Brooklyn Brothers: Nagging & Making Things

Guy Barnett and Stephen Rutterford describe their company, Brooklyn Brothers, as a “creative enterprise.” For clients, they are a fresh creative agency with a history of compelling ad campaigns. For themselves, they are a prolific group of idea-generators-cum -entrepreneurs with “businesses” ranging from chocolate to children’s books. Behance met with Guy and Stephen to discuss the joy of nagging and the necessity of creating tangible products while simultaneously serving external clients.

The Brooklyn Brothers team, and especially Guy and Stephen, are obsessed with execution. At a base level, Stephen explains, “we have lots of ideas…we are a factory of ideas…but we develop less than 10% of them.” When it comes to taking action, the team has no faith in hands-off project management. Their secret to actually pushing projects forward can be summed up with one word: “nagging.” Guy explains, “we repeat stuff like robots a thousand times…a best practice for us is to use nagging tempered by humor, we sit around a table and feel responsible to each other.” He goes as far to admit, “if you’re annoying, people will do things because they’ll want you to shut up!” How true!
 
Guy and Stephen have little patience when it comes to ideas. As Guy explains, “we don’t brainstorm often -- we tried it the other day and it didn’t work. Ideas don’t come like strikes of lightning, but from muscles. Ideas are logical and come to you over time.”
 
Aside from being an especially productive agency, Brooklyn Brothers is also known for its “side projects” that are actually integral to their business in surprising ways. The team has developed a vitamin, along with a partner, that minimizes the side effects of PMS, they have developed a brand of chocolate called “Fat Pig,” and they have written a children’s book. From these ideas, the agency gets new product lines and an understanding of the logistics behind developing, executing, and distributing a product. Guy elaborates, “one great thing about executing your own ideas is you actually learn to do stuff -- and this knowledge can be utilized for your work with clients or the creation of other products.”
 
Guy and Stephen strongly encourage all agencies to create a product alongside their services. “They should encourage all their employees to produce SOMETHING.  Most agencies believe that creativity is harder to come by.  The inverse is true.  Clients are much smarter than us." Guy goes on to explain, “agencies tend to be arrogant and they forget how important logistics are -- they rest on the ease of making ads and lack knowledge on how something is developed and sold.” And for Brooklyn Brothers, there’s no better ingredient than chocolate for making ideas happen.