Culture

London Week - Mother

Continuing the reports of the third year's London Week, here's a student review of the recent visit to Mother.


Mother - Will Blackburn

Mother love. On 20th March, Lincoln Creative Advertisers visited Mother London to work within a top London agency. Mother welcomed us with tea, coffee and a slide show of the agency’s history, previous work and current clients. Caroline Heap, Creative Director explained to us that Mother employees abide by three rules.

> Do the best work we possibly can.

> Have fun.

> Make a living.


Do things that will make your mother proud is an agency motto. Mother prides itself on the collaborative efforts of all its sons and daughters. A tool they use to achieve this is using one giant table in the centre of the room; this throws different expertise into the mix that is the creative department at Mother. Accounts, strategists, creatives, finance and directors all sit in no particular order around this table. The dotted effect of various specialists is an attempt to bring down the walls between departments, all for the greater good of the creative process.


The process that Mother focuses on is ‘strategy before media’. Something that sets Mother apart from other agencies is the fact that they employ strategists to work closely with the creatives. Mother must be doing something right, as they remain one of the only large independent advertising agencies in London.

After the presentation strategist Bruno Frankel handed us a day brief. This brief was for a Stella Artois Christmas campaign. We were given roughly four and half-hours to come up with campaigns for a crit later on in the afternoon. This gave us a chance to explore the agency a little bit more. A creative environment of graffiti, giant plastic animals and the famous wall full of framed photographs of employees’ mums.

The crit was set up in a conference room that maintained Mothers core ideology... the giant table. They kindly supplied us with beer and­ crisps (they did their research). The crit was held by Bruno, Ben Heap and was accompanied by a pair of creatives called Ana Balarin and Hermeti Balarin. The crit was very insightful and gave us a real taste of what to expect in agencies. The creatives of Mother liked the variety of ideas put forward in the crit by us all.


The experience at Mother London was informative, insightful and a lot of fun. I feel that this agency has made the students of Lincoln's Creative Advertising course leave London with a strong aspiration of what type of agency they want to work for.

Mother knows best.