5 Minutes with… Rania Robinson
To be a good CEO takes an understanding of how every part of a business works, and where the challenges are likely to come up in every corner of it. That’s something that Rania Robinson, the CEO and partner at independent UK creative agency Quiet Storm, has proven she has. The child of Egyptian immigrants, she grew up in the west of England before leaving school at 16 to become a secretary. From there Rania flowed through various roles, from account handling to planning to production, eventually gaining a birds-eye view of the advertising industry and how it works.
Since 2012 she’s worked as CEO alongside her husband Trevor Robinson OBE at Quiet Storm, the agency he founded in 1995. A formidable champion for diversity, together the couple relaunched Create Not Hate in 2020, which aims to get under-represented young people into the creative industries by unlocking their creative potential. She also served as the president of WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications Leadership) during the club’s 100th year.
LBB’s Alex Reeves speaks to Rania about her life, career and proudest moments so far.
LBB> I read that you left school at 16 and then decided to become a secretary. What led you that way?
Rania> I grew up in a probably quite a typical African family – very high expectations around education and certain professions, being a doctor or lawyer or accountant or something like that. So I wasn't in an environment where the creative industries were something that my family understood or were connected to. Also, we lived outside London, in Salisbury in Wiltshire, so we weren't in the centre of the media world. Gorgeous, but not very diverse. Not many options from a career perspective.
I went to a very academic grammar school. Science education, what would be STEM now, was the focus. It didn't support the arts, didn't encourage you to do anything non-scientific. There wasn't that curriculum that you had in the local comprehensive schools, so I just wasn't exposed at all to the possibilities of the creative industry. But I hated school because I was really disengaged, and clearly was naturally more of a creative, but didn't really know about that. So I just felt like a fish out of water.
I'd always loved stuff that was on telly, but I didn't really know whether that happened. It was like this sort of alternate universe. So when I came to London when I was 16, I was like, right, this is the centre of all the media. At the time everybody had secretaries, so I knew if I got a secretarial course under my belt, I could go into any industry and I could get into one of these media, entertainment or music industries. That's why I did that, but it was always with a bigger plan. I thought I'll get in and then I'll work my way up, which is exactly what I did.
LBB> You clearly didn’t want to stay as a secretary. How did you work your way into a job that suited you better?
Rania> I was ambitious. I just didn't want to go the conventional way because I was so disengaged with education, it completely put me off. I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do either. So I started off in a music publishing company, which I hated because it’s actually all contracts, negotiating rights and things like that. It wasn't very creative.
I went from there to Virgin Media, which was video distribution. They would sell VHS to the likes of HMV where you buy or rent these videos. I was in the sales department but we worked really closely with marketing. And that's when I realised what they were doing was fun, because they were coming up with ways to market and promote titles. So I wanted to do something in marketing. What I didn't really understand was the difference between the brand marketing side and the agency side.
I went to a recruitment agency that specialised in the media and entertainment industry and just said I want to work in marketing. They ended up sending me to a little independent marketing agency. And I would type up the pitch presentations.
That's when I was like, 'Oh my God, this is it.' I was just so excited about the ideas. Just by sheer osmosis of typing God knows how many presentations, I actually got quite a good understanding of strategy and ideas.
I would nag them to give me other opportunities in the agency, and I worked my way up from there. So eventually I became an account handler. And then over time I started to get more interested in strategy, so I started moving more towards planning.
LBB> What are some of the clients, projects and jobs that helped to shape you at that time?
Rania> When I first started at this agency, they were more of a shopper marketing agency. They did things like on-pack promotions, where you'd collect packs of whatever to redeem your Casper the ghost watch or something in some sort of Disney-franchised licensing deal they'd done. We'd work with people like Ribena and KP nuts - a lot of snack brands. We also did all the point of sale in the supermarkets and stuff like that.
I spent most of my early career in what was considered below-the-line marketing – activation, I guess we'd call it now. Then I moved more towards experiential and content, music marketing, and ended up at an agency called Exposure where we did loads of really cool, culture-driven stuff. I toured with The Fun Loving Criminals and One to One and also did loads of sponsorship, activation at music festivals and all that sort of stuff. I worked on brands like Smirnoff and Three, lots of the mobile brands because they did lots of experiential.
LBB> How did you end up at Quiet Storm?
Rania> When I had my kids, I took a step back from it because it was just mad for working hours. So I went freelance and was consulting. Then I just went in to try to help Trev on a pitch one day, and never left.
LBB> So you’d never worked with Trevor before then, but you were already a couple?
Rania> Yeah, we met before I started working in the business. It's almost 20 years ago now that we got together. And I always said we'd never work together. But as I think about the way the industry is gone, it's gone from TV advertising agencies and below-the-line agencies to integrated and having to think about the whole customer journey, rather than just your great TV. So it was just quite a natural partnership because Trevor's heartland was TV. He'd always done other great creative stuff, but the heart of the agency was TV. Whereas my experience was about how you come up with big ideas that can live in any channel. So I was able to bring that dimension to the business as the industry has needed that more and more.
I was always a bit of a reluctant CEO. I just ended up there. But of course I have loved it and actually, with my skills because I've done so many different roles, I've even spent a little bit of time in production, I had this very rounded understanding of each discipline – planning, account handling and delivery. I think good CEOs are part planners, part creatives, part suits. In more PR-driven or below-the-line agencies, they often didn't have planners. As a senior suit, you had to do the thinking and come up with some of the ideas.
I always worked at small indies because I'm a generalist, really. So I was always drawn to places where I can have variety and get stuck in. That has been a useful back catalogue for becoming a CEO, because it's very hard to be able to lead a business when you don't understand half the functions in the business. I can have credible conversations with the planners, the creatives and the producers as well. And empathise with their roles.
LBB> You've been a quiet storm for well over 10 years now. What have you been most proud of building over those years?
Rania> When I first came into Quiet Storm, we went into an acquisition. We'd got bought by a company called Inferno, who were bigger independent than us and we went into a commercial partnership with them. And they ended up getting bought by IPG, at which point we did a management buyout and became independent again. That was the first thing that I feel really proud of – taking back our independence was really a seminal moment.
The next thing was becoming an employee-owned trust three years ago now. That was a really peak moment as well. Building a business that could yield that kind of value, but also doing it in a way that was equitable and great for the employees. It was also great for our clients, who bought into an independent business with certain values. As soon as you sell, you see what happens to the culture. So being able to retain that integrity of the business by being employee owned, for me, was something to be really super proud of.
The third thing was relaunching Create Not Hate with Trev but turning it into a community interest company, where it could actually kind of fund itself.
LBB> Can you tell the story of Create Not Hate for those who don’t know it?
Rania> It was Trev's vision. He launched it originally in 2007. It was in response to a young kid getting killed in his old school and a frustration with the campaigns at the time that were around gun and knife crime. For someone who's grown up in that community, in that environment where it's very visceral and real for him, he just felt they were completely off the mark, being written by people who really don't understand the issues in the community.
He went back to his old school, where he remembered all the brilliant young talent that was there. He's come from that background, had a really good career in advertising, done some really groundbreaking work and felt there's all this brilliant talent that the industry is just not getting any exposure to. It was a missed opportunity for these young people, a missed opportunity for the industry.
So he went to the school, set them the brief: what would you do to tackle gun and knife crime? And the best idea, we made as a business.
We created this three-minute film called 'A Mother's Tear' and gave all these young people an experience of the industry, from coming up with the ideas to making it to being wardrobe to runners to the full production process. The idea being that we were going to get them into the industry. Actually, one of the producers and one the directors have subsequently gone on and come into the industry. But the idea was that it was going to inspire other businesses in the industry to do a similar thing, found a programme and then hire from this brilliant pool of talent.
In reality in 2007, people weren't talking about diversity, didn't really get it. We funded a couple of programmes and then it just became unsustainable, the financial crisis and various things happened and so we weren't able to continue it.
LBB> Can you talk about rebooting it?
Rania> Then I've got of course George Floyd [was killed, triggering a global surge for the Black Lives Matter movement]. We saw it as an opportunity to relaunch Create Not Hate, but this time making it a sustainable organisation and launching it as a community interest company, making sure we were getting funding.
It's all about timing, isn't it? We've got huge amounts of support from the industry, loads of other agencies doing their own programmes, coming to talk to us about programmes. It's created quite a bit of momentum in the industry.
Equally, we've got lots of brands involved as well, and we've supported all sorts of different causes as well as brands' commercial challenges as well. We've tackled mental health with young Black boys, who are most impacted, as you can imagine, for obvious reasons. We've done anti-racism, mental health. We've also done some work with John Lewis about how to make them more relevant to wider communities. We've done stuff with The National Trust around bringing young diverse people in and we've also done some work with Vimto.
LBB> With the economy facing difficult times, how hard is it to keep initiatives like that going?
Rania> Even though there's loads of data that supports the commercial upside of diversity, people still treat it like a cost or charity. Like they're doing some CSR. No, it's actually good for your business. That's been frustrating. We have found that it's been de-prioritised. And I think that, to me, would reflect the lack of understanding of the commercial benefit. It's a long-term investment. You don't see the benefits immediately. So I think some of it is short termism.
I think most people see it as a moral thing. And it is. But it's also good for business. I can say that because I see how small the pots of money get put into it are. You wouldn't put in a tiny pot if you thought you're going to get a decent return. Sadly, I do think there's a lot of posturing around it. The commitment is not there as much as the noise is.
But we've made great strides. I'm a positive person. At least there's a greater recognition of the importance of diversity now that wasn't there in 2007. I'm celebrating the positive shift. We need to make sure that people stick with it and understand it fully.
LBB> In terms of work for clients, what are you most proud of? HARIBO ‘Kids Voices’ feels like a stand-out case in that it’s an idea that endured.
Rania> There's loads of things I'm proud of, but Haribo's ridiculous in the sense that it's 10 years in. I think we've made about 50 ads around the world with 22 different markets. We've not personally made all of them but we've made a lot of them. I don't know many campaigns that could boast that. And still people love it. People aren't tired of it.
I'm super proud of On the Beach. The sales shift, the shift in brand sentiment and bookings are a very tangible business step change. The CMO Zoe Harris has talked loads about how successful the campaign has been, the CEO has marked it in their annual plan as being a big driver of a business success for them. Obviously we want to do great creative work, but it's got to be work that does bloody brilliant commercially.
Vimto is another one I'm really proud of. We helped them for the first time ever overtake Ribena to the number-two position and deliver their highest sales. So it's things like that I feel really proud of – the business impact stuff.
LBB> You also served as WACL’s 100th president in 2022/23. What did you take from that experience?
Rania> I've been part of the club for seven years and sat on committees. It's a tonne of senior female leaders voluntarily giving up their spare time, of which they have very little, to do stuff that's going to shift the dial in the industry around gender equality. To be surrounded by all these brilliant women, getting to work with them on things that we wouldn't even do in our day job, being part of a really strong network is amazing. Then to be asked to be president really was an unbelievable privilege. It was a lot of work, I'm not gonna lie. It was distracting from the day job. But hugely, hugely rewarding.
I was privileged enough to be president in the 100th year of the club as well. That club was founded before all women in this country could vote. It gives you some perspective. It's an incredible organisation and we've always campaigned for change in the industry. We talk about inspiring, supporting and campaigning for gender equality, inspiring the next generation of women, supporting all the female leaders that still need support because we're still too few and we still find it harder, for various reasons, than our male colleagues.
I've always been part of a marginalised group being a woman of colour. And I think what we do is really powerful. We can change minds. We can inspire action. We can shape society. I know it sounds very grandiose, but we do. We're putting stuff out in the world that shapes people's views on things. As a young girl growing up, I didn't see people like me on TV. I didn't see positive representation or role modelling. And I felt that. Anything we can do to help influence that is really important.
LBB> If a brand was to successfully advertise to you, what would that advertising look like?
Rania> Something like Marmite 'Love It or Hate It'. It's got to a truth that speaks to me like you just pulled into my head. I'm a lover, but it's engaging everybody. Even with something that normally polarises people to the brand, they found a way to unite people. This is where I get really excited about a lot of the behavioural change stuff we do. When you get somebody who's got such an ingrained view about something to think twice. That's the kind of advertising I love. I want to be surprised or entertained.
I love the McDonald's eyebrows. It's pretty frivolous. But it's fun, it makes you feel good. Simple, lovely piece of advertising. There's so much risk aversion in tough times like this. It's hard to sell clients stuff sometimes when you can't uber-rationalise it. And it can be hard sometimes when you work on those big brands who are becoming more and more risk averse. But it's fun, playful, and gets the branding in there as well with the arches. It's brilliant.
