It's never too late to fall in love (to quote The Boy Friend) with a new business. The fact that middle-age has arrived is no reason to abandon ambition. Nor is affluence. Richard Hall and Richard French (combined ages 105) could both afford to pack up and go fishing - in fact, French did precisely that. For two years he's lived in Key West, Florida: now he's partnering Hall in the business they both know and love, advertising.
That last sentence contains important guides to success. Love and know the business, and you've made a flying start: take a partner, especially one you know well, and your chances of turning start-up into take-off are substantially greater than those of a soloist. It's not simply that two minds are better than one: good partners provide essential checks and balances for each other, while the interplay of equals stimulates ideas.
Increasingly, ideas are the main currency of any business. In advertising, they're the only currency - or should be. What encouraged French and Hall to rejoin the agency game was their belief that much advertising has lost contact with its main purpose, which, says Hall, is 'about selling things' by creative ideas. The creativity is principally in the hands of another pair of long-time partners, Gary Walton and Phil Wiggins, both in their 40s. Their established business joined forces with the two older men in November.
Because the two Ws had been creating profitably for five years, FWWH began life with eleven people and half-a-dozen solid clients (including Forte Crest, MGM and Alamo Rent-a-Car). That's given time and space to follow another guideline for successful partnership: to decide, says French, 'what are we, what can we be, what should we be?'. This step, very important, often isn't taken. 'It's more important', says Hall, 'to get the brand right than to get the product out.' Most businesses throw all their energies into producing without deciding on their 'brand' - the reason for the customer to buy from them, and not from somebody else.
The partners might have generated a long document. Instead, they decided to co-produce their manifesto in the form of ads - advertising being their business, after all. Their business philosophy thus emerged as succinct slogans: like 'The first agency to promise you nothing new' (emphasising the basics of effective, 'fun' advertising); 'You don't have to have a big budget to have a big idea'; or 'Long-term relationship seeks long-term relationships' (with clients).
The slogans embody lessons French and Hall learnt from high-flying pasts that included two seven-year spells together, at the French Gold Abbott and FCO agencies. As individuals, French and Hall are more alike than Wiggins and Walton (who are 'chalk and cheese'). Partners can run the gamut from opposites to blood brothers. While one partner's strengths should complement the other's weaknesses, Hall says that 'role reversal' is also very valuable: the intuitive partner starts calling for more data, while the fact-based thinker retaliates with 'gut feel.'
What happens when the suspicion dawns that something on which you've been working is fundamentally wrong? You must 'go all the way back to the beginning', which, says Hall, is easier for partners who have the necesssary good relationship. In the end, and the beginning, human relationships hold the key, not only to successful partnering, but to all sustainable business success: 'only work with people you like, know and trust - and never underestimate their abilities.' As other high-achieving entrepreneurs stress, all other factors are outweighed by the recruitment and motivation of talented, creative people.
That's how the seeds of FWWH were sown in the 1970s, when young Gary Walton went to see his new managing director, Richard French, for the first time. Desperate for rent money, Walton wanted a £500 advance against his £1,000 salary as an art assistant. French retorted that they didn't employ art assistants or people earning only £1,000 a year, and left the room. He returned with the information that Walton was now an art director on £2,000, could have the £500 as a rise and had to hire a writer. Walton has stayed highly motivated and creative ever since. So has the writer - Phil Wiggins.
