cherish is dead, long live cherish

So what an interesting few months that has been. It's my blog so I can be honest, and here goes honesty....albeit in short.

November 2007...time to wrap up cherish...why?

1. cherish was doing small work with big brands. This was not going to change in the short term and was frustrating.
2. As a self financed venture cherish never had the money to hire the very best people, with all respect to those that worked with cherish in its 3 years. This was hurting our work and the business.
3. I was increasingly failing as a manager, partly because of the above points it was becoming clear the business, which successful compared to many small agencies, was not living up to my expectations and aims...so before it died or I died it was time to close.
4. There was an offer of something interesting that would allow me to leverage the cherish model but in a larger better financed environment. More of that below.

Feb 2008...new challenges and little bit of stability, or so I thought...!

Over the course of 2007 a friend at the time Hans Howarth, CEO of Amsterdam based web agency MediaCatalyst, had approached me to help head up a new joint venture between his company and Cayenne, the traditional agency of Canon in Europe. The new company, Look, was to be the integrated agency of the group. My role was to be Strategy Director, determining the offering of the business and help solidify a very shaky client relationship between Canon and Cayenne.

Public blogs are not for details so I will leave it by saying it was not what it was meant to be, politics and in fighting resulted in stagnation and impotence, someone I considered a friend turned out to be quite the opposite in their expectation setting and more disappointingly in their financial commitment so after 4 months it was time to leave what in fact turned into the worst experience of my career.

You always learn from these things, they make you stronger, but it is still not pleasant to experience.

The biggest disappointment of all is that the small number of Look employees brought in to start the business were very able, very admirable people. MediaCatalyst is a company with a strong culture and great team. It is an example of how one person's ambition can be blind to what could be lost in order to reach a financial goal. A lesson in business for us all. But, onwards and upwards.

cherish lives on, but now as a vehicle for me to engage agencies and brands to deliver on the opportunity that exists in communications without the baggage of overheads and the necessity to sell campaigns or production.