THE STORY
BACK IN 2013
I was fortunate to enjoy a busman’s holiday to Silicon Valley where I did the bullshit Disneyland for execs trip visiting Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and having a Q&A with Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin. It was cool.
This simple line, screen printed onto watercolour paper that I picked up on the Facebook campus in their print shop got me thinking. What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? Afraid of what? Afraid of failing, afraid of not being able to support my family, afraid of letting myself down. It’s a screen print I see everyday and it’s one that I think has helped me contemplate big decisions.
The people that I met in San Francisco that changed the course of my career were the team at Nurun and
an Irishman called Neil Robinson, ECD at AKQA.
Nurun were doing incredible work. They had recently completed deep ethnography as they redesigned the San Francisco 49ers App. Through this research they were able to create experiences via the app such as food and merch ordering direct to your seat, finding the nearest toilet with the shortest queue, and at the end of the game getting turn by turn directions back to your car. They also took us through their work for Tesla designing the customer experience for the very innovative new stores in Malls across the world. At the time no other car manufacturer had contemplated such a brave move.
Neil was the Executive Creative Director at AKQA in San Francisco.
At the time AKQA was a 400 strong creative powerhouse and Neil was at the pinnacle of his career. But he was leaving, citing a radically changing industry landscape.
Over a few beers he explained how he was setting up a different kind of agency that he was designing to use a very different business model. He would have no employees and leverage his extensive network to curate teams based on the client need and not on who was sitting in the agency. This would free him up to say ‘yes’ more and provide significant flexibility regarding the types of work he could do.
With a huge appreciation for human-centred design and in awe of Neil’s fresh business model I returned to Auckland with a lot to think about.
Around the same time my Technical Director and I were exploring an opportunity to break away from the agency we were working for and set up an innovation lab in L.A for Panasonic Avionics. We covertly hosted their CEO over on Waiheke and hashed out an agreement in principal. We both resigned from Designworks but were swiftly convinced to stay by our CEO (read that as he threw a bunch more $$$ at us). However in a serendipitous moment one of my best mates from London just so happened to be in Sydney.
I hopped on a plane and it took 2 pints in the Argyll pub in The Rocks to realise I had to leave Designworks.
So we resigned again and continued to work on the details of the deal through our non-compete period. It was at this stage that I founded D&Co to keep myself busy and also joined Principals part time to set up their experience design offering across New Zealand and Australia.
At the same time I threw myself into a renewed learning journey studying at Cooper in San Francisco, Luma Institute in Sydney and devouring new books and online courses.
In the end the innovation lab fell through which was a huge blow but then again D&Co wouldn’t have become what it is today had the lab been green lit.
So D&Co became the core focus.
At the same time I also set up an In-flight Entertainment business called Mavn with my old Technical Director. We had a few opportunities to pitch for large airline inflight entertainment design work. We got down to the final 3 agencies for United Airlines and flew to Chicago to pitch our nuts off. The thinking and the creative were up there, and super progressive, but 2 guys from Auckland against big global agencies didn’t make it, but we did beat Designworks and got down to the final three.
Back to our friends at Principals. After around a year and a half of consulting across Australasia and growing the brand experience part of the agency, they offered me an earn in directorship. That was a huge deal and most folks would have grabbed the opportunity and I certainly spent an inordinate amount of time considering it. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for D&Co, their ELT refused to acknowledge the value I had built up in D&Co and with that I made the shit scary decision to reject their offer and go for it with D&Co!
Fortunately I had already secured Fonterra as a client and had multiple opportunities to chase down. It didn’t hurt that I was asked to give a keynote talk to around 600 folks at a Spark Digital conference. The trouble with that was that I’d get anxious just giving a team update on a Monday morning! But I couldn’t say no and so I threw myself into designing the keynote and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. The talk went down so well that the organisers asked me to do it all over again the next day at an internal employee conference.
So D&Co was properly off the blocks, and in each year of the business we’ve continued to grow and develop, bringing in exciting new clients, welcoming brilliant new team members, securing incredible projects and landing systems and processes to help our clients with their brand, customer experience and innovation efforts.
After the initial shit scary keynote for Spark Digital a wave of exciting keynote invites came in from the likes of TVNZ, ASB, Foodstuffs, Mitre 10, OfficeMax, PSFK, ABB, Bupa, Caci Clinic, and others. While I really enjoy giving keynotes, I’m still terrified every time!
One of our early opportunities was for Scott at Z Energy to facilitate a design sprint exploring the future of loyalty. This project led to the likes of Fastlane and Sharetank - products that have made a significant difference to Z’s business and increased customer loyalty and spend. And it’s been cool to work with Scott on multiple projects, for multiple brands, over the years.
The Future of Loyalty project was one of the first Simon and I worked on together. Despite almost cutting his thumb off while building the final artefact, Simon and I have now been working together for almost 8 years. It’s been a really rewarding journey collaborating on so many epic projects over the years.
Simon and I have worked on hundreds of very cool projects together, but one that really stands out is Future Moves - a really creative endeavour where we riffed on some epic ideas landing on a pop up experience using Xantia board. Fun times.
Speaking about Z Energy, I helped Cerebos win a significant new account in Z. As a bit of a thank-you I got taken out for lunch and at the end of the meal the client asked me to pop back to his car. He opened the boot and there was a Rocket coffee machine with all the trappings as a thank-you for helping to win the account!!!
One of D&Co’s longest standing clients is Anchor FP. Remembering back to one particular project it was fun to help Suse and the team with a major campaign for Malaysia. The only problem – I was heading back to Scotland for a wedding, but with a bit of in-lounge and in-flight working we managed to pull it off and made a big difference. Suse has become a good friend and we did some incredible work together over the years.
We’ve enjoyed team and client events and boozy xmas parties, but around 2018 I decided to stop giving clients gifts at Xmas and instead gave tens of thousands of dollars to charities like Eat My Lunch, Help for Hospo and the Auckland City Mission. I feel very privileged to have been able to do so and we continue to support our local community and causes close to our heart.
But we’ve still had some fun times with our team and clients. We introduced the D&Co Supper Club. Yes, it sounds like a scene from Bridgerton, but in reality, it’s a chance to get together with some truly interesting people for an intimate, creative and innovative dining experience. We host these cool events at Paris Butter’s Test Kitchen Tuesday where the chefs got to experiment and we got to kick back and have a good yarn.
But then Covid hit us. What a cluster f**k! But we cracked on and miraculously became busier than ever working closely with Mitre 10, Fonterra, Anchor FP, Foodstuffs, WEL Networks, Meridian and a big CX project for Southern Cross working through the crazy first lock down!
Out of lockdown came an incredible challenge for Fonterra at Fieldays! Fonterra asked us to create an activation experience for their significant stand at Fieldays and boy did we deliver.
The Tanker Roadie experience was born. Our team came up with the idea of branding a tanker and fitting out a shipping container with a tanker simulator and recording studio. In addition we created a bespoke game and a series of supporting activations.
Fonterra were let down by their original fit-out supplier, and asked D&Co if we could pick up this significant job with only four weeks to go!
That meant buying a shipping container and doing the full fit-out! We hadn’t done this type of project before, but as luck would have it Naomi and I were having some renovations done at our new home. We reached out to our contractors, Paul and Laine, to see if they could deliver a small miracle. A shipping container was delivered to Devonport and the team got into it.
4 weeks later and we delivered the full experience at Fieldays receiving incredible feedback from Fonterra and Fieldays visitors. The tanker roadie lived on beyond Fieldays, travelling up and down the country, visiting multiple Farm Source outlets, schools and other locations.
“It would be an understatement to
say we pulled off a project miracle! Our team of 20+ worked day and night to get the tanker experience ready in time for its Fieldays debut.
”
Russell Douglas Founder & Principal Strategist D&Co
In August of 2021, Naomi and I bought a beach side retreat, but then we hit the massive 5 month Auckland Covid lockdown (August through 15th December) which drove us all crazy. Throughout this time, to keep us sane, we worked on branding the snizzle out of ‘Paina Lodge’ which was a tonne of fun and included everything from naming, a fresh new visual identity, brand story, brand video, photoshoot, and a number of activations throughout the lodge from bespoke artwork, cheeseboards, a welcome booklet and summer magazine. Every little detail was considered, right down to branded coat hangers!
In 2022 Naomi and I were approached by the Devonport Rotary Club, who wanted to feature our home in the ‘Fine Homes of Devonport’ charity fundraiser.
Initially, we weren’t too interested, thinking it might feel a bit stuffy. However, our electrician convinced us to participate.
One of his suppliers offered to donate $10,000 if we included our home, as their new smart home technology had just been installed in our house. We agreed on one condition: that we rebrand ‘Fine Homes’ to simply ‘Homes of Devonport’ and expand the range of homes featured.
And so, Homes of Devonport was born. D&Co donated a significant amount of our time to rebrand the event and raise substantial funds for Dementia Auckland, a cause close to my heart, as my grandfather suffered from dementia.
We’ve continued to support Homes of Devonport in 2024, raising over $90,000 this time around.
D&Co’s longest standing client is the lovely Teresa. I first worked with T back in 2015 on a big product launch and community platform for Anmum when she was at Fonterra. T and I have worked on multiple projects since, including Good Together, a tonne of internal and external brand work and I’m delighted that she reached out to me when she moved to SeaLink.
Late in 2022 T reached out to us for help with rebranding SeaLink, starting out with the interior and exterior branding for a ferry! Since then we’ve had a tonne of fun working across the brand and continue to support the team with a range of brand and marketing activations.
As we’ve grown, the D&Co team are now far and wide, from Edinburgh in Scotland, to Plymouth in England, Nelson, Christchurch, Wellington and of course Auckland. Now more than ever I strongly believe in catching up in person to celebrate our wins, bond a team and kick back and enjoy each others company with good food and wine.
From the early days of D&Co to today it’s been an incredible journey and I’m so proud of what we’ve created, the team we’ve built and the clients we’ve partnered with. Here’s to the next 10 years!!!
