My Biggest Lesson: Tom Arendas
As executive director UK & Europe, Tom joined Imagination after a nine-year successful career as CCO at NYC, LA & London based creative agencies. Here he built and led full external and in-house creative services, recruiting diverse thinkers and makers to make some of the world's biggest and best brands famously successful.
In his role as executive director UK & Europe, Tom will champion the company’s outstanding work and push into new sectors such as tech, fashion, lifestyle and youth marketing. He will also expand Imagination’s core offers including Consulting, Destinations, Content and Live. Tom’s expertise allows him to harness strategic-led creativity and to leverage earned, owned, shared and paid media, maximising reach and amplification, drive business development and deliver measurable campaign results.
His talent for developing world-class creative executions and igniting movement by blurring the boundaries between physical, digital and virtual, will support Imagination’s ongoing mission to push the boundaries of brand experiences. Tom is a results-driven and inspiring creative executive with more than 15 years of experience. He is an expert in leading teams in creative development as well as executing impactful and award-winning projects and ad campaigns.
Around 2017/2018, I found myself as a young (ish) creative director, having already accrued a commendable portfolio of projects for some amazing brands within the industry. Eager for a major challenge, I was presented with the remarkable opportunity to conceptualise and execute a sponsorship experience for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia for a new client, Visa.
The call from the client came in a few days prior to a meeting. The memory is vivid: it was the day following my inaugural London Marathon. Limping my way to my Soho office, I discovered that what I had assumed to be a mere Q&A session with the client was, in reality, a comprehensive presentation of top-level concepts.
The implications were stark – the outcome could either propel our agency into contention for the project or preclude our participation altogether. Fresh from the mix of exhilaration and exhaustion brought on by the marathon, I found myself in an oddly paradoxical state of strength and vulnerability. Seeking counsel, I reached out to my mentor and an industry confidant, whose timeless advice remains my guiding light: "Great strides can be made in a minute, an hour, a day, or a week. The key is to start."
It somehow reminded me of being on the starting line of the marathon, and somehow helped me to figure out what to do with the next 8 hours, focused on one ambitious goal, to win.
With this advice in mind, as soon as I walked into the office, I allocated my team and myself a mere 60 minutes to generate six ideas, no matter how audacious they seemed. I was determined to make the super-speedy session fun, no matter the pressure.
Our brainstorm surprisingly yielded five distinct concepts, ranging from an indoor skydiving experience to an early version of the Metaverse – predating the term's current ubiquity. Among these, one concept stood out as a clear winner, propelling both my team's and my own careers to new heights and enabling me to embark on a long-held dream project.
We secured the largest project ever awarded to the agency through a 60-minute burst of creative freedom, fueled by the belief that significant concepts can materialise at any moment, as long as the appropriate atmosphere is cultivated for their inception.
This episode taught me an indelible lesson about the potency of creative liberty and collaboration, even in the face of pressing deadlines.
The essence of achievement, I discovered, can be condensed into fleeting moments. I distinctly recall how granting ourselves the freedom to conjure something daring yet elemental, without obsessing over minutiae at the initial stage, can yield expansive creative possibilities.
The subsequent challenge was to assemble a team of unparalleled expertise to transform these ideas into reality. My mission: a diverse collective hailing from myriad backgrounds, all impassioned about their craft. This, I was convinced, held the key to success, even if I couldn't articulate precisely why at the time. Assembling this cohort, I forged bonds that transcended professional realms, evolving into friendships that persist to this day.
Though paths have diverged for some, the connections endure, affirming the timeless wisdom that ideas transform into either dust or magic, contingent upon the individuals who embrace them. From that point onward, my belief in the adage that an idea's fate rests upon the individuals who engage with it solidified. Paired with the notion of extending creative licence to oneself, the team, and the client, doors previously thought locked become ajar. The profound realisation is that these opportunities are, indeed, within grasp – an empowering sentiment that endures.
