Marcus Richards
Transmission is a Creative Production Company like no other.
We blend the creative vision that comes from an ad agency with the technical knowledge of a production company so that clients receive a premium, yet affordable, end-to-end service.
We provide a direct line to the Creatives, Producers and Directors, not just the Account Execs, which means nothing is lost in communication.
We are the people that really make it happen – bringing life to ideas and ideas to life across everything TV, Video and Audio.
From brief to Transmission.
Tell us about yourself?
I’ve always loved writing stories and recording videos – It was something I started doing when I was a child. I’d use my Dad’s video camera to create home movies and tell stories.
I officially began work in the world of broadcast as a trainee copywriter at the age of 18 for a Radio Advertising Production Company called Airforce. It was a huge moment for me because I could see my career mapped out in front of me.
I knew where I wanted to be, and I’ll forever be thankful to John Calvert and Alan Bell at Airforce for putting their faith in me at such a young age, and letting me run with proposals, pitches and presentations, as well as giving me invaluable experience in the full broadcast production process.
Over the course of 5 years, I was promoted regularly to become Production Director, producing radio advertising campaigns for a huge range of local and national advertisers. And then the economy took a hit in 2002, and I was unfortunately made redundant. But every cloud has a silver lining and I became Head of Production at renowned recording studios, Silk Sound, where I produced TV and radio campaigns for brands such as Sony, Aldi, First Choice and many more.
After a few years, I moved into the agency world, working for the production arm of London Creative as Production Director. This was where I really learnt the ropes in not only overseeing the entire TV advertising production process, but also about running a production company and being a manager.
After a merger, I then decided to make the jump and start Transmission with my good friends and colleagues Matt Buckle and Adam Lampard. Running a business is something I always envisaged doing right from a young age.
You can’t beat the rush of seeing your own company grow and being master of your own destiny. Today, we’re hugely fortunate to have such a wide and wonderful client base, of different sizes in a range of different sectors, and it’s that variety that not only keeps every day exciting, but it has also given us a great amount of stability over the past couple of tumultuous years.
I’m also hugely proud of the team that we’ve built at Transmission, all of which have a huge talent and a wonderful passion for what they do.
I have a huge enthusiasm for TV & Radio advertising, being able to see a campaign move from brief to broadcast, and then seeing the difference that makes to our clients’ success is hugely rewarding.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Don’t sweat it. You’re going to be ok. Just ride it out.
What problem does your business solve?
We help Marketing Departments achieve increased sales by creating response-led TV advertising campaigns and video content.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
We’re inspired to make advertising good by making good advertising.
Our clients work in Marketing Departments which have huge demands and KPIs put onto them. We help find out their pain points, promote their key messaging and answer their objectives in a cost-effective way.
What is your magic sauce?
Our magic is our people. We have an incredible range of talents internally from Creatives, Producers, Editors, GFX Artists, Audio Engineers and Colourists, all with tons of experience and at the top of their game.
We invest in good people – talented people – who we know will deliver on our clients’ needs and then some. That’s the secret of our success.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We have a variety of aims over the next 5 years, but I’d probably break them down into two – measurable aims and emotive aims. Firstly, our measurable aim is to be in the Top 100 agencies and achieve a turnover of £5 million.
But it’s our emotive aim that I think is more important, and that’s for us to provide our team with an environment where they’re happy.
We want our employees to feel supported, fulfilled and happy. And I think that’s so important. Because although the destination matters, it’s the journey to get there that’s most important.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
The three months from March 2020 to June 2020 was probably the most stressful of my working life. Overnight, productions stopped and projects were cancelled.
But in many cases, we couldn’t speak to our clients about it because they’d been furloughed. That sudden cliff edge was very hard to manage, and it was a huge shock. We went into new business mode immediately in order to try and fill in the gaps, but it was like shouting into a vacuum.
Thankfully, we have an extremely strong business model with a strong reserve which kept us afloat and enabled us to keep all of our staff – we didn’t put a single person on furlough – and we have a wide variety of clients in a range of sectors, so we were fine. But to see our billings go to zero overnight was very challenging.
Fortunately, we quickly adjusted to this new world and, along with the rest of the film industry, we worked out how to film safely in a Covid world, and that was when things started to pick back up again.
We were able to explain to clients the measures we were putting in places in order to carry on creating promotional video content for them, and that brought a lot of clients back from the brink.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We’re looking to speak to Marketing Directors of challenger brands who are looking to take on the big guys and elevate their brand in the minds of their target audience.
