5 Minutes with… Steve Barnes
Steve Barnes has spent over 20 years directing creatively-led executions for blue-chip clients as one of the founding partners of Collective.
Traditionally trained as a graphic designer, Steve’s early career focused on delivering multi-channel executions for international brands including Audi, adidas, and Deutsche Telekom. Highlights include rebranding Deutsche Telekom's youth brand TD-1 and helping launch The Ministry of Sound to a global audience.
Since founding Collective, Steve has been responsible for the creative output of the London- and New York-based agency, helping brands such as EE, Avis, Hyundai and Unilever navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape. Collective combines traditional agency expertise with new approaches to content creation, augmented creative, performance marketing and the agency-client business model.
LBB’s Alex Reeves catches up with Steve.
LBB> How did you first get into advertising?
Steve> After graduating from university, I managed to secure a junior position in the London office of a German advertising agency called Ideenhaus through the D&AD New Blood show. However, when I arrived at the office it became pretty clear that the UK arm was little more than an address on a letterhead doing overspill work for the Berlin and Munich offices.
Being young and obnoxious I voiced my concerns, and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to Germany to put my money where my mouth is. Unbeknownst to me there had been a miscommunication and the German office was under the impression they were getting a seasoned art director rather than someone with two weeks’ experience.
I managed to reposition my inexperience as ‘fresh thinking’ and I got to work on some mind-blowing campaigns. The rest as they say is history…
LBB> And what were the major twists and turns that ended up taking you in the direction of founding Collective?
Steve> I guess the biggest twist was just before we set it up. Another of the founders and I had been freelancing on Honda for a while (which would go on to become our founding client) but I was planning on taking six months out to cycle around South East Asia. When the opportunity came up to take on the account wholesale it was a real Sliding Doors moment. Settle down and get serious about starting an agency or blow everything up and bugger off to the other side of the world. Still trying to decide if it was the right call 21 years later.
LBB> What have been the big changes over the years in how Collective defines itself as a business?
Steve> Collective is a business that exists in a perpetual state of evolution. We’re fearless of change and always have been. It’s why we never stop exploring new things, and it’s what keeps us relevant and to be honest makes it fun. Back in the early days it was Macromedia’s Flash but now it’s a whole new world of technology powering what we do. Couple this love of change with an unswerving commitment to creativity, craft and compassion, and that’s what defines us.
LBB> You've had some pretty massive growth in the past year! What has driven that and why was it the right time?
Steve> The main driver of that has been our ongoing R&D in both real-time 3D and gen AI and our partnership with Nvidia and their Omniverse platform. We started playing with real-time 3D back in 2017 not really knowing where it would lead, but when Nvidia released their Omniverse platform it meant we were in an ideal position to capitalise on it. Now lots of brands are seeing the potential in what we’re doing to help reinvent workflows and deliver product content at scale. The latest evolution of that has been establishing this workflow as the starting point for using gen AI in a brand-safe way.
LBB> What projects have you recently been most proud of and why?
Steve> I’m really proud of the work we did recently with EE on their game centre launch. This was one of the first rollouts of our real-time tools and it was a joy to see the stakeholders’ reactions to working that way for the first time. Right now, I’m really excited about our digital product twin work across the Unilever business. This is really transformational stuff and is setting the standard in this space.
LBB> For the standard advertising person who understands the general ways that AI fits into workflows, what is most important for them to remember when speaking to companies like Collective?
Steve> First and foremost, nothing can replace human creativity. The tools we’re using help creatives, technologists and brand owners get to a high-quality result with less wasted time. On the flip side, despite the immense promise of gen AI, it isn’t ‘brand safe’. That’s why we start at the product level. Your products are the most important thing to get right, so we begin there, creating interoperable, pixel-perfect, ultra-high quality digital product twins that ensure your most prized assets are always 100% perfect. Once you have product accuracy every time, you can start to unlock creativity and content at scale for both traditional and gen AI workflows.
LBB> We hear a lot about how Nvidia is powering much of this tech. How should people think about the role that one of the world's most valuable companies is playing in creativity?
Steve> When you boil it down, a lot of their technology is really unlocking human creativity by removing the pain points. Their Omniverse platform, for instance, makes it easy to share, contribute and work on creative projects wherever you are, in real time. It’s incredible to see the smiles of creatives, creative technologists and brand owners being able to contribute and try out new approaches non-destructively and seeing where they get to.
LBB> What is most exciting about your work in real time 3D?
Steve> It never gets old showing someone the tools for the first time. You become a bit blasé about what it feels like to see it in action. But working collaboratively with clients over a live stream in real time and signing off a scene or animation in an hour (that would have taken weeks of back and forth over email) is something else.
LBB> And what creative possibilities will technologies like Omniverse bring to brands?
Steve> It’s like a sandbox. You are a kid with a bucket and spade and a whole heap of imagination. Very quickly you can start moulding and shaping and getting to something that’s interesting and can be fed back on. It’s this playfulness and experimentation it gives to brands, along with the fact it takes the handbrake off the production process, that is the game-changer.
LBB> Beyond all of the tech, what creative and cultural things are you most enthused about?
Steve> We’re really keen on enabling the next generation of creatives at Collective. In fact, we’ve just run our latest Upstarts (10 years and counting) to give them a leg up on the career ladder. So creatively I’m really enthused to see where the young folk are going to take our industry. It feels like the tech has taken centre stage, and I can’t wait to see where they take us when it becomes ubiquitous. All hail the idea.
