Dream Teams: The ‘Radical Honesty’ of Rob de Souza and Archie Challen

It’s often said that friends first is a firm foundation on which to build a romantic relationship, and maybe the same goes for professional partnerships. VaynerMedia lead creators Rob de Souza and Archie Challen support that idea.

The pair met at university 10 years ago and spent their first year just being friends. They bonded over actually taking an interest in their advertising course at the University for the Creative Arts. “In all honesty, there were very few people that consistently showed up to our uni studio. We both put in the hours, so that work ethic probably brought us together,” says Archie. “Rob was laid back, cool and funny but most importantly wanted to put in the effort. Not much has changed, I’m just more reluctant to tell him this now.”

They soon connected over this trait. “Each of us had a drive to always be making cool s**t, and I don’t think anything has changed,” says Rob. 

It was mutual respect that eventually bonded Rob and Archie together into a team. “As we progressed through our degree it turned out this industry wants to hire friends as creative duos so we just stayed together,” says Rob. 

Soon they found themselves on placement at VCCP, where they were tasked with running the socials for Aleksandr and Sergei, the meerkat duo who are the face of price comparison website Compare the Market. “Our first ever meeting, we presented a 20+ slide deck with research and strategy that we spent ages on,” says Archie. “The brief was only to change their profile pictures! Our CD was both impressed and confused at the sheer amount of time we had put into it.”

Of course Rob and Archie were trying to make an impression on their new agency employers, but they also deeply believed that this approach was justified. “We really went overboard, creating rules and a strategy as to why they would be posting,” says Rob. “We realised that people are following Aleksandr and Sergei to be entertained not to boost the brand click through rate.”

While both admit to having a laid back temperament, their love for creating things is where this passion to go the extra mile originates. But where they differ is the areas of interest and knowledge that they draw on. “For example Archie loves sport, and I couldn't think of anything worse to watch,” says Rob. “So when it comes to bringing ideas and concepts to the table we each bring a diversity of ideas.”

Recently, Archie has been drawing inspiration from a lot of work coming out of football clubs.  “They’re starting to take seriously the idea that their brands can be built on social with creative work that you want to DM to your pals,” he says. “Arsenal are doing some great things with the likes of their ‘Supporting Supporters’ campaign and ‘No More Red’. They’re also flying the flag for the women’s game too.”  

The work that really inspires Rob is the content that he watches after work on Instagram or TikTok, or the creators he religiously follows on YouTube. “All the content I enjoy watching is where we aim all our work to be. We REALLY don't want to be making adverts that get in the way of people's lives. Rather, we want to always be making content people go out of their way to rewatch.”

For the sake of the work, they’re happy to disagree, but they try not to get frustrated with one another. If anything, their frustrations step from their mutual admiration. “Archie can pick up any skill in minutes. It’s kinda annoying,” says Rob. "If he has a vision for an idea, he will always figure out a way to make it come to life in the best way possible.”

If one of them has an idea that the other hates, Rob and Archie have learned that it’s worth not instantly throwing it out. “We trust each other to articulate the ‘controversial’ idea to the wider team or clients and are always open to being proven wrong,” says Archie. “Low key, nothing beats having an idea that Rob hates do well!”

Ultimately, ideas aren’t worth falling out over anyway. “At the end of the day it’s just advertising,” says Rob. “Subjectively, what we think doesn't matter and it's down to the internet to tell us if it's good or bad when the work goes live.”

For the past four years Rob and Archie have worked at VaynerMedia. Some of their standout projects are a social/influencer campaign for Durex that became an out-of-home success story and a satisfyingly tangible project for UK supermarket ASDA that worked with a jewellery-making influencer to make the world’s smallest ASDA rewards card and set it on a bracelet with the shopping list as silver charms.

Their time working on TikTok was a chance they both particularly treasured. “We got to help the brand grow from a new and novel platform into the titan it’s become today. We championed up and coming creators, took on some huge partnerships such as Euro 2020 and we like to think we played a part in getting [viral sea shanty] ‘Wellerman’ to #1 in the charts.”

In 2021 the pair noticed an aspiring artist called Nathan Evans with a few followers singing a traditional sea shanty. The pair came up with a bunch of creative concepts and brought it to the team. “The client loved the ideas,” says Rob. “So we built the idea on every social channel and then went live in four days, creating the full campaign while the trend was still hot.” The campaign celebrated Nathan as part of TikTok's existing #ItStartsonTikTok campaign as a TV spot, which received 4.6 billion hashtag impressions in-app and a VTR 239% above benchmark.

LBB covered that campaign at the time and continues to play a role in Rob and Archie’s creative trajectories, even recently setting them a brief that Rob is proud to have stepped up to. When asked what he’s recently been happy with his work on he responds: “To be honest, Photoshopping the above image of us both to make it look like we totally shot it together. As I have been in the process of moving house and all the pictures were… how would you say, less professional…”

That might come as a surprise because during work hours the pair are consummate professionals. Archie admires his partner’s leadership. “Rob is a great manager,” he says. “He truly understands that happy creatives make the best work. It’s easy to go on auto-pilot in such a fast-paced industry but he makes time for people and ensures they are getting what they should get out of each experience. I’m still trying to be more like him in that sense.” 

Rob takes a lot from the partnership too though. “I have learned a lot from Archie Challen, and I am always learning more. But the one thing I respect the most from him is the boundaries he sets. This industry is very fast paced and hard working and Archie is great at establishing boundaries so that his creative time isn't disturbed.”

To quote from ‘Married At First Sight’, Archie puts their success down to ‘radical honesty’. “We tell each other what we think and we trust each other enough to never take it personally.” 

Rob builds on that: “The benefit of having a great creative partner is that you can have no filter and not be afraid to tell each other if something is s**t. We will always call each other out if we accidentally get too sucked into the advertising world rather than making things that people actually want to see.”