We were lucky to catch up with Hamish Macdonald recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Hamish thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?
I was lucky enough to have an incredibly insightful and decent fella as my direct manager as I first started in Advertising and Production. When it was my time to lead as TV Producer of my first campaign, he took me aside before my first pre-production meeting and told me, no matter what, if you believe in the team around you, then you can find the solution to any query or problem that arises that you don’t know within a phone call. So you can walk into ANY meeting with complete confidence that you can do the job and that you deserve to be there.
As a business owner, with that same lesson in mind, you hire for those with talents and knowledge outside your own, that often surpass your own in areas of importance, and then you can move forward as a company with that same confidence!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have had a rather varied career, but always within the same industry which has allowed me to experience and understand all the corners of the Production world. I studied film and television production at Boston University, and have since worked as a TV Producer at Ad Agencies, a producer and EP at production companies, an EP at an Animation Studio, also a Post Production Company and am now Partner and MD at Squeak E. Clean Studios, a Music and Sound Company.
We have been at the forefront of music and audio creativity for more than 20 years now thanks to our incredible in-house global team we help brands locally and internationally stand out and stay top-of-mind in an ever changing communication and social media landscape.
For some of our clients that will mean helping them create memorable Sonic Branding assets (used to be known as a Sting or Mnemonic) that you might normally hear at the end of an ad to to create Brand recall and recognition. For other clients it’s finding or sourcing the perfect music Artist, Band or Song to license and use in association with that Brand. Or instead using our team of artist and composers to create an original bespoke song of piece of music that becomes an asset for the brands on TV, social media and in Film. Our Sound Designers work on creating depth and an immersive quality to the visuals for any project, we record SFX, voice over and provide final mix to the variety of technical specs across the various media platform globally. We are also a TikTok Sound Partner and work wth them on specific campaigns specific to their platform.
There is a lot of talk around AI in the creative industries and the potential impacts, however for us we have always incorporated tech into our creative process to improve system, processes and output quality for ourselves but also for our clients.
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
Proud to say, we already have produced immersive experiences for Budweiser, McDonalds, Yonex and Air Jordan.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
As a company we have always been artist first and friendly! Our company was started by one of America’s leading musicians and one of Australia’s top engineers, and this has remained at our core, as we continue to grow we ensure we always support our industries creatives and hire the best talent, which is what our brand and our reputation is born from, legit artists.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.squeakeclean.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/squeakecleanstudios
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/squeakeclean/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/squeak-e-clean-studios-llc/?originalSubdomain=au
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/squeakeclean?lang=en