David Billing on creating enduring connections between brands and their audiences, and why Above+Beyond is an ‘Agency for the Audience Age’

Career Highlights to date:

2012 – Founding Partner, Executive Creative Director, Above+Beyond
2005 – Head of Copy, The Creative Partnership
2002 – Producer, Songwriter, Remixer, Brutus Productions Ltd
2000 – Communications Manager, JPMorgan FundsHub
1997 – Account Director, Citigate Dewe Rogerson

As Founding Partner and Executive Creative Director of Above+Beyond what is your primary focus?

My job is to ensure we’re creating culturally relevant connections between our client brands and their audiences. That might be advertising – or something else entirely.

Please share a para on your career to date – specifically talking us through the high points.

My career (or careers) have been highly unorthodox, but I’m lucky in that they’ve taken me near some of the most interesting entertainment properties and creators of the past few decades. I started in PR where I discovered the power of the live idea, and how cultural context and news agendas determine the validity and relevance of any story. I then decamped into the music business, working as a record producer, songwriter and remixer for major labels, published by Universal. I worked with Kylie, Sugagbabes, Jamelia, The Verve and Lily Allen amongst others. This segued into working as a creative within the film industry, where I worked on the launch of Avatar amongst other movies. There I started working seriously on a number of other entertainment brands, like LOVEFiLM, Playstation, Wargaming and Betway. And from there, I started my own agency.

What’s unique about your agency / business? Why did you form Above+Beyond?

It’s the unorthodox backgrounds of me and my fellow founder, Nic Ost, that gave us the ability to arrive in this industry with a radically different perspective. We call ourselves an Agency for the Audience Age. In music and film, we witnessed two near-extinction events in which the internet arrived and blew up distribution, discovery and even creation. Look at Netflix. Look at Napster. We came to advertising just as a similar extinction event began to loom, and that’s what we’re here to address. Audiences are liberated, empowered like never before. People are blocking mobile ads and becoming increasingly less receptive to TV advertising. Millennials are disappearing from the linear viewing landscape and they distrust top-down communications. They are their own creators and distributors. 70% of internet traffic will be video by next year, but not much of it is advertising. Our purpose is twofold: first, to make advertising more relevant, contextual and timely than ever before through something we call Modular. Second, beyond ‘advertising’, to create enduring cultural connections between brands and their audiences. To let brands nurture, respect, contribute and even co-create around real people’s passions.

Who are the people new to you (either within your business or externally) who have particularly impressed you in the last twelve months?​​​

It’s an exciting time for Above+Beyond, because we are massively reinvesting in the business to bring our audience-facing vision into reality. I’m meeting impressive people on an almost daily basis. Not least our new CEO, Zaid Al-Zaidy; our new head of client services Tom Bedwell – and myriad strategists, creative and audience people who are drawn by our proposition and want to get involved.

‘For the Love of the Game’ , Betway by Above+Beyond

What has been your agency’s best work in the last year?​​​​​

Betway’s new campaign, For The Love Of The Game, which we’re modestly claiming is the funniest, most high concept idea that the sportsbook category has ever produced. More than that, with the campaign we’ve discovered a lovely cultural truth that squarely lands the brand with its audiences: that football, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s far more serious than that.

Industry wide, what work has excited you most this year?

There’s been precious little advertising that’s excited me. Dominos reinventing itself as a technology company was very interesting, the whole emoji-to-delivery thing is fascinating. In the past few years, I’d say Red Bull’s Stratos gave us a sense of what the future of “culture scale” advertising might look like. Increasingly I don’t think you puncture culture with an ad; you have to create the cultural event itself.

‘Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall from 128k’ – Mission Highlights by Red Bull

Who or what inspires you?​​​

In terms of our industry, our new CEO Zaid Al-Zaidy has been a constant source of inspiration, never letting me fall into lazy thinking or assumptions. I recently got to talk at length with Dave Buonoguidi (Chief Creative Officer of Crispin Porter Bogusky London) and found him to be the brave, tell-it-like-it-is soul I’d always hoped him to be. Outside of that, it’s actually what’s happening in science and tech – one example might be the boundless, borderline-deranged thinking of a visionary like Elon Musk – that inspires me daily. With every year, the boundaries of artificial intelligence, physics, nanotechnology and space exploration are rolled back. It’s terrifying and exhilarating. I do think that half of humanity is stuck having conversations that belong to the last century – the future is here and change is occurring at an unprecedented pace. That’s scary. And inspiring.

How do you stay in-touch with the industry’s best work and culturally relevant news?

I try not to become too concerned about what’s happening within the industry. That way we become myopic. I’m a daily reader of Campaign, The Drum and David Reviews. But that’s the bare minimum required to see what my peers are making. Other sources of culturally relevant work come from the occasional inspiring portfolio of a young creative; my restless and tireless hunt for provocative new sounds and business models within music; and a voracious appetite for all things social – particularly around DIY creation, vlogging and writing. Today’s most prolific and exciting creators are ‘out there’, not within the walls of the industry.

What work or agency from outside the UK do you think is particularly influential?​​

Over in LA, I’m very excited to see how WPP’s investment in Alex Da Kid’s new creative company, Kid In A Korner, works out. He’s a massively successful music producer, and the aim of this new venture is to connect brands directly with the music makers, the creators, creating cultural properties that aren’t intermediated by agencies. The line between brand and entertainment product has been completely blurred. It’s true ‘creating within culture’, and I think we can presume that if Martin Sorrell thinks this a viable trend, it probably is.

What do you think are going to be the main challenges for agencies in the next two years?

Not becoming irrelevant as brands increasingly go direct to creators. Having discrete data, products and cultural access points that are ‘money can’t buy’ and therefore can’t be commoditised. Recruiting talent from a more diverse, relevant pool than the industry has to date.

‘Amazon Prime Student’, Amazon prime (Amazon) by Above+Beyond

How do you see the media landscape unfolding in the next five years?

As the importance of Paid dwindles, what is their role? As owned and earned rise to dominate, we need to become completely data-literate and excel at identifying where audiences are and what they’re doing so we can deliver in a programmatic world. There will be a fight. But that’s healthy.

What’s your attitude to the ‘traditional’ pitch? Do you think there is a better/more modern way?

I hope we can give clients a genuinely different product and choice so their reliance on pitching wanes.

What’s the best pitch you’ve been involved in?

None of the most rewarding work we do today has been awarded by pitch, but grown organically through a long-term relationship, as is right.

In what ways do you think the industry can change for the better?​

In almost every conceivable way, as outlined above. But a little bit of pride, conviction and a passionate fight to avoid commodisation would be a good place to start.

What’s the next big thing for Above + Beyond?

Becoming the Creative Agency for the Audience Age.

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