A few weeks ago I received an email from Kellan Craddock, a student at the Art Institute here in Portland. As part of his classwork he needed to interview some people “in the industry,” and it was my pleasure to write up some responses to his questions. More importantly, it’s opportunities like these that remind me to continually think about the industry, our company (Substance), and what I wish someone had told me as I was finishing up my education and heading out into the real world. With Kellan’s permission, I’m republishing the questions and answers below, so if you need something like this for a school project, here you go (it’s like open-source interviewing).
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(Kellan Craddock) How was Substance the company founded?
(Stephen Landau) I could probably write something about how it was founded because David Lowe-Rogstad and I wanted to “do something different” or “fill a need we saw missing in the interactive industry” but really Substance was founded because David and I wanted to be able to answer to three people: our spouses, each other, and ourselves. This belief that doing what we think is right and important, to do what we call “making meaning,” isn’t really how we started Substance but why we started Substance. And this concept was then applied to what David and I knew how to do… concept, strategize, design and build interactive experiences.
The “how” part is really logistics. David and I agreed to go into business together, we filled out some forms, made it official, bought computers, and got to work.
(KC) What makes Substance such a unique interactive agency?
(SL) I think the thing that makes Substance unique is we execute on our ideas, thoughts and concepts. There are plenty of agencies that say what they think or what they do, but when it comes down to it they’re just not delivering on that promise. As I stated above, David and I started the company to answer to three people and making sure we can live with these answers is what drives Substance. If it was just lip service we’d be working somewhere else. Anyone can say they’re unique; the real trick is executing on what you say. Later, when Todd Moritz joined as a third partner and we brought on people to work with us we made sure that our primary goal is to make something better; we’re not doing our jobs if we’re simply doing good enough.
I also think one of the unique attributes of Substance is the physical set-up. The whole team works around a long table, this massive 24 foot x 7 foot table built from reclaimed lumber. By working around one long table, there are no departments, divisions or hierarchy. I sit at the table just like everyone else. This allows us to actually talk to each other and be in close proximity to each other. You’ve got to be pretty comfortable with the idea of collaboration to work in this type of environment, but the fact that we don’t have walls or desks creates an organic problem-solving culture that simply can’t be replicated through online communication tools or meetings. Every day at the long table is like one big conversation… sometimes we’re talking to each other to solve a problem, sometimes it’s about interactive trends, sometimes it’s about nothing related to work at all. But this kind of camaraderie isn’t created through a mission statement or a “game room” or “creative artifacts.” It’s created through words and actions.
(KC) What is your role at Substance?
(SL) My role at Substance is Creative Director. Basically this means I work with clients to discover and create their brand, then figure out ways to implement this brand through interactivity. Then I get to think about the strategy and creative execution on all this, and sometimes I even get to design stuff. I’m also one of the Principals, which means I get to work with the other Principals in determining the direction and brand of Substance. Finally, I get to challenge everyone else with statements like “wouldn’t it be cool if…”, “can’t we just…” and “why not?” They love it when I say things like that. Maybe.
(KC) What type of clients does Substance work with?
(SL) The polite way to say what clients we work with is, “clients who care about what they do” but really David summed it up pretty well with, “clients who give a shit.” We work with clients who are as passionate about what they’re doing as we are about what we’re doing. Some examples of these clients are the Portland Trail Blazers, Travel Oregon, the Oregon Coast Visitors Association, bambu, and ClimatePath. They’re not all within a specific “vertical” like high-tech or sports or environmentally-conscious, but they all care about what they do.
One of our other most important clients is ourselves. Creating projects like Logobama, SXSW Lesson and augmented reality remixers allows us to experiment with our own ideas, learn from our experiments, and then implement these ideas in other projects when appropriate. We’ve got a wall covered with all sorts of ideas we want to implement; the challenge is finding the time to work on these. Honestly, I see the creation of intellectual property as being an important business decision for any company who wants to be successful in tomorrow’s economy.
(KC) How is collaboration/communication carried out at Substance?
(SL) Collaboration and communication is basically how everything happens at Substance. Because of the long table, collaboration and communication are part and parcel of how the office works. You can’t isolate yourself from the group, which I guess some people could see as a negative, but we see as a crucial way for us to continually do better. If we’re not working together, if we’re not talking, if we’re not aligned to the same goals, we’re never going to accomplish them.
We don’t have an official process of collaboration, it’s simply one of the aspects of our workday, whenever it’s necessary. And sometimes when it’s not… it’s hard not to get involved in other people’s conversations which can in turn result in solutions the original people in the conversation hadn’t thought of. Sometimes the outside perspective helps reframe the problem to come up with a solution. And it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t sitting across the table from each other.
(KC) What is a typical day like at Substance?
(SL) Man, I hope we don’t have typical days at Substance. That would be pretty boring. The day could vary from meeting with a new client to understand what their brand goals are, to figuring out the interactive brand strategy for a client, to writing a blog post for our site, to taking a quick bike ride to get doughnuts, to designing and coding a website. While projects drive what we need to get done any given day, the ways in which we approach each of these projects can differ from the day or even the hour. If any agency tells you they have a typical day, stay as far away as possible. Why do the same stuff over and over?
(KC) Where do you see the future of the interactive industry heading?
(SL) It’s so hard to predict the future, so the best thing we can do is help shape and create the future. Since Substance started over 2 years ago, we’ve always felt it’s important to create conversations between brands and people. Is that the future? Not really, it’s the way it’s always been. But so many companies ignored this idea and decided to create flashy marketing monologues. Sometimes the future is realizing what has been important in the past and simply re-evaluating how to implement those ideas today and tomorrow.
(KC) Do you have any suggestions/tips for a graduating interactive student starting in the industry?
(SL) Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned since I started in the industry are what not to do through the examples of others. Don’t repeat the behavior or techniques that you see others doing that you feel are wrong. Do what you believe. Don’t be egotistical, but be confident. You don’t have to know all the answers, and don’t be afraid to say you don’t know the solution. Part of working in the interactive industry is discovery, collaboration and conversations. Everyone can’t know everything, so it’s important to surround yourself with smart, interesting people that can help come up with the answer. Sometimes it won’t be the right answer, but hey, no one ever learned from not doing.
Care and take pride in what you do. And make sure you love doing it, because you’ll most likely be doing it for your entire life. Life is way too short to be doing something you don’t care about.
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Editor’s Note: I’ve rephrased some of the answers to make a bit more sense… hopefully Kellan wasn’t confused by my first round of responses!
Sounds like you’ve got a pretty great culture within the company that I’d almost define as a “startup” culture. The real trick in going forward, as I’ve personally experienced, is maintaining that valuable culture, especially as you get more and more successful.
For example, I used to work for a web firm where we used to work out of a long one room suite that we nicknamed the “sub” (as it reminded us of a submarine). It was in a somewhat seedy part of town but we all loved it. No matter what was going on in the office, we all knew about it and could quickly jump in and contribute. I actually remember saying that if I ever won the lottery, I’d show up for work the next day, as I loved working there that much.
Of course, as the company got more and more successful, the two owners of it decided that we needed newer digs to represent ourselves better to our clients (since a lot of them were big computer game publishers such as Vivendi, Activision, and Konami). As expected, in the process of moving to newer digs, that closeness that we once had was shattered, as people moved into their own offices.
Even more so the company eventually decided to go public which I personally saw as their death knell. No longer was the focus on the work but on watching the stock price every hour and minute of every day.
All in all, it seemed like the more successful we got and the more attention that was attracted to us, the more we grew apart and the more friction there was within the company. Eventually, with the Dot Com Bomb period hitting us in late 2001/2002, the company finally imploded shortly thereafter.
All said and done, the point of this whole story is that when success comes, guard your culture with your life and don’t take it for granted, no matter how enticing the “trappings” of success might seem to you. You culture is the key to your success and the blood that flows through your company. As long as you can maintain it, you can traverse the worse storms and still come out ahead.
10:42 am / 5 August 2009