After a 9 month break I’ve decided to leave behind my life of leisure for a new roller coaster adventure of fun, inspiration and excitement with the good folks of BERG London.
If you have been hiding under a rock for the past couple of years then you might not already know that BERG are one of the world’s hottest design and tech consultancies and I’m really excited to be joining their team at such an important juncture.
I’ll be taking on a new role of Director of Consulting and my brief is to increase the number of potential collaborations with the most interesting clients and organisations.
BERG already command a hugely influential following within the global design and tech community (you can see some of their plaudits here at bergcloud.com) and the recent launch of Little Printer has created an almighty buzz online.
(If you haven’t already placed your pre-order you can do so here as the first batch are selling out fast!)
Apart from anything else it is just incredibly exciting for me to getting my hands dirty again directly helping clients make better products and services.
So much talk in the ad agency world over the past few years has been about ‘doing’, ‘making things’ and ‘innovating’, but I’ve always been slightly worried that this often siloed approach to innovation within agencies was more of a distraction from the business of marketing and in many cases would be pursued more as a new-business-loss-leader rather than fundamentally changing the way agencies work with clients.
That’s fundamentally why BERG holds such appeal. Rather than just talk about the importance of innovation BERG are out doing it for themselves, making not just their own products but creating whole new platforms and genres of connected consumer products - so in one sense I’ve gone straight to the source.
I’m only a few days in but it is already clear that there is much excitement to come over the next few years and it is great to be back in Shoreditch where I’ve spent most of my career to date and working with such a smart and committed bunch of people - plus Matt, Jack and Matt have made me very welcome already.
I’ll continue to volunteer for the Green Party on the side and have a few other things up my sleeve but for the moment BERG is very much my main bag and I’ll try to blog a bit more often here now that I’m back in the world of paid employment.
You can keep track of all things BERG related by signing up for their week notes at berglondon.com and I look forward to hearing all your comments.