FortyTwo Studio
Member Spotlight
Currently celebrating its tenth year in business, FortyTwo Studio is a brand and digital agency in Aberdeen founded by Mark Kemp. Since the very beginning, food and drink has been an important part of their client roster, as Mark explains. “I really wanted to dig into food and drink when we started the business. Obviously, it’s a visual sector. But it’s also pragmatic, friendly and supportive in a way you don’t see in every industry. We also love to work with start-ups and scale-ups, which feel more personal and where we feel we can have a bigger impact.”
Mark gets a real buzz from the sector’s entrepreneurial spirit too. “Nobody’s more entrepreneurial than a farmer! They’re always thinking about diversifying and improving. A lot of our early clients were estates or farms that diversified into holiday cabins, or distilling their own spirits or launching food boxes. I enjoy helping Scottish agriculture and rural life to develop."
FortyTwo Studio also works across other sectors, and this cross-pollination helps bring a new focus to its food and drink clients.
“There’s so much innovation across Scotland; that’s not just in food and drink,” continued Mark. “For example, we can learn a lot from our clients in the energy transition sphere. I was at a Net Zero event a couple of months ago – people from Scotland Food & Drink were there looking at the technology companies are using to convert waste into hydrogen or to capture. Scotland can lead the way here, if we work together.”
Is innovation something that food and drink producers should build into their brand strategy? “Consumers will always be consumers; price and quality will always lead,” Mark said. “If you look at the gin bubble, we put so much emphasis on local and, while that’s important, it’s further down the line of customer concerns. Innovation and sustainability are like that, too. Don’t get me wrong, we have to innovate, whether that’s through using AI, how we recycle, or how we use energy. And there’s the funding question too – if you’re not doing something innovative it’s harder to get funding. But that’s never going to be front-facing for consumers. People don’t buy things because they’re made in an innovative way, they buy things because they taste good.”
Mark believes it’s also about horizon-scanning, particularly around AI. “AI is attractive for a start-up, but at some point the model is going to change and it’s going to become expensive. You need to make sure you’re using it for the right reasons. Physical things like distribution, getting your products in front of people, should be a bigger issue for food and drink producers, in my opinion. I can help you make the most beautiful bottle in the world but if you can’t get it in front of people, they can’t buy it.”
Scotland Food & Drink membership has been important to FortyTwo Studio from the start. “Of course, it’s useful from a business development point of view. But the support I talked about earlier is very visible at their events. We try and get involved as much as we can, whether it’s going to events or making ourselves available to producers through giving advice. For example, we offer a free half day brand strategy report for members.”
Mark also urges members to make use of the free resources, particularly The Knowledge Bank. “Over the years, I’ve used The Knowledge Bank so much, whether it’s to inform me or to send on reports and snippets that capture the latest thinking. The team are putting in the hard yards to find the data that’s important to the people we work for and the work we do.”
So, what has the past ten years taught him? “We’ve been so fortunate. One great thing about food and drink producers is they don’t expect you to be based beside them if you’re willing to go and see them, so we’ve been able to spread our work across the country without having to set up offices. That’s helped us to be agile. And we have a great team who have created consistently good relationships with clients, even in tough times. Of course there have been challenges – and most of those challenges aren’t going away. But we get to do good work because we have good relationships with good people. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.”
