of which you know no one had asked me that for years. Right. Yeah I found that quite strange to start with but primarily it was a more factionalized place. I think you know at at um Ogilv's media were very friendly with creative well with client services you know you we we were all encouraged to have direct lines of communication I think this well maybe was a bit more split by department yeah um a bit more aligned behind certain characters as some characters didn't get on with each other very well so it was a good experience you know it toughened me up but I decided when I got there that I would stay for a short amount of time and then once it looked appropriate I'd start looking for something new. Yeah and I did that for a a year and then left.
SPEAKER_02Okay so it gosh it's interesting isn't it because I guess lots of people have had that in their career where they they've made a change and almost on day one when you arrive in the new place you think ouch this may not be for me what can can you go into a bit more detail about the difference I mean you've you've explained a bit there but a bit more detail about the difference in culture between Ogilvy and the place you went to um I think that I mean there were still brilliant people there and you know great accounts to work on and I worked on some brilliant things.
SPEAKER_00And some of the people funny enough were the same people you know the people Ogilvy that had gone there who were still the same people. But I think that it made me realise that the culture kind of runs you know deep within a business it was very much structured around client services.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00I think creative was kept at arm's length a bit from other teams um so I just didn't know the creatives in the same way I had and quite a lot of good ideas from a media person would come from talking to the creatives and coming up with an idea together was something that you could do. And although they were very professional you know there just wasn't the kind of the warmth I didn't feel the warmth and the energy that there had been previously. So yeah people sort of came who were lovely individually but I just didn't feel that kind of cohesiveness of it being a type of person that was there. It was just a mishmash of lots of different types of people some of the accounts were very similar but again the relationships just felt a little bit different really and you know it it was a good period of soul searching for me because I what did I not spot when I was being interviewed you know how can I make sure I learn for the next time I want to job somewhere else yeah um and what can I learn from it. There was a sort of um a slightly painful part for me of thinking actually do you know what it's not a bad thing for you to work with a team that don't like each other. It's not a bad thing to work with a client who might want to move somewhere else it's not a bad thing. It's these are all experiences to have yeah see what you can turn around and see what you can make better. But you know they will help you to learn.
SPEAKER_02It's admirable to be able to think that way when you're in that situation. I think it's much easier with the benefit of hindsight isn't it but it sounds like you were thinking about those things at the time sort of live yes and um you know I felt that I had in some ways lived a very charmed life up till that point.
SPEAKER_00You know I just lucked into one thing after another yeah you know I'd wanted to have this new position of responsibility and seniority in a business and I thought actually you know you you can't just get walked through life with being everybody's friend's always lovely it's always a lovely sunny day. Sometimes you're gonna have to put your marker down on something that's not working or call out something you're not happy with. Yes. So I think it was a good life experience.
SPEAKER_02To find out how that life experience served Sarah in the second half of her career and to hear about her setting up a company with what was at the time an unusual working model tune in to the next episode of the Amber Moment. Until then stay amber