Hello there… It's been a while

We’ve had a three-year hiatus from the blog, three years off Instagram (save for the odd story) and until recently our website hadn’t been updated since 2021. You’d be forgiven for thinking we’d fallen off the face of the earth. Thankfully we haven’t and we’ve been here, beavering away, working through a pandemic, diversifying, adapting and overcoming. 

The last three years have seen us take on some huge new challenges and some big clients, including Global Financing Facility (a subsidiary of World Bank), Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Women Political Leaders. 

Like everyone else, when the pandemic hit, we wondered if we’d survive. Live events, our bread and butter, were wiped out overnight. Before long though, in September 2020, we were back to it but in a totally new format for us. The Reykjavik Global Forum for Women Political Leaders was a virtual event, with nearly 1,000 delegates and millions of viewers via our partners, CBS News. Running an event of this size and scale on a relatively new event platform was certainly a test of our nerves! On the plus side, this new way of running events opened up many doors for us, including a leap into the world of streaming, which has allowed us to run hybrid events with physical and virtual audiences from around the globe. 

As was the case for many of our industry colleagues, we didn’t know if live events would return. We wondered what our business would look like when the pandemic was over. Would The Mammoths still exist? Had everything we had worked towards gone up in a puff of smoke? But we needn’t have worried. Here we are now, at the end of 2022 (how?!) and our business is as strong as it ever was. 

That’s not to say the last 2 years haven’t been tough. We’ve aged a lot and we’ve had some sleepless nights but ultimately, being forced to diversify our offering has been beneficial to The Mammoths, allowing us to grow our client base and work on some exciting new projects.

You’ll be hearing a lot more from us in 2023 so we’ll see you very soon!

The Importance Of Rest

There’s a dirty little secret about doing something you love as a career… it brings with it a whole different set of pressures, because how can you live with yourself if you fail at it? It’s hard to truly switch off. You’re so scared of the whole thing falling apart that it’s very easy not to rest or recover properly. As soon as the fatigue starts to lift you’re off again…

When we founded The Mammoths back in 2012, part of the plan was to try & take the summers off. 2 of our larger events traditionally take place around Christmas & Easter so we don’t really break between September and June. With staff on holiday at different points throughout the summer, organisations traditionally don’t pick this time of year to communicate with them. It’s win-win.

By the time June comes around we’re generally pretty fried & craving a break. For the last 6 years though, within days of switching to holiday mode I’ve started worrying: “What if we lose some business next year?” “Can you really afford to take a break?” It’s always there, niggling away. 

For some reason, this year, 7 years in, it didn’t niggle. I managed to have a complete break & I can’t remember starting the year feeling so fresh, inspired & ready to go again.

So, what did I do for 3 months? Well, there was a family holiday to kick things off & then I overdosed on hobbies and passion projects really; racing bikes & blogging about it for Singletrack magazine, starting a podcast, playing football every Wednesday night before wrapping things up with another family holiday. Oh & I tidied the garage as well. Sure, there’s been the odd client meeting (3 months is a long time!) but none of it’s been too taxing, all done at a leisurely pace.

We’re already nearly a month into Year 8. The nights are already drawing in but the afterglow of an amazing summer still lingers on…

As Good As It Gets?

We’re on fire at the minute. Year 6 is going incredibly well. So well in fact that I’m actually questioning if this is “as good as it gets?” Will we look back on Year 6 & think “that was the one”?

All the projects we’ve delivered have gone exceptionally well but the 2 huge ones, well… When you’re forwarded an email from the Global President of Marketing at Universal Pictures entitled “Smashed it”; when 96% of delegates rate the 2018 Lyreco Sales Convention as Good or Excellent & the 360 campaign has everyone saying “WOW!”; off the back of a “Disruption” campaign that ran throughout 2017 & saw growth across the business of 6% & Lyreco WISE (Wales Ireland Scotland England) being ranked the No 1 Subsidiary globally for growth; you have to sit back & think “good work team”.

We have 3 more huge projects to deliver in Year 6 so the focus is on making sure those projects are delivered to the same standard & have similar impact. We’re pretty deep into the planning of all 3 & I’m confident they all will.

At the same time though I’m already thinking about future projects for Universal & Lyreco & thinking “how do you better that? Where do you go from here?” In my experience, trying to do something similar only yields a poor copy. So, you need to change it, but changing a winning formula has associated risks. You just have to believe that you delivered these amazing projects, you’ll deliver even more, even better ones in the future… 

Rebranding

“Why change it when you’ve been so successful?” It’s a valid question & one that Linda, CEO of The Fragrance Foundation asked me a few months ago. Well, let’s go back to the beginning...

Like many others probably, I always thought that if you were setting up a business you’d spend months choosing the name. Brainstorming, deliberating, considering, & eventually you’d come up with the perfect option. In reality, we decided to set up Mammoth in July 2012 & within a matter of days we’d been appointed to deliver a couple of brand activations for the final of BBC’s Junior Apprentice. Before we could start work we needed to supply a business name for the contract which left us with couple of hours to decide. We went with Mammoth because I’m big & Mand’s ginger (she dyes it a lot), then we chose Events because we knew that would be our core business & we needed a bit of validation.

Fast forward a few years & the work we’re doing has diversified quite dramatically. Yes, events are still at the core of what we do, but add to that standalone video projects, apps, database systems, script writing & music production.

“Well if you’re doing that already, why do you need to change?” is something I wrestled with for a few months & it came to a head when we were invited in to meet the Comms team at Universal Pictures. We’d delivered a couple of big events for another department & came highly recommended. The Comms team have a range of projects & with events in the name I just felt it was now restricting us, pigeonholing us into one category; so we’ve been bold & we’ve changed it. From here on in, we shalt forever be known as The Mammoths. Still big, still ginger (still dying it), still delivering all the ace work we’ve delivered over the last 5 years; just hopefully getting involved in even more diverse projects as well.

New Website

When we were setting Mammoth up, some 5 years ago now, I distinctly remember looking round at other companies’ websites & thinking “this hasn’t been updated for months, that’s terrible, I’d never let that happen” & here we are. We’ve had the craziest couple of years & guess what, we never updated our site. I understand now why it happens. The main reasons? Time & need. When we’re busy delivering projects they take over our lives completely & when they’re back-to-back-to-back as ours have been, you get to the summer & think “I need a break” not “I need to update the website”. That’s the time element, then there’s need. When you’ve got work lined up for the next 12 months it’s more important to successfully deliver that work than it is to shout about it. Anyway, we’ve burnt the midnight oil & we’ve delivered. Rebrand, new website, Instagram the works; hope you like it!

The Model

So, here we are; five years on & I think we can safely say the model works!

Back in the summer of 2012 I remember explaining to people that we weren’t going to have an office or any staff & that everything would be in the cloud & we’d hold all our meetings via Skype & we’d use specialist companies & freelancers to help deliver our project & they looked at me a little like I’d lost my mind; but we believed it was the way forward & now it seems like the most natural thing in the world. In fact, we’re starting to hear of more & more projects that would traditionally have been with huge agencies moving to much smaller ones; the recent Samsung Note 8 launch out in New York is a particular example.

When we initially set up Mammoth Events we tendered for 4 key projects. We needed to win one to survive; two to survive comfortably; three would be brilliant & four; well there’s no way we’d win all four. We won all four & we’re delighted to report that we’re still working with those four clients today. In fact, we haven’t lost a single client in the whole 5 years, but we’ve added a few.

We’re still working with the same trusted suppliers as well. Most of them work at the very highest level for the largest agencies in the land & they deliver the exact same quality for us as they do for them.

The main challenges our model brings is growth. We’re at capacity for 2017/18 & our turnover (barring any cancellations) should be circa £1M once again. Neither of us are greedy & so we won’t take on any more than we can handle, so it’s never going to get substantially bigger; but if you love what you’re doing does it really matter? Sure, we could recruit a couple of Producers to work with us and we could move into more supervisory roles but that would mean handing over the part of the job that we love to someone else and we don’t love running a business, we love producing projects.

So, yes, the model has its limitations but it works a treat!

Success

Sometimes, when I’m still working on a slide deck at midnight or I’m back in the office at 6am, I’ll tweet “this is what success looks like”. I’m being satirical, but it has made me think more about ‘what is success?’ & ‘how do we measure it?’

Growing up in a working class family, success was always measured financially. “They’re well off, he’s got a good job”, “they’ve got plenty of money, she’s got a nice car” The aspiration was clearly to have money. Time was never really valued. No one ever said “he’s got the time to do the things he loves”. “Work hard, do well at school, get a good job” were the mantras that were ingrained in us, as I’m sure they were & still are in many households up & down the country.

Truth be told I didn’t work that hard at school. I had the ability to turn it on when required (I was once referred to as “an enigma” by a headmaster) & consequently I didn’t do that well. I scraped my way into University & then spent the next 10 years working in clubland (which my wife always refers to as “not a proper job”). When that all spiralled out of control at 31 I basically started again, moved into a new sector, worked hard & I’ve ended up with a good job. Not only that, I’ve fulfilled the utopian dream my parents had of running my own business. “You get out what you put in” “you’re working for yourself, you keep every penny” etc. etc.

So, that’s it. I’ve done it. I’ve pretty much fulfilled the dream my parents had for me; I’ve achieved; I should be “over the moon” shouldn’t I?  I really enjoy delivering the projects, & that good job gives me the money to live in a nice house, drive a new van & have 3 amazing bikes sat in the garage. But the payoff is that it doesn’t leave much time to do the things you love. When I totalled it up, I've actually spent more days in London this year than I have riding those 3 bikes & my music project with Matt has slowly ground to a halt.

So, it got me thinking, what is success? Well, I’m now of the opinion that success is having the time & the money. We’ve recently had our first child & I’ll be sure to make sure she values time more as a commodity in her life, because at the end of the day you can always earn more money, but your time here is limited.