5 Years On: Making It Mother Shanghai Style
It all started with a phone call. Bob (Robert) Saville, founder of Mother, was on the other end and he had just asked us the craziest question: would we like to start up Mother in Shanghai?
Our reaction was one of both excitement and fear. In practice, opening Mother in Shanghai would be an almost impossible brief. China is a marketplace that contradicts Mother's independence beliefs. “Best of luck,” the market said. Mother is unlikely to survive in China. Mother’s principles are overly idealistic (although we, of course, disagree). So if Bob is brave, then we will be too, we thought. We took the brief.
Five years later, and we’re still going strong, having survived some of the toughest years for a new business to thrive in with the onset of covid-19. How did we survive? We believe it is down to The Trinity – the three guiding principles that help us live up to our mission of ‘Making Our Children Proud’. In other words, creating a future that we can all be proud of. This is our measure/benchmark for new business and client opportunities, and for existing relationships and work alike.
The Trinity has existed ever since the business started out in 1996 and has served us well since we first opened our doors in Shanghai, shaping the business, its work, and its people ever since. The same set of principles have drawn like-minded clients and production partners, who continue to work with and support Mother in Shanghai. These are principles that we believe have the power to help any business stand the test of time. We share them with you here.
1. Do the Best Work We Possibly Can
This principle always comes first. It is what gets us out of bed in the morning. It doesn’t necessarily mean award-winning work, it means coming up with the best creative solution for the task at hand.
This principle has a significant impact on the work and people involved. China has its own set of communication rules that are vastly different from the rest of the world, sometimes strange and shocking, but always fascinating.
Every brief comes with a business problem and a set of constraints, such as a smaller budget, meeting requests from various functions, developing ideas that are flexible enough to span multiple touch points, and so on. Doing our best work pushes us to analyse the task at hand in order to find the most creative solution to the problem.
Awards aren’t the only metric of success. Tencent, Woolmark, Supercell and Airbnb are works that we are proud of, but each faced distinct challenges such as entering China, navigating covid, adapting post-pandemic, etc. The road from idea to finished product is fraught with ups and downs and we embrace the journey as a team, clients included, allowing us to produce our version of the best work. On the flip side, it makes things more challenging. More fun.
2. Have Fun
Are we having fun/are we going to have fun working on this? Are our clients? It’s really important that everyone enjoys what they do.
Over the last five years, most clients have come to us with problems like “our brand is getting old and tired” and “we need to sell more products”, which are not enjoyable. As a creative company, our job is to look at problems from a different perspective and make them enjoyable to solve.
Our ambition remains to be a destination for the world's most creative minds. Most importantly, we include our clients. When people with similar creative goals come together, they produce great work. And everyone has a great time making it. When others see a problem, we see an opportunity to make it something fun to work on. When everyone has fun solving the problem, it shows in the work.
3. Make a Living
We say make a living not a killing. We will only ever ask for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We never make decisions based purely on money. It’s a part of why independence is so important.
Most people believe that this should be the first of the three in most Chinese business structures. If we wanted to make a fortune, we would come up with ideas in an hour, get the lowest cost to produce them and deliver the job for the highest margin. That is not the reason we are in China.
We are here to provide a well-thought-out, creative solution that will turn customers into fans. We are not here to cut corners in order to maximise returns. An effective solution will yield fruitful results. Mother has always felt more like a place where creativity is the core product. We are a creative company, and the work we make is our product.
This undoubtedly influenced the approach and mindset of the creative minds who joined Mother in Shanghai, and it still does for those who have left and returned. People want to come to work every day and feel safe to be creative. We are extremely proud of that.
The Trinity is always in this order.
We are confident that The Trinity is a set of principles by which we operate, and our mission in doing all of this is to make our children proud.
