Getting Ahead: Spencer Wright

Let the banks go bust, Ill trade you a website for a year of own label groceries. Anyone!

spencerwrightName: Spencer Wright

Company: RPM

Job title: Head of Digital IP & Activation

What made you want to get into brands/advertising/media/marketing? the birth of 3D computer aided design whilst in Architecture.

How did you get into the industry (including relevant qualifications and professional training)? Trained as an Architectural Assistant and saw a whole new generation of opportunities through computer design in 1988. Left to join a small digital repro house in West London and became the trouble shooter as agencies started to use Apple Mac’s in the days before Photoshop.

What was good and bad about your first job.
GOOD: Each day was different from trouble shooting CAD for Richard Rogers and Sir Norman Fosters to helping Purchase Point get computer presentations published digitally overnight.

BAD: people had a reason not to know how things worked with computers but I could never excuse those that didn’t check the obvious and I’d travel to their offices and find out the cable was lose on a monitor… snide wisecracks were the often the order of the day.

List your jobs to date
1988
Day & England (CAD Designer, architecture)
1992 ABA (Digital Design Production Manager)
1994
RPM (Technology Director)
1997 Pixel (First attempt at own start-up)
1998 BrandNet (MD)
2001
UndergroundBLC (MD)
Current The Creatives Inc. (Creative Co-op for Digital IP & TV formats)
RPM (Head of Digital IP & Activation)

What were the best and worst, and why?
BEST: Two achievements, being offered 4 jobs in one day and turning them all down for a 50% on the spot pay rise when I told my boss.

Business wise it would be BrandNet – setting up the UK’s first online consumer survey business and publishing bi-monthly reports in Marketing Week measuring brands use of the internet. Way ahead of it’s time…

WORST: Day & England – The day the first computer arrived in the office and was set-up for training the next day. When everyone had gone home I turned it on have a play with zero computer experience. I ended up executing a command delete/*.* (DOS 1.0 for you old schoolers) needless to say I wiped all the files and I was up all night reading manuals and re-installing stuff. In the morning, no one was any the wiser and I taught the installation guy a few things. I replaced him a week later.

Who has been your biggest inspiration? Steve Jobs – who else is there? The death of DOS was a glorious beginning for all, shame windows followed.

Who in the industry do you most admire? Steve Jobs, without his being creativity would not have got to where it is today. Imagine a life of Powerpoint design v48.2, it would be like serving Angle Delight at a diner party.

What is your biggest achievement to date? Launching BrandNet and engaging directly with over 450 global brand teams who didn’t have a clue what they were doing online, easy pickings?

On what do you base your success so far? Attitude and Vision… or put another way grumpy and narrow minded.

What are your ambitions? Create digital IP that brands execute all their other media activity from… Don’t you know there’s only one future!

Change one thing about your job: The pub opposite

Change one thing about your industry: Get Banksy to hi-jack corporate websites and give digital media a real creative currency, I’m bored with menu’s and headings; contact us and about us, more fool us.

Change one thing about the world: Let the banks go bust, I’ll trade you a website for a year of own label groceries. Anyone!

What is your favourite brand? Jaguar, iconic, historic and modern all in one.

What is the next big brand in your view? JamminSession (want to invest, call me)

List your “media diet: What ever is on the back of the toilet doors in the office.