5 Minutes with… Franki Goodwin
In her 25 years since graduating from The Glasgow School of Art, Franki Goodwin has made an impact across film, music, science and culture.
By the time she stepped up to become chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi UK and helped the agency win the totemic John Lewis and Waitrose account, she’d already changed the face of feature film marketing, working as a designer in the early days of online content. She’d already rubbed shoulders with the likes of David Schwimmer, Lucy Liu, John Malkovich, Salma Hayek and Kenneth Branagh. She’d spent over 10 years as company director of production company Western Edge pictures, working on titles including ‘Prevenge’, ‘Rare Beasts’ and ‘The Toll’.
And before becoming CCO Franki also worked on advertising that had made a mark on science, music and culture. She’d created the groundbreaking ‘Sea Hero Quest’ game that continues to contribute valuable data to dementia research. She’d earned the trust of Gorillaz creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett and collaborated with Billie Eilish on a project that celebrated a whole generation.
That’s not to mention the run of creative hits that Saatchi & Saatchi UK has put into the world since she took up the CCO role – campaigns for John Lewis and Waitrose that go way beyond the Christmas extravaganza as well as brand building brilliance for EE and data-driven work for OVO.
With the 2024 New Creators Showcase now open for entries, she’s looking to push that even further this year too.
To hear about all this and more, LBB’s Alex Reeves catches up with Franki.
LBB> What were your priorities as CCO when you stepped up to the role in June 2022 and how has that evolved?
Franki> A big thing for me was how design works within the agency, creating a new department in concept design. I started life as a designer. I was a little bit frustrated with the way that design was being used and that it was actually creating a ceiling for really good people. It's almost like the only path past design director was as a creative director, and then you're doing a job you don't know how to do. So it's elevating the role of concept design, bringing that into the process earlier.
That fed into winning John Lewis and Waitrose, for example. The role of design in retail is so huge in terms of integration, in terms of experiences. So, having set that up we were able to plug that into Waitrose and John Lewis. One of the things I'm most proud about with the John Lewis work was how the concept of Snapper integrated through literal tendrils that were able to hold high-fashion handbags on one tendril, slippers and pyjamas on another. That was really thanks to having those skill sets and elevating concept design that Nathan [Crawford, executive design director] and his team can work with.
We got on the pitch list maybe in January 2023 and we were on the shortlist by February. So I had six months to make some changes, elevate some people and then we all stared into the whites of each other’s eyes and said, "Let's do this thing!"
LBB> Of course you ended up winning it, having elevated design within Saatchi & Saatchi’s creative offering. How did you end up getting started as a designer?
Franki> This comes back to my interest in the creative curriculum. I don't think I always wanted to be a designer. I just think it was the only career I'd heard of that took being good at art and offered a career path that wasn't an artist. I was very sure that I wasn’t going to get up every day and paint, as much as that sounded romantic. I've got more of a scientific brain than that. I need problems to solve.
At school, I would put words into my paintings. I didn’t know that was design. Then I was lucky enough to go to Glasgow School of Art, which has a very broad, non-restrictive way of teaching design. There were two sides to the street – the art side and the design side – and we would still go over the road to do life drawing, for example, because a fundamental skill of being a visual person is the human form. So on one side of the street, you've got old-school typographic presses and you're literally building the type by hand, understanding the physical form of type and why this G is so beautiful (I'm honestly not joking); then you're going and drawing a woman. Seeing those connections, that's great creative education, as far as I'm concerned.
So I came out with this very broad, not very disciplined approach to visual communication, with some design skills and a hard drive full of typefaces that I'd stolen and this ridiculous, enormous portfolio full of very high-concept work. I almost feel now that it's incredible that anyone offered me a job. And David Stocks at SAS (which is now MSL) gave me a job.
Then you learn how to be a designer. It was very much an apprenticeship. I met some great people. I was lucky enough that they had digital ambition, so I didn't get stuck. The culture was changing, the world was changing, I was young and young people are interested in that. So many interesting companies came out of SAS like GBH, Salterbaxter, Rude, and Franki&Jonny, which I created [with co-founder Jonny Green]. It was definitely a place that was really good at bringing people together.
LBB> Franki&Jonny ended up specialising in creative and design around films. How did that come about?
Franki> I was designing a website for a Mike Figgis film, 'Hotel', very randomly through some tech friends. I got to Venice, and was like, "I don't think this thing has a creative director." There were lots of individuals who could do things – director, editor, designer, coder – but we needed an idea for this website. So I went from being this quite junior person to creatively running this big project with Jonny, who became my business partner.
We got funding from Film4.com, which was raised through a producer. I just fell into it. And then, like hungry young people do, you go "I think this might be my opportunity."
That website was really groundbreaking. It got nominated for a BAFTA. Mike Figgis was really interested in the internet and digital filmmaking. So he was running around with PlayStations attached to wheels, reducing the amount of crew, getting really elite Hollywood camera people to do their own sound. It was fascinating. We could spend an hour talking about 'Hotel'.
It was a '90s fest. Everyone from David Schwimmer to Lucy Liu, Max Beasley (who went out with Mel B from the Spice Girls and time, so she popped over for the weekend), John Malkovich, Julian Sands (RIP) all these incredible people. I remember having this out-of-body experience where I was chatting to David Schwimmer about how I left this buttoned-up day job and was taking a risk to do this website. And he was like, "Yeah, it's like me. I've got the very secure thing that I do for half the year, and then I like to do more experimental stuff." He was comparing my graphic design job to being in 'Friends'!
I was thrown into this world of actors, auteurs and musicians – all of these creative people, being incredibly inspired. I would just get Rhys Ifans and ask him to sing into this microphone because I needed some music for the website, because our rule with it was we couldn't use anything from the internet so everything had to be created on set. It was so much fun. We made content, we made games, we made animations, I just went out, took photos and turned them into stuff.
I came back and thought it's criminal that other than a DVD with a behind the scenes, there isn’t more output from a film. So that's what we created Franki&Jonny to do. With a very naive lens of surely that would bring an audience to a film. That's now called 'content' – what we all do – but at the time, nobody knew what the internet was for. Salma Hayek's fan club hacked our website to get the content because there was no way for us to share the videos, no social media. It was housed on Film4.com. It was driven through the forums. Remember them?
LBB> What sort of work did Franki&Jonny end up doing after that?
Franki> Some of the time I was doing film posters, very traditional film titles, and logos for film companies. We designed the Curzon cinemas website. Some of it was simple web design or poster design and other times we were taking a Spanish film, re-cutting it and turning it into a game that you play online.
When Kenneth Branagh did 'The Magic Flute', we took every single bar of the opera, turned it into an interface and made content. We were just doing fun stuff. We had a great time. It was a very, very creative 10-ish years. We built an amazing body of work, most of which now feels teeny tiny.
Then I got to a point where I was wanting a break because I spent my whole 20s doing it. I also needed to figure out what the sum of these skills meant outside the film industry. I did a bit of work with guys at The Viral Factory and worked on a few branding things. It also worked with 4creative quite a bit. That gave me an insight into how to be a bit more grown up.
LBB> How did you end up getting involved in Western Edge Pictures?
Franki> I took some time off to go to Paris. We'd closed Franki&Jonny down, but I was still doing the odd bit of film consultancy. A friend of mine, who produced a film called 'Third Star', introduced me to Vaughan Sivell who'd written it (he became my husband). He got why I was frustrated with film. When you're an indie, you fall into the trap of being a problem-solving agency. So people only come to you with the weird titles they don't know what to do with, rather than the absolute bankers. I remember someone telling me that 'Slumdog Millionaire' would be too boring for Franki&Jonny. It wouldn't. I'd really like to work on a film that won an Oscar!
Vaughn was like, "You should be a film producer because then you can input on cast and whether the story has an audience or not." I thought that's the last thing I want to do. Quite interesting, though… So we started to build slates.
LBB> But soon after in 2014, you ended up at your first and only ad agency – Saatchi & Saatchi. How did that come about?
LBB> I ended up freelancing at Outside Line when it was brought by Saatchi. That was a bit interesting. I would never get the opportunity to the front door. And I had talked to quite a few recruiters at that point who didn't know what to do with me. Head of design maybe?
Coming into a big agency that was predominantly above the line, but had lots of integration ambitions was kind of perfect. I was able to identify people to work with. I was four days a week. I ran my own film company. I thought this is not going to last; I'll get found out in six months.
I give an awful lot of credit to Will John for making sure that that didn't happen, because we teamed up [as creative partners], started working with Deutsche Telekom, he filled in a few probably quite large gaps in my knowledge. I brought a lot of interesting other experience to the table and we became a great team.
LBB> Deutsche Telekom has obviously been a huge part of your time at Saatchi’s. What have been the big threshold moments?
Franki> 'Sea Hero Quest' was huge in 2016. It was an incredible commitment by Deutsche Telekom. The research is still feeding the scientists' work now. They're still working with the game company that we brought in, and they're still finding out lots of things about the brain through that data and experiments that we didn't know before. It's sort of mindblowing that it's still being used as a source of knowledge to further the science around dementia and how humans navigate. That's the one thing I would say, in my whole portfolio. I don't know if I'd ever hope to do anything else with that kind of legacy. I think that comes around maybe once a career for people like us.
'Magenta' was the follow up, the tricky second album, which was, again, brilliant. That was a privilege, being able to talk to Jamie Hewlett and Damon [Albarn], about the project. That was the first and only time they allowed the Gorillaz to have human bodies. The activation was more famous than the film that we made, but we ran around Poland with these actors, spraying and making things magenta for the launch film. The only bit that was animated was their heads. I remember being in this Polish production office looking at these four funny-shaped people with charity shop clothes – all a bit raggedy – not believing they were letting us do this. But that came out really well.
Billie Eilish was the next thing. You don't get to work with Billie Eilish if she doesn't like your idea. So that was really pressure, probably up there with pitching to John Lewis – pitching to this incredibly articulate 17-year-old girl the night before she played Glastonbury. I think there's a lot of empathy involved in what we do. And when you're working with a celebrity, you've got to try to put yourself in their position. In the same way you try to with a client. I had a very strong sense when I was building the deck that I was putting all these pictures of her in it. And she was 17. So I said to her at the beginning of the presentation, "By the way I've chosen all these pictures of you. And it's such a strange thing to do. So if you hate any of them, I'm really sorry." And her mum went, "No one ever says that. That's so kind of you to say that because it is very exposing." I thought, “I'm in. At least she's listening now. She doesn't think I'm some asshole from advertising.”
Empathy is a huge part of what we try and do, working with people who have a brand, an image, a projection. She didn't like any of the first ideas we presented her and it was fine because we were getting to know each other. We took that all away and went back in and came up with 'What We Do Next', which I'm incredibly proud of.
A lot of the time, the integrity of the person can really keep you honest on the work. If Billie wouldn't do it, as a client or an agency you can't start forcing your own desires into that execution. It gives you really good boundaries.
LBB> Another client that’s really defined your career since becoming CCO has been John Lewis and Waitrose of course, which is now a lot more than just the biggest Christmas ad.
Franki> We went straight into the sale work, which I absolutely love. We worked with Man vs Machine on that. And it was a really different tone of voice. I care as much about sale as Christmas. There's sometimes a tendency to think of the tent poles and not everything else. I believe that the harder-working stuff about a point of sale, or encouraging people to save energy, that's where craft can really make the difference. I think you see that on the EE work we do. Care about it all, because you don't get to do Christmas if you don't have a good sale. You don't get to do 'Freedom' if you haven't done Black Friday. That's the power of a partnership.
LBB> What recent work are you most proud of?
Franki> I'm really proud of the John Lewis idents. They're really charming and starting to establish a humour and tone of voice with John Lewis.
We've got some exciting projects on Waitrose coming up – John Lewis is the one everyone mentions, but Waitrose have got brilliant leadership on the client side, they're in growth, they're a great brand, and a bit of a blank canvas. I was very pleased with our Christmas work.
I am excited about some EE work that's coming out soon. It's very, very cool. The Ellen White ‘UNFINISHED’ story was something we were really passionate about getting out. The new EE was such a big moment and is still continuing. It's been years in the making. And it's so great to see that getting recognition.
LBB> The New Creators Showcase – your third as CCO – is now open for entries too. What does that mean to Saatchi & Saatchi UK?
Franki> I became CCO in the summer. So, Cannes was sort of my deb ball. In the first week, I did the NCS for the first time. I launched my vision for that, which was about creativity in the curriculum. Being in school, knowing you're kind of creative, but not having any clue what the opportunities are – being able to open up the world of creative careers is such a big passion of mine. Understanding that there are people that choose clothes for things. Your career path from an art degree can be so wild and wonderful. And I just don't think we shine a light on it. It feels to me, it's still a bit "doctor, lawyer, graphic designer". Schools need help from the creative industries to make sure it's feeding and giving kids the fulfilment of their potential.
The commitment we made last year to work with everybody on the reel is easy to say, but we really have honoured that commitment. And it's so exciting to be working with them across brands such as Nivea and Deutsche Telekom. It's really opening up our network. Instead of it just being a showcase and you stand on the stage and you take a little bit of reflected glory of some brilliant young people, actually going “What are you gonna do?”
There's talent from a few years ago I still really want to work with, like The Blaze; I want to work with Will Wightman – I'm delighted that his career is taking off in the way it is, but we haven't found the right project yet.
It's a showcase for the industry. But if we can give them their first gig or get them on a first treatment that helps them understand the process better of how to pitch, or get something in their book that's got a big brand on it which gives the client confidence to take a risk on them, then that's part of the commitment.
