Future Factory is a leading business development consultancy helping creative agencies grow. As a founding member, Kimi Gilbert, Managing Partner, has 13 years’ experience working across a range of disciplines and supporting agencies big and small. She has an MA in Human Rights from UCL and, as a proud Asian woman and member of the LGBTQIA+ community, she is a fierce advocate for achieving greater diversity within the creative industries. Gilbert speaks to Intelligent SME.tech about the unique culture at Future Factory and how she delights in being a different type of leader.
Tell me more about Future Factory and what it does.
Future Factory is a business development consultancy that helps creative businesses (especially creative agencies) grow by winning new clients.
When a client takes us on, they get a dedicated Future Factory account team to be their boots on the ground, prospecting and generating fresh leads. Another way we support our clients is by boosting their new business skills through training for their wider team and coaching for their leadership team.
As a founding member, what gap in the market did you see?
I was working with the two founders, Dan Sudron and Alex Sibille, at another new business consultancy in 2011. When they left to set up Future Factory, I went with them.
The gap in the market was the same then as it is now. Agencies have an aversion to sales, yet they need sales if they want to survive. What we identified is that the reason agencies dislike sales is because it’s wrapped up in a whole bunch of negative stereotypes. We wanted to prove that sales could be done in an intelligent, ethical way and that a nuanced, research-based approach to selling would get amazing results.
I think agencies have always been drawn to us because we walk and talk like them – our team’s made up of the types of people they’d have within their businesses and, in fact, we do see ourselves as an extension of their team. We’re honest, we’re nice and we have a lot of fun doing what we do. Agencies buy into that.
What does Future Factory’s growth journey look like?
Dan, Alex and I spent our first summer working from our living rooms. Thirteen years on and we’re about 75 people split across three locations: London, Manchester and Glasgow. In 2023, we were acquired and are now part of the Ingenuity Group, whose mission is to connect the marketing world. So, it’s been quite the journey!
Our desire to help agencies grow is the same as it’s always been, and our business model is largely the same. That said, now that we’re part of a larger group, our clients have access to a whole range of new services that were previously unthinkable. We’re learning loads from our sister businesses and asking ourselves different kinds of questions as we look to enter our next stage of growth.
How have you ensured a cohesive team?
A lot of companies didn’t return to the office after the pandemic. This was never an option for us. Instead, we have a hybrid way of working and we encourage the team to get into the office as much as possible. All those little F2F touchpoints, from having a chat in the kitchen to a brainstorming session with Post-Its, are so important when it comes to creating a sense of togetherness. It’s hard to feel like you’re one team when you’re not actually in the same place!
Emily, our Head of Culture, and her ‘Vibes Team’ do a wonderful job organising team outings so we can enjoy each other’s company and have a laugh outside of work. Our culture is quite unique – people always say they miss it when they leave and it’s something we want to protect.
In addition to the above, we’ve worked hard over the years to be better at comms with the team so that everyone’s on the same page about our goals as a business and how we’re performing. We’re making a conscious effort to be more transparent as we believe it’s the best way to be.
How does daring to be different help SMEs?
Future Factory is an SME and we primarily work with other SMEs. Because we’re an SME, we understand all the highs and lows of growing a business from scratch and I think this empathy is key to our success. I love working with SMEs because of their hunger, their entrepreneurial spirit and their desire to do things differently. There’s less bureaucracy and less red tape, which means more energy and freedom to come up with new ideas and new ways of working. Daring to be different is their whole reason for being.
Your passion is education and learning – what ignited this passion?
I hope this isn’t too cliché an answer but I’d have to say it was my parents. From a very early age, they instilled a love of learning in me and my older sister. My dad used to tell us that knowledge is power and that getting an education is something that could never be taken away from us, no matter what happened to us in life.
Yet even though having a formal education is important and I do believe that higher education should be free and available to everyone, I don’t think fancy degrees are a good measure of intelligence. They’re not the be-all and end-all. Instead, I’m much more interested in and excited by lived experience and all those wonderful things we learn simply by existing in this world and interacting with others. It’s going to sound trite but learning really is a lifelong journey.
You are a fierce advocate of achieving greater diversity within the creative industries. How can SMEs in particular create a diverse workforce?
This is a huge topic but I’m going to keep it brief and give three concrete examples of what we’ve done at Future Factory to try and achieve this. Firstly, we don’t require previous industry experience as a pre-requisite to getting a job with us. Relevant experience is welcome but if we made this a requirement, we’d only be getting certain types of people through the door.
Secondly, the entire team has been trained in understanding unconscious bias and we’ve worked hard to be more mindful of how this impacts the decisions that we make, including who we hire. Currently it’s a team of about five people at Future Factory, across different levels, who get the final say on who gets a job with us.
And lastly, we have relationships with organisations which are doing fantastic work in helping companies create a more diverse workforce. One of our directors, Richard, has done loads of work with Brixton Finishing School and Creative Equals over the years and we’re currently exploring different ways of supporting them.
How do you challenge the stereotypes of job roles?
The number one stereotype we come up against is people’s preconceived notions of what someone working in sales is like and we love turning this stereotype on its head! Our team’s made up of people from all walks of life: creatives, fresh graduates, people who’ve worked in agencies, people looking for a career change. The most important quality we look for when recruiting is if someone is able to build rapport and relationships quickly and effortlessly. It’s impossible to put our team into a box.
Another stereotype I enjoy challenging is the stereotype of what it means to be a strong leader. To me, a strong leader is someone who’s not scared to show their vulnerability, someone who’s approachable and someone who can admit when they’re wrong. I think the stereotype of a strong leader is someone who’s stoic and who has all the answers – that just isn’t who I am and I’m delighted to be a different kind of leader.