Brian McGoldrick Thomas McGoldrick

Q&As

Brian:

For me I have a scattering of O’levels and Highers, but my main interest was in art from a very early age. I suppose I always knew on some level I would end up in some sort of creative capacity.

Thomas:

Yeah I remember your Fonzie drawings and that picture of the face made up with thousands of dots…that took you weeks to do. Remember the days when you had patience!!

Thomas:

From school I did enough to get me into university. The challenge was looking through prospectuses and seeing which courses that didn’t need a huge knowledge of maths. So I picked Business Economics, which specialised in Marketing. Obviously the course lulled me with the no maths thing. Luckily I had made a few friends who got me through that part. Thanks Fiona and Gerry.

Brian:

And what about me laying out your reports and producing advertising campaigns for your marketing projects

Thomas:

What are big brothers for!!!

Brian:

Back in the days before computers, my first job was as a finished artist. Now what used to take 3 days to pull together with Letraset, Rubylith and repro cameras can now be done in a click of the button (well if you know how). I went to Circus Design the sister company to Adset typesetters in Glasgow. Being forward thinking in technology I got my hands on one of the first Apple Macs went on training courses for Adobe Illustrator and quickly changed over from manual to computer. How technology has changed

Thomas:

So you were one of the very first people to learn and work on Apple Mac. In at the right time I think!

Brian:

Yep I used to remember the 1Mb floppy disc and thinking how the heck will we ever fill that. Those were the days eh.

Thomas:

Well for me I interviewed a family friend who had his own agency as part of my marketing dissertation. After I finished university he asked me to do a couple of market research projects and employed me from there. So my first role was as an Account Executive dealing with clients such as Fiat, Alfa Romeo, RBIS and the Pendragon Group.

Brian:

I suppose the main agency I worked with was Keywest and I was there for 5 years. It was during my time there that I worked closely with Ken Doig the Creative Director and we had a fantastic business and personal friendship. Together we set up Berkana Design and over 5 years we built it up to a staff of 10 and had an enviable client list which included Honeywell, Scottish Enterprise, Keyline, Aggreko, Knaerner, Rolls Royce, Shell Direct, Scottish City Link, Compaq, Collins Debden and Scottish Trade International.

Brian:

Unfortunately it was a case of growing too big to soon and didn’t credit check some new clients (not mentioned above) we took on. At the end it was a nightmare, but lesson learned to grow at a steady pace and always credit check new clients. Ken and I folded the company and went our separate ways, although we still work together when the opportunity arises.

Thomas:

It was a pity. In my role at Keyline I used them as part of a rota of creative companies and although I will sound biased, they were exceptional. Believe me, they had to be or I would have been guilty of nepotism.

Thomas:

Well for me I was enjoying Agency life. I loved the variety of work and the number of different clients and suppliers I had to deal with. However, I hankered after a marketing role within a large company. I really wanted to see how the other half lived. So when the opportunity to join Keyline arose as Marketing Communications Manager, I jumped at it.

I was in the job a year Travis Perkins purchased Keyline. There were a lot of redundancies but I was one of four people who moved to Northampton, where I took up the role as Marketing Manager working across a number of brands.

I was with TP for seven years where I had responsibilities for strategic and tactical marketing. This included brand developments, service improvements, product marketing and support, benchmarking, implementing branch service standards, customer incentives, exhibitions, countless brochures, direct marketing and customer incentive campaigns, sport sponsorship, web sites, market research, launching 60 landscape, 30 civils and drainage as well as specialist brick, insulation, self build centres … it was never dull and overall gave a fantastic grounding and education

Thomas:

Although our families and friends would say we were similar, we actually found out that we were direct opposites when it came to profiling ourselves. So for me it’s really good to have a different opinion and that I can be challenged. I just wish he was wrong more often.

Brian:

It’s been really good to work with Thomas. His approach to customers and how he advises them on the best way to market themselves has really made me look at how we service customers properly

Thomas:

Thanks …. And Brian has great ideas and a fantastic eye for design. We complement each other very well

Brian:

Our core customer base has been with us for a number of years. Aggreko and Directional Data have been with us from the start. We do a lot of work with Credit Unions. Our family immediate and extended have been heavily involved for years, so where we can add value and help, we do. We do a lot of work with ITW and have finished off 7 websites for them this year. We are also in the middle of a re-packaging project for Permatex, which has been a challenging, but interesting project.

Thomas:

This year especially we’ve been doing a lot more online activity from building sites to optimising. For our clients they like that we look at their sites in terms of what customers want. It’s not about having a site in place and that’s it. All sites should work hard for the client and have a reason to be there.

Brian:

Because we look at client requirements from a marketing perspective it allows us to determine what they need and advise on what will work best for them. All activity we do should have a reason and a target to achieve.

Thomas:

Yes, I would agree with that. A lot of design and ‘marketing’ companies will produce for the sake of it. For us, we want to find out the who, what, why, where and when before we start. This means that the clients receive what they need through solid marketing principles instead of a ‘me too” or ‘take a chance’ attitude. We find our clients value this approach because we look at the customers, the potential and work to the budget.

Brian:

Quite simply we want to make a difference to our customer, not to our bottom line.

Thomas:

There is no better feeling than work that we’ve done on behalf of a client making a real difference to their business.