5 Minutes with... Mat Goff
Mat Goff studied Theology at university. So you have to wonder whether it was entirely a coincidence that he started his advertising career as the first employee of an agency called adam&eve. That agency went on to define British commercial creativity in the ‘10s, becoming a jewel in the crown of the DDB network. Year after year, it kept the industry and public excitedly waiting for their John Lewis Christmas ad. Mat went on to become group CEO of adam&eveDDB. None of that was coincidental. Nor was the naming of his and co-founder Mike Wilton’s agency when it opened its doors in 2024: ARK Agency.
A year in, the London-based agency is afloat and making progress at a rate of knots. Having won clients including BINANCE, LÖFBERGS, Huel, Magners, and DR. VEGAN, ARK has already brought campaigns alive for most of them. LBB’s Alex Reeves chatted to Mat about ARK’s first year and how the agency has been built for the tumultuous waters of today’s industry.
LBB> ARK has been up and running for just over a year now, and it’s definitely made a mark on the industry already. How do you reflect on that first year?
Mat> Sometimes I have to pinch myself, but ARK is a real agency already. I've been lucky to have found Mike, a brilliant partner who sees the world in the same way that I do. You start full of hope, expectation, and dreams. You open the doors, and you’ve no idea whether the phone is going to ring or the inbox is going to chime.
Our first 12 months have been in some ways exactly what we hoped for, and in some ways way more than we could have possibly imagined. We've done way more business than I thought we might have done. The turnover and income, all of those good things you might expect to grow into, have perhaps come sooner than we thought they would.
But it's been exactly what we wanted: being true to our proposition, bringing in fantastic talent who see and think in the same way that we do, and offering clients high-level, experienced creative partnership. We get everybody in our business to think creatively about clients’ problems together, and that's about as complicated as it needs to be.
LBB> What have been the really exciting moments since you opened the doors?
Mat> Significant clients have asked us to work with them, and that's fantastic. BINANCE is the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, and when they approached us to have a think about their problems (they've already got agencies on their roster, but they weren't getting the kind of partnership they needed), we were able to turn a plan around for them in 48 hours.
We surprised them with the quality of our thinking, our speed and plan, and then how we effortlessly delivered that campaign across 14 European markets. People said we were too small to do that. But no. These days, the ability to scale is there and quite straightforward. You can plug that in. You don't need to have people all over the world in order to activate a campaign globally.
So BINANCE came knocking, Huel came knocking, and we won Magners in a competitive pitch through Creativebrief. These are big, significant organisations with multiple brands in their portfolio, and we’re competing against really big agencies. To be able to put ourselves in that company, show up well, win, and then get some really strong work out off the back of it has been great.
We try and avoid the nautical analogies where possible, but at some point you're going to get beyond the reef... When you first start, you do some little projects, but then you get beyond the reef and you're out in the open water. I think we were out in the open water faster than I imagined. That’s just so exciting.
LBB> In your first year, what work have you been most proud of?
Mat> Work with a capital W is always advertising execution in our world. People kept saying, “I can’t wait to see your first piece of Work.” And inside I was going, we’ve delivered our first piece of work.
It was a piece of engagement architecture for a B2B brand, trying to work out where their audiences are and where they spend their time. That is creative work. That is creative thinking that is really clever, really complex, full of data and insight. It’s work that’s added real value to their business. But you’re never going to see it. You don’t see that in the real world in that form.
More people being more creative, more of the time, that, for me, is what’s really important. I know what you’re asking is for advertising execution, but it’s an important question too, because it’s an indication of the kind of work we want to make.
The Huel work stands out. Here’s an organisation that’s built an unbelievable business on performance marketing. A £250 million business in 10 years. But you’d never heard them speak in public, represent themselves, or show any sense of collectiveness around the brand.
They’d probably hit somewhere on the performance plateau; not growing as fast as they used to or might do. Taking them on a journey from being a meal replacement brand to being a fuel brand was key. Meal replacement is interesting to a relatively small group of people, but everybody in the world needs to fuel their passions. Whether you’re a student, a midwife, or a student midwife, you’ve got limited time and need to get through the day ahead; you need a partner alongside you to fuel you to the next stage.
LBB> So you’ve got off to a strong start, even though there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market recently?
Mat> I think there’s probably never been a more interesting or exciting time to do the job that we do - which, by the way, is a total luxury in life. To be able to sit and think creatively about people's problems, fill blank pages, and tell stories, that’s an amazing job to have.
I think there’s also never been more people working in fear, slightly scared, or in an organisation that is prioritising other things. There are lots of people in positions where they’re not happy, or they’re frightened, or being made redundant, or the brand they work for that’s been around for 100 years is disappearing. And yet here we are: small, agile, and able to grow
The job is all about growth. It’s all about momentum. Can we grow this company? Can we create momentum for us, for the people who come and work with us, and for our clients? Yes, we can. Partly deliberately, our agency name is a vessel that goes somewhere. It goes from A to B and uses creativity to get there. That’s exciting. That’s momentum. That’s growth.
So when I look across the landscape and ask, “Where would I most like to be right now, in the most exciting time there’s ever been to do what we do?” I’d like to be here. And that’s a lovely thing to know.
LBB> Why do you think you gravitated towards this industry in the first place?
Mat> I studied theology at university, and everybody looked at me and went, “Well, have you chosen the path of least resistance here? That sounds like a bit of a cop-out.” And they waited to see how useful that would be for the rest of my life.
After university, I went into banking. I worked at Goldman Sachs, and it just wasn’t right. It was interesting to a little bit of my brain, but not to the rest of it. After two years, I was lucky enough to get on an agency grad scheme, and I thought, “This is where I want to be,” because the person you are and the ideas you have make a difference in your job. I was never going to do that in banking.
But then I joined adam&eve, and I thought, “Well, hold on, that’s gone OK, I understand this story.” I left adam&eveDDB and founded ARK. It rains, and an old bastard builds a boat. I thought, I’m going to build a boat, we’re going to call it ARK, and away we go.
To have responsibility for a blank page. When you grow up through the business, if you take responsibility and ownership – which is always a good thing to do – you hold the blank page and say, “I can do this, but I need you to do that better, to come and fill in this blank page together.” Then you’ve got something, and you’re holding it, and you think, “This is magic.”
LBB> You were at adam&eveDDB during what most industry people would agree was a golden age for the agency. How did that influence ARK?
Mat> I had an unbelievably fortunate time. I went for a job as a freelance account director, and quite quickly became a minor shareholder in the company. Then we had the most unbelievable 16 years. You couldn’t have written it. There are no beats missing from what you might want to do, achieve, see, or experience in an advertising career. That journey was remarkable, and I was lucky to work alongside the most incredibly talented, hardworking group of people.
Towards the end of my time, I became increasingly frustrated with the legacy structures and thinking. So much change is happening out in the real world but all these amazing, unbelievably talented, clever people are still organised and structured and working the same way as in the '80s or '90s.
When you look at the media landscape, a lot of access for organisations has been democratised. For example, anybody can buy some YouTube space, some ads on Meta and start building a brand. But access to the talent we have in our industry has not been democratised, because you need quite a lot of money to come and play. To access the strategic thinking, the creative thinking, and the production services that have traditionally been held within ad agencies, you need significant investment.
So you have this mismatch: if you're one of the top 200 ad spenders in the UK, great, you can afford to go and get an agency. Meanwhile, the creative economy explodes everywhere. There are people launching all sorts of amazing businesses. And on the other end of that, production changes unbelievably, because suddenly everybody can make things in a quick, affordable way, and in a way that consumers engage with.
The agency gets squeezed at both ends. Agencies have to think really hard about what the special thing is that clients of all shapes and sizes might want and pay for, and how we organise ourselves so more people can access it.
For ARK, I have no interest in recreating the journey I had in the past, because the world has moved on. I'd rather have 20 people or 40 people than 400 or 600, and bolt in the skills as and when I need them, so clients pay for what they need when they need it – not for teams of people they might not ever even see.
ARK is set up to look after our own arks. Mike and I have kids – his are seven and six, mine are six, four, and a newborn. This is an amazing job, but it can come at the cost of family life, the people around you, or the ark you’ve got to look after yourself. For us, it’s simple: look after your ark, then come and give what you can to ARK, but don’t do that at the cost of your own ark. In my experience, if you give people in advertising an inch, they’ll give you a mile back. That’s just the nature of the people it attracts. So we give an inch where we can, and we trust our people. They’ll come and give us a mile.
LBB> With that in mind, what’s your approach to charging for creativity?
Mat> Part of our mantra here is pioneering new ways to unlock creative value for brands. Part of the reason somebody would choose to work with us at ARK is that they’re not buying time off us. Our fees end with a number of zeros. They’re not calculated by hours or the number of people sitting around. We price the value that we think we are offering to that client, depending on where they are in their journey or what services they want.
Lots of people are stuck in a retainer model, pretending they’re no longer in one. They charge a project as though it’s a retainer, and then they start to behave like that too, because that’s the muscle memory of the organisation. The job at ARK is to find brilliant ways to monetise the great creativity that people across our business bring. At every single stage, no matter where you are, everybody’s thinking creatively. We monetise that for clients in a way that makes sense for them, where they can see and access the value.
So it’s never done by hours. It’s done by the value we can create. And then we try and think beyond that to ask: what products can we put out there, so clients can say, “I’d like to buy that from you, please”?
That starts to differentiate you from other offerings. During a pitch, a client will see four or five agencies, and most of those agencies will have a grumble about having to show their creative work, but they don’t really offer any differentiation to clients in terms of why they should choose them. There’s no real difference in the business model, remuneration, or things that can be bought from them.
We’re working hard to put those things in place. We have a product called AdVal, which means that in the first year, you pay us 70% of the fee you were going to pay us, and we’ll give you 30% to invest in production and media. Then in year two, when you use that ad again, you pay us 40%. In year three, when you use that ad again – because your ad will still only be wearing in, it certainly won’t be anywhere near wearing out – pay us 30% again.
So over time, we’ll get 140% of the fee. 40% of that is pure profit, because you’re running the same ad in years two and three. I’d rather take 40% of pure profit and have our resource, staff, and talent working on something else for somebody else than try and persuade the client to make another ad when they don’t really need one.
I want ARK to be known for pioneering a new way of doing things, because the world doesn’t need another replica. That’s one thing we definitely know. But it might need one prepared, able, and set up to do things slightly differently. It’s not quite the Wild West, but we do stand on a precipice looking into the future. I’m not clever enough or stupid enough to offer a prediction of what’s to come for agencies, but I do know that we’re facing some pretty choppy waters and some strong headwinds; we’ve got to find new ways. It’ll be the independent agencies that reach for the edges and find those.
LBB> In many careers, you do a thing, and then you’re suddenly a manager. What have you realised is important in people making that transition?
Mat> The first thing is never let go of the thing you were good at in the first place. If you were good enough at it to be considered for elevation to the next stage, don’t get confused and think, “Great, I won’t do that anymore, I’ll just be in charge of some people who do it.” That’s not what you were good at, and you’ll probably be really unfulfilled doing it.
In my experience, the best leaders have always been the ones who carry on doing the thing that made them brilliant in the first place. Otherwise, they get frustrated. You then have to add in the ability to manage people, set a direction, set a vision, lead, recruit, and find people. You’ve got to add lots of other skills.
Our job is so thrilling – you get to see so many businesses all the time. You can be talking about an airline in the morning, gaming later, and then persuading people to choose one idea over another on a Friday afternoon.
What a beautiful thing. To be involved in so much of what people do, how they think, and why they choose what they choose – whether that’s a car, insurance, or how they spend their hard-earned money at the weekend. So I’d say: never stop doing the thing that made you good in the first place.
