The work still has to win someone over

Agency work is judged outside the room where it was approved. I first felt that clearly with Palmdream Coconut Water, a physical product I had designed and could pick up.

We had taken a more visually adventurous direction than the competing proposals. In a presentation, that choice could be argued for. On a shelf, it had to hold up on its own, beside everything else someone could choose.

Seeing it there, among its neighbours, and judging whether it stood out has stayed with me.

The Ooredoo campaign with Paris Saint-Germain approached attention from the other direction. Instead of waiting to be noticed, messages from the online experience appeared on the side boards during a PSG game, in front of fans who had come for the match. The digital idea became part of the match itself, and it was one of my first major award wins, including a Clio.

Shoppers and fans were outside the agency. On Samsung Infinity Stage, the first people to win over were closer to home.

At Cheil Worldwide, our COO had the initial idea for a virtual launch destination, and I was tasked with figuring out how it would work: what people could do there, which capabilities would make it useful, and what we could actually build.

The objection was understandable. People could already watch a product launch on YouTube, so why would they come to another destination? The capabilities we imagined did not seem, to everyone, like enough reason to create something new. That doubt put a useful question at the centre of the design.

Our answer was to let people act on their interest while the launch was still happening. They could watch, take part in polls, and explore the product as its features were demonstrated. A virtual device gave them something approaching a hands-on experience: they could rotate it and look around it.

There was also an immediate path to purchase within the destination. Someone who became interested during the launch could act there, without being sent elsewhere to begin another journey. The design work was in connecting the demonstration, the exploration, and the decision to buy.

The result I remember most clearly is two purchases. These were high-value devices, and the site had little to no marketing support. Two is a modest number, but against the doubt surrounding the project it mattered: people had come to the experience and bought through it.

None of these ideas reached a shelf, a stadium, or a launch without a client willing to hear them. The way you explain a choice, respond to feedback, and understand a client's concerns affects what you can make together.

In an agency, the business is never something you can take for granted. You move quickly, find another route when something changes, and make the value of the work visible.

Inside an organisation, it is easier to assume the relationship is settled, or that there will be time to demonstrate value later. I try not to.

When I design a feature now, I also think about how I would introduce it to a customer. What would I say about it? What would they recognise in it? How would I want them to feel?

Agency work made those questions part of how I design, because the story shapes what gets built.

A mentor in my first job pushed me past the first level of ideas, to keep looking for the insight that makes another answer possible. In product design, it is easy to find twenty products that solve a problem and repeat the familiar answer. I still want to know whether there is a more imaginative way to solve this particular one, while keeping the result intuitive.

Agency life taught me to keep looking long enough to find it, and then move quickly enough to put it in front of the people it has to win over.