We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ken Byers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ken, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Confidant started in 2016 with a single question: “Why don’t people trust ad agencies?” It was as provocative a question to tackle then as it is today. At the time of our inception, AdAge proclaimed, “NO ONE TRUSTS ADVERTISING…”, with studies claiming “only 4% of Americans think the marketing industry behaves with integrity…” (AdAge, April 24, 2015) Grim findings, to say the least.

Having previously worked both at a major brand (Sony Electronics), and in the ad agency world (Ogilvy & Mather), I had to admit as a soon-to-be agency founder: brands don’t actually hire agencies for the name that’s on the door. They hire PEOPLE. So, really our brand name had to encapsulate the characteristics that are the ethos of our people.

Thus was born Confidant, named for the integral role that we want our people to play with brands. The moment the name came out of our mouth, it felt like it represented both WHAT our role would be, and also HOW we aspire to serve the needs of brands. The brand itself instantly carried with it a range of associations that go with the notion of a confidant: Strategic focus. Creative problem-solving. Holistic thinking. Transparent accountability. Easy accessibility. And, of course, results.

It just instantly felt right. And, amazingly, we were able to trademark the name, which is a tricky process in-and-of-itself.

Ken, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When I was starting Confidant, a colleague asked me where I find purpose in the work that I do.

In the branding and advertising business that I’m in, we’re always trying to find the core purpose that drives brands and we’re trying to connect that to stories and visuals that deliver the brands’ essence in an artful way that is believable and appealing to the world. But, looking in the mirror to find my own purpose or my company’s purpose was and is a provocative question to ask.

In art, the artist is making a statement through their work. But in advertising and branding, we are using our creativity to communicate something unique about a brand or its products. And yet within a brand you find that these companies are filled with various individuals with many different ideas about what’s right for their brand. They each have their own conscious and subconscious associations with that brand and it takes a lot of work for my team to really LISTEN to and ACT on all of these perspectives. And even once we’ve heard everyone’s unique perspectives, we need to bring a strong dose of empathy and intuition to our creative solutions so that we can find ideas that represent this collection of perspectives at the core of the brand. We are both stewards of the brand itself, and of the people who are managing it.

The truth is, all the people involved want to do their job well and all want to get along (usually), so working through these different perspectives can be tricky. All involved can deal with a sizable amount of stress, and when you really break apart what stress is, you find that a lot of stress is born from fear. Fear of of failure. Fear of judgement from others. Fear of the unknown.

And therein lies the answer to what motivates me. There’s our purpose. As Confidants, our job is to both find a brand’s ideal destination, but really the real work is to go on a journey with a wide assortment of people so that we can help them overcome all of the obstacles that keep them up at night. If we can choose to see this journey a crucial ingredient in our work, it allows us to maintain this posture of empathy to fuel the right outcome.

This is the true essence of problem solving in our work.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Over the years we’ve done a range of branding, advertising, content creation and design projects for a wide variety of brands like Amazon, Sony, Diageo, ShakeShack, the Harlem Globetrotters, MadeGood and Birchbox, to name a handful.

Every phase of Confidant’s existence has been characterized by some defining moment where we’ve had to rise to a challenge.

In our first year, we had a watershed David-and-Goliath type of moment as a small start-up team of two people pitching to work on a global brand project with Sony, competing against some of the biggest ad agencies in Europe. And we still work with Sony today, seven years later.

Fast-forward to 2020, when the world was descending into lockdown. In this new and challenging phase, we steadily kept building and diversifying beyond advertising and content creation into more and more branding and design work, adding a range of Amazon divisions to the stable.

And now today, our third major phase has been us striving to maintain multi-year relationships with all the brands with-whom we work, while adding on new industries and new brands into the mix.

Looking into the years to come, it’s encouraging to see that in 2023 we’ve been recognized as an AdAge Agency of the Year and as one of Inc’s Best Workplaces, and we hope this trendline will help us continue to grow our team as more and more interesting projects come into our midst.

Any advice for managing a team?

In the early days of any company, there is a lot of value in having a team of multi-faceted, entrepreneurial, jack-of-all-trades individuals. This was undoubtedly true for Confidant for both me as a founder and for the team to have maximum flexibility to do whatever a project needs, even if that means going beyond our comfort zone. This versatility has been an enormous asset throughout our establishing years.

But, with a greater number of projects coming through in any given month, we’ve started to reach a point where we need to grow our team to have more defined roles. The sheer volume of work demands a more clear workflow, with more intentionality for each role and how it plays to each persons’ strengths so that they can thrive in their work. We’re continually trying to make strides on the individual level, which ultimately sets the right team dynamic.

On the emotional level, finding clarity of role and purpose is the key to building the right team.

We’ve also done a lot more to provide for the physical needs of each person. This has a lot to do with strengthening our employee benefits, providing a comfortable physical office environment that people want to be in and, these days, finding ways to be flexible to allow people to determine when to be in the office or when to be remote.

We’re really proud to have been named one of Inc’s Best Workplaces in 2023, which is especially sweet since it’s determined by a survey of employees own thoughts on the company.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.confidant.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weareconfidant/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/confidant-/mycompany/

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