What the @?€! is an on-demand creative agency? We’re about to find out, as KAGU’s head honchos Katriin and Gunnar Hunt explain. In any case, they have one goal in mind: to shake up the market.

Katriin, an experienced event marketer and member of the management board of the Estonian Marketing Association, has a few years of freelance work behind her after walking away from agency life, while Gunnar’s last job was as the creative director of Optimist. Now they’ve struck out on their own. But why?

“We’d been working under other people for so long that it was about time we did our own thing,” says Katriin.

Gunnar nods. “When I did my internship at Imagine\TBWA, they asked where I saw myself in five years’ time,” he recalls. “I said I’d have started my own agency, but that for the time being I’d be learning from them. It took 10 years and four agencies in the end, but here we are.”

Lately, both Katriin and Gunnar had started to feel that things had come full circle.

“We already had our own ideas about how an agency should be run,” Gunnar adds. “You wouldn’t go into someone else’s home and tell them their cupboard’s in the wrong place or that they chose the wrong colour for their walls. Better you buy your own little apartment and start decorating it yourself,” he smiles.

How do you go about setting up an agency?

Gunnar: Cooperation’s really the key.

Katriin: For example, event marketing agencies don’t tend to have all that many employees. There are no designers or web designers or people in a bunch of other roles – there are project managers and creative directors. They are used to outsourcing everything else.

I’ve never understood why other sectors don’t do the same thing. Event marketing has shown that it’s an approach that works really well. You don’t have to be able to do everything yourself. There are people on the market who can do certain things better than you. You’re just the brains that bring everything together.

Gunnar: It’s easier to break through internationally as well if you’ve got the brains you need overseeing everything. When people come and work for KAGU, it’s not so much for their skills as it is for their know-how and experience. Our creative director doesn’t have to be a pro at every discipline, but they do have to be familiar with them all. At the same time, they have to be socially adept and have a solid network so that they can find the people the client needs. And they have to be able to guide and supervise those people. Basically, what I’m saying is that there are no entry-level jobs in KAGU.

I’m always on the lookout for superpowers in the people I work with. You might be a great designer who’s been making banners your whole life, but actually your superpower is photo composition, and I’ve got a client who needs to sell their product using powerful images.

Katriin: CEO’s always worry that big clients will put together their own in-house teams. That’s perfect for us! We can serve as their strategists and creative leaders.

Gunnar: We can teach creative writers and designers how to bring a brand book to life. I’ve also been telling our clients of late that I’m their creative director for hire. But the same applies to, say, digital agencies that provide a specific service. I can help you get the information you need from your client and put together a marketing narrative. A strategist for hire!

That’s the magic of our on-demand agency. You don’t need a whole team for every single problem, but you do always need a good creative director, a great strategy, an experienced producer and accurate accounting.

Our partner network also include other agencies, so we don’t necessarily turn to freelancers straight away when a client comes to us with something – if we need to, we bring an experienced agency on board. With us, you have the whole market at your fingertips.

Our own superpower is definitely branding. Katriin’s experienced in bringing people together and finding solutions to impossible problems, while my strength lies in pinpointing insights and communicating brand stories, whatever the format, whatever the field. We understand what’s needed. For want of a better term, we’re creative middlemen.

I was just thinking that – that you’re like intermediaries.

Gunnar: Right? ‘On-demand creative agency’ doesn’t really translate into Estonian. That’s why we ended up with loovusvahendusagentuur (literally ‘creativity mediation agency’ – Ed). We can help you find solutions to your problems without that being restricted to the options available in our agency alone. As the saying goes, the world’s our oyster. We don’t recommend a new website to a client just because our UX designer is twiddling their thumbs.

But why shouldn’t the client just go directly to the other agency? Why does it have to be through you?

Gunnar: Because we know how to communicate their brand in every format. The client trusts us, and we shoulder the majority of the brand manager burden for all of their ideas. We’re the marketing director’s secret weapon, the trick they use to make their life easier. We offer consultation and know-how. And sometimes we argue!

Some might say that now isn’t the best time for a new agency…

Katriin: We’ve talked about this a lot with other agency managers we know. They all say the best agencies emerge during times of crisis.

Gunnar: Not to put too fine a point on it, but the market’s a mess right now. Everyone’s limping their way through it, to some extent.

We can pretend we’re limping as well, but in fact we’re only just learning to walk! (Laughs) And when things pick up again, we’ll be ready to keep pace with everyone by then. It’s good way to learn how to walk while already competing in a race.

Katriin: We don’t have the baggage of having to put bread on the table for everyone, either. Basically, we only need to feed our dog.

Gunnar: And he didn’t want anything this morning! (Laughs)

You mentioned breaking through internationally. Does that mean you’ve set your sights beyond Estonia?

Gunnar: Yep, that’s one direction we’re definitely aiming for. Once our system’s in place in Estonia, we’ll be able to sell it anywhere. If someone in, say, Switzerland asks you who you are, then you’re on the same footing as you are in Estonia anyway. KAGU will be offering its on-demand creative agency service anywhere and everywhere.

Even as recently as 10 years ago, that sort of approach wouldn’t have worked. But after the digital changes and the green transition and the generational shifts and the Euribor fiasco, the market’s embracing us. We’re not the first people in human history to put together an on-demand agency, but in this country, now’s the perfect time for it. The feedback’s been really positive, too. No one sees us as competition.

Katriin: The market’s ready for it, and excited about it.

So you’re not competing with others, but bringing work their way?

Katriin: It’s no different to what I do in TULI – partnering with others. That takes us a lot further than trying to do it alone.

Gunnar: Cooperation’s at the root of it all, really. It’s not just that I have the phone numbers of creatives and heads of agencies and can call them if I want to. I actually keep in touch with them on Slack, and when we write to you, you know something good will be coming your way.

For the moment it’s just the two of you, but how many places are there for other people in your core team?

Gunnar: There are seven tails on our logo, so that’s the limit. We’re living from one Cannes to the next, or from Midsummer to Midsummer: KAGU was born on the 24th of June.

Once we’re a year old, we’ll see if we need a permanent, in-house AD. If we do, finding them will be a challenge. They’ll have to be as sharp, hungry and geeky as we are, and share the KAGU mindset.

We’ve talked quite a bit about cooperation. Is that a problem right now, that people aren’t interested in working with others?

Katriin: It really is. I’m always being asked who’ll get the Golden Egg when I’m working on projects with other people. Cooperation’s complicated. It’s not something people are used to doing. All agencies have their own playbook they operate by.

Gunnar: We’d like to see the 20-30 agencies who do the rounds at the Golden Egg each year doing great things together rather than pitting themselves against one another all the time.

Katriin: Huddling in a corner on your own gets you nowhere.

What else have you got in your sights? What more do you want to shake up?

Katriin: Apart from the market as a whole, you mean?

Gunnar: Data was really popular there for a while, but now simple-stupid creativity is in again. I don’t think anyone should be aiming for extremes. Data and creativity need to partner up. You need data from the client so that your creative solution isn’t just a piece of art, and you need creativity so that the marketing materials you create for the client aren’t just some bland, dry announcements.

When I was summing up my 10 years of learnings, I wrote on the whiteboard “1 + 1 = (scribble)”. That formula helps us and our clients find solutions that combine creativity and brand to create something new, something memorable, something functional.

Katriin: 1 + 1 = KAGU. Simple!

Gunnar: That’s the method I’ll be sharing on the stage at Cannes.

Katriin: Those are the sorts of mini-goals we have – making it to Cannes within three years!

You’re really aiming for Cannes?

Gunnar: Yes, but not for prizes – to tell our story.

Not for prizes? Just to get up on the stage?

Katriin: I mean, I’m sure we’ll win the prize at some point!

Gunnar: Plus our aim is to do something so good, so effective, that the whole world wants to hear about it. Our tagline is ‘The Creative Wolfpack’, which is what we ourselves are, and good solutions always boost the client’s own wolfpack – the cult that’s grown up around them.

Katriin: ‘Creative wolfpack’ is our promise to the market as well. When we do things together, we do them better.

Is there anything you miss about working for big agencies?

Katriin: The company retreats in summer! (Laughs)

Gunnar: I miss the freedom to fall flat on your face some days a bit. You can’t afford to do that when you go out on your own. You can allow yourself the occasional stumble, maybe. But if I fall, then I’ll land face-first on my own system.

Katriin: I’m not afraid of falling. That’s how much faith I have in Gunnar! I’ve been freelancing for the last two or three years, so the clients are there. That provides a safety net, however intangible.

Gunnar: Katriin also has a s***tastic nose for money! (Laughs) Not just for earning it, but for managing a client’s budget as well. They come to the table with a non-existent amount of money and it just seems to disappear. But it doesn’t – Katriin knows exactly where every penny goes.

Katriin: And credit where it’s due – I haven’t seen a single brand fail to take off under Gunnar.

KAGU comes from the letters of your first names?

Katriin: No no, the compass point! (Kagu is Estonian for ‘south-east’ – Ed.) If you get lost in the woods, all you have to do is look for some moss on the trunks of trees or on rocks and you can plot your way north or south. But we don’t encourage people to go north – we beckon you south-east. KAGU’s an unexpected direction to take!

Gunnar: It was only once we got into what we were doing that we realised KAGU was a sort of portmanteau of our names. So it works on two levels!

What prompted you to join TULI?

Katriin: Now that really was not an unexpected direction! (Laughs) We want to evolve the market, and we have a lot to offer to the community.

Gunnar: I’ve been active in TULI in every agency I’ve worked for. They’re encoded into everything we do.

Why? Because the only way to make a difference in this field is to be part of TULI. Well, there is another way, which is to moan and whine, but that takes so much longer!

By the way, the first costs we incurred as an agency were for our branding and joining TULI. It was just a natural step.

Katriin: Playing an active role in TULI is written into our statutes. What kind of agency or marketing company are you if you’re not a member of the Estonian Marketing Association?

Author: Siim Kera (TULI)

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