Inside Hijinks: Where positivity powers creative success

When a group of big agency alumni get together to form their own collective, how they put their stake in the ground can be extremely revealing about their take on the state of the creative industry. For full service agency Hijinks, as the name might suggest, perhaps what they were missing was some fun. 

With YouTube as their inaugural client, their first year has seen them score business with the Royal Navy (which resulted in a takeover of Piccadilly Circus in Central London), Amazon, Vue Cinemas and Kingfisher, amongst others in the UK and globally.

CEO Alicia Iveson was previously Managing Partner at Saatchi & Saatchi, and has also worked at Joint and Ogilvy, and Marc Allenby and Tamryn Kerr – co-chief creative officers and fellow co-founders – bring backgrounds at VCCP, The Brooklyn Brothers, Publicis, YouTube, and VMLY&R.

As they wrap their first full year, all three speak to DCA about what it means to be a women and queer-founded agency flying the flag for “positivity through creativity”.
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Positivity through creativity 

It’s no secret that the creative industries can often be intense to work in, and yet the Hijinks say this has not hardened them. Instead, they are brimming with optimism with so many ideas about how to build a fun environment that not only works for them, but brings a refreshing closeness and lightness to client relationships. 
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“We wanted to create something a bit different and also to bring back some fun,” says Iveson. “People come into the business and feel a different kind of energy, like the way we show up on a shoot, for example,” adds Allenby. “We're different and people seem to really value that – creating a safe environment where people can be themselves. It's about being that advocate for positive change in the industry, which I think just reflects the society we all want to live in.” 
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“It's not like kumbaya,” says Iveson. “We consider how we could add positivity to absolutely every facet, from how we work with clients to how we work with each other, to how we actually make work.”
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It has been a game changer for Hijinks’ business both in terms of the creative output and attracting talent and brands. “We have built an incredible network of like-minded clients to build brands who further project this positivity from the events startup Brands and Culture, to the new influencer agency WeRepresent, and the global inclusive marketing organisation Creative Equals.” says Iveson.
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A new kind of culture

At the core of Hijinks’s culture is creating a safe space for everyone to truly be themselves. “We are absolutely ourselves in the way that we interact with each other and also our clients, and it just means that everybody naturally follows suit,” says Iveson, who adds that the casual working environment and fully flexible policy has actually had the surprising effect of everyone being in the office out of choice.
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Welcoming people with other pursuits in their lives, they find, enhances the level of talent they are able to attract too. “We also do stuff outside of the four walls of Hijinks,” says Allenby, who is also the co-creative director for Outvertising –  a not-for-profit LGBTQIA+ advertising and marketing advocacy group. “It just adds to that positive platform, that outside of Hijinks we use our influence to further causes that are important to us.”
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And through eschewing the traditional agency model, they’re able to work nimbly across the world – at one point running a 24-hour business through multiple time zones while delivering a project – in a way that would be difficult in a cumbersome agency set-up. “It was actually wild,” says Kerr “It was really interesting, but it was beautiful. You go to sleep with everything in one place and you would wake up and the deck would magically just appear out of nowhere overnight.”
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A true partner

Such positivity has meant that client relationships have become meaningful friendships, and the small company size and inclusive structure means, unlike at some of the big agencies, clients are interfacing with creative leadership, and not only via the intermediary of account management. Kerr’s background in-house at YouTube brings a fresh perspective to client-creative partner relationships, according to Iveson. “You understand how to connect as a real partner as opposed to just a supplier, and going in with an attitude of pure collaboration,” says Iveson. “That’s true co-creation; it's not like an agency and client relationship. It's like how can we be a true creative partner to you?”
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Kerr also describes it as being true co-creation, made possible by really understanding what it’s like to be in house and developing ways of working that feel outside of traditional agency-client relationships. She asks “How can we help? How can we fit into your team? How can we upskill your team?” With this collaborative approach there is no “ta-da” moment because the client is, by the culmination of the work, intimately familiar with how it has developed. “It’s showing up as a true partner”.