After ten years of running a creative agency called Flying Object, some questions just keep coming up. Tom, one of our co-founders, has a stab at answering them.

Why are you called Flying Object?

Naming things is hard. Just ask the people who make Coco Pops, who in a bid to align their brand architecture (or something like that) spent a torrid few months defending a name change to Choco Krispies before caving to the whims of the Great British Public and reverting. Early name ideas for what became Flying Object included "Step 3", from the South Park underpants meme; "Wax Lyrical", which I quite like but sounds like a theatre company; and "Ball of Wax", which is a terrible name and I don't know why it's on a doc called "Name This Company" that is still on our Google drive. But number 1 on that list, and what we were seriously considering for a couple of weeks, is Unfamiliar Horse. Tim (my co-founder) even bought the domain name.

An unfamiliar horse is what competitors of the modern pentathlon are confronted with for the "riding a horse" part of that event, unfamiliar presumably because it levels the playing field. I am glad we are not called Unfamiliar Horse. Imagine spending a decade explaining parts of the modern pentathlon to bemused clients, assuming that they even let us through the door.

The doc led to some word association and, I think via Unfamiliar we got to unidentified, and thus to Flying Object. I remember not wanting the name to start with "un" as it was a negative prefix. And obviously I'm right because no successful agency has been started with a name beginning "Un" ever since. But anyway, the answer to why we are called Flying Object: because it's a better name than Unfamiliar Horse.

What made you start Flying Object?

As anyone who has been anywhere near us in the last decade will now know, Tim and I used to work at Google. We started in 2006, when the Google brand was almost magical and marketing felt a bit unnecessary, so we had small budgets and a “scrappy” mindset that focused on coming up with ideas that used what we had - mostly the product - and launching them. By the time we left in 2013, Google had to actually sell things, or convince people that they needed a product they didn’t realise they used (new browser, anyone?), and so budgets were a lot larger and creative was being done by agencies. 

And in short, we preferred the first bit. 

We also felt that other companies would appreciate a bit of that Google point-of-view, enough to take a chance on two former marketing managers who had never worked at an agency before. And that must have been a good insight since I’m still here writing this, and now I have ten years’ agency experience. 

Sorry, which one of you is Tim?

That one is Tim. And don’t worry, staff members who have worked here for years still get confused. I don’t know if any other alliteratively named founders have this problem, but differentiating between Tim and Tom has been a constant struggle for everyone we’ve met over the years. Sometimes Tim tries to tell clients that Tom with the o wears the round glasses, but somehow that never sticks. Maybe we need name badges. Or the other day Tim called me Paul - we’ve only known each other for 17 years - perhaps I should try that. 

What does your creative agency do exactly?

In our earliest creds decks we talked a lot about “engagement not interruption”, and how you should not rely so much on banner ads but instead actually do things that make people feel positive about your brand. Broadly speaking, we’ve stuck to that. 

Nowadays we do more advertising, so there’s a bit more interruption in what we’re making. But the overall promise, to make stuff people like - even if we are interrupting their media consumption to show them - remains the same. 

Exactly how we engage them is the fun bit. We’ve made an art exhibition, a three hour live stream, a 10 minute guided meditation (narrated by a drag queen), lots of six, ten and fifteen second videos, a pastiche visitor centre for a meme community, a video for a jewellery brand and jewellery for a video brand, a feature film - you get the idea. The actual medium isn’t so important, it’s what you do with it that counts.

Hi Insert Name, Do you want 5-10 highly qualified leads every month through our patented system?

Honestly, I get this email maybe three times a day, every day. How many new business companies are there? Is it some kind of front? Why is everyone offering almost exactly the same thing? If everyone is offering the same thing how can all their approaches be as unique as I’m being told? And how are they still in business given they seem to have only one tactic and it’s obviously not working?

What’s the best pub round here?

We’ve been in Farringdon for 9.5 of our 10 years (after a brief stint in London Bridge), and our five premises have all been within a few hundred metres of each other. Farringdon wasn't particularly cool when we moved there - though an early client referred to it as "east London", much to my surprise - but it has a charm that comes from an odd collision of old professions: the selling of meat, the forging of jewellery, the haggling of legal documents. I could make a metaphor for running an agency out of this but there's no need. The silverworking bit was useful for when we made jewellery for the aforementioned video company. 

Anyway: for old school, go to the Mitre off Hatton Garden; to go back in time try the Holy Tavern; for food, the Eagle; or just a nice, easy place to sit, the Betsey Trotwood. 

Do you have any jobs going?

Usually, no. We've hired quite slowly and carefully over the years, building a team we're really rather proud of and a work culture that people seem to enjoy. We could have sought out investment and multiplied the size of the team, but we never thought that would end up with better work being created and would lead Tim and I away from doing work to being just managers. So by comparison to many agencies, we're quite small, by design, and reaping the benefits of that - as do our clients, we believe. It doesn't stop us from punching above our weight and delivering big brand campaigns for blue chip companies. 

If we do have an open role it'll be on weareflyingobject.com/jobs

What's next for Flying Object?

This comes up a lot. And the answer is - I don't know, more of this?  A lot of what we set out to do early on has become increasingly core to standard brand building, particularly with the rise of social-as-ad-platforms which has put more emphasis on engaging content. This has given us new ways to use the skills we have. There’s also new areas to go into - we’re doing an increasing amount of brand strategy and design at the moment, for example. So I guess you could say that after ten years we’re still learning new things. Is that too trite a message to end on?