Brave Spark: Erasing The Gap Between Thinkers and Makers

Rob Drake (left) and Robin Shek.

By Mark Tungate

It’s sometimes a good idea to create something out of frustration: to solve a problem nobody else seems willing to address. That’s what happened with Brave Spark, founded by Rob Drake and Robin Shek in 2010. They felt that production and creativity were working too far apart. Their creative studio – which fused the two – was the result.

But let’s rewind a bit. The pair met at a company called Big Earth Productions, where they were working on adventure travel TV shows for the BBC. Some of these featured a fairly well-known chap called Ewan McGregor. (A fellow Scot, Robin recalls that when he and the actor got together, their accents would thicken like porridge.) Robin and Rob forged a friendship while honing their content creation skills – and not just for the TV screen.

“We had the idea of making a web series for the production company’s website,” relates Robin. “We contacted a bunch of adventure travellers who’d written books, or were semi famous, and interviewed them for the series. It quickly became one of the most visited areas of the site.”

Rob Drake elaborates: “Although the TV shows were for the [non-commercial] BBC, they attracted sponsorship from the likes of Nissan, Nokia, Garmin and Michelin. As part of the sponsorship package, they’d been offered exclusive content online. At that point, in 2006, very few people knew how to make branded online content…”

“Or if they did,” Robin adds, “they were big agencies who were charging a lot of money for it. We were just two guys.”

Rob continues: “Basically we put our hands up and offered to do it. And over time, we got pretty good at it.”

That was the basis for Brave Spark. Rob went off to work for traditional agencies for a while, but was exasperated by the sluggishness and expense of roping together creative and production from two different companies.

The economy of speed

“The inefficiency made it impossible to make the kind of work I knew it was possible to make. So with Robin we decided to create an agency that merged writing and making – ideas and craft – right from the start. Nobody had done that before. The ‘branded content’ wave was beginning, and we rode it.”

Rob believes that keeping craft and creative separate disserves both. “We have editors and producers who love writing. We have creatives who love to design and mock things up. There’s a big value in bringing them together. As they’re all passionate about what they do, the work is better as a result.”

Like most start-ups they struggled at first to gain traction, but then clients caught on. Robin says: “They realised that by smashing creative and production together from day one, we’d saved them a lot of time and money. When we propose an idea we pretty much know where we’re going to shoot and which crew will be involved. So we can get to the set much quicker.”

This is vital because there’s more content than ever, attention spans are shrinking, and trends come and go in the blink of an eye. Content that reaches audiences fast remains relevant and compelling. Plus, clients now demand assets for various platforms, as rapidly and inexpensively as possible.