Michon Guest Talk - ''Commercial first, creative always''

The Michon company started 40 years ago, in 1982. They're an independent agency that take great proud in the community they have created in their work space. They had taken pride in being able to say that nearly a third of their client's have stayed with them over the past 10 years. It was interesting to hear how Michon developed went through their design process and company development over the decades. During their talk they often emphasised the importance of team effort in their methodology.

Beth Michon (strategy lead, started in 2016) and Trevor Ede (creative director, started in 2016) said that their process when working with clientele involves an initial immersion session. They tend to bring in the whole team to speak about ways that they could go about creating or adding to a brand, a big focus is on strategic methods of producing a good marketing framework. After that they have a brand review and using the insights and data, would then proceed to adjust the concept accordingly to make sure that it fits properly.

When they've finished with adding in the new data, they begin creating the brand's whole identity and how it would come across to everyone. Following that, the team goes back to another review, to refine it. During these stages they would have a lot of different concept paths to go down with the project, until they are able to solidify a choice with choosing one concept and sticking with it.

Finally, the guidelines are created and it's set out to be reviewed by the public and to gather feedback to improve it before feeding the project back to the client before officially launching the product.

When asking about how they are able to adjust their finances in projects with each client, Michon answered saying that they try their best to make the most out of the budget that their provided with, so they would do everything in ability to expand the brand within their capabilities. Michon spoke about how they preferred to use a range of mix media, using talents such as photographers and cinematography to create this sort of eco system of creatives that all have the ability to take a concept to a new angle/degree.

I went on to ask them about their usage of AI, now that its become very hard t escape in the industry. They answered quite similarly to how other agencies have answered and said that they only want to use it during concept production, but then remove any trances of it in their last product. They always use an AI software called 'Otter', they said how much it had improved note taking during their meetings, allowing 100% focus on member's contributing to the meetings rather then distracted by note taking.

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