August 5, 2011 |
FROM THE VAULT (WINTER 2010)
JAMES GRANT: CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, STARWORKS GROUP
“I would say I know what I want – sometimes I achieve it quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. I am a bit of a crowd pleaser and I hate frowning. My mantra is never tell too much… not sure it’s working today!” Well since that’s the case, anything else you’d like to share with us?
ON JET-SETTING
“I don’t know about jet-setter, that’s always relative – compared to my mum, then yes; compared to Daphne Guinness, then not so much. Yesterday I was travelling back to London from Denpasar via BKK. Heading to NYC Saturday then back to London next Tuesday… Then NYC again for shows and so on… You get the picture. Some people might call it jet-setting, I call it bloody hard work!”
ON THE BUSINESS OF FASHION
“Ten years ago, the core of our business focused on uniting the fashion and entertainment industries. We were the first and still are the primary agency connecting fashion and the entertainment industry.
“It has always been about delivering efficiencies to the industry rather than waking up in the morning and saying we should do this or that. The fashion brands we worked with found our approach innovative and the results spoke for themselves and therefore PR was a natural progression. I think it was the beginning of the trend that is to have deeper relationships with your clients across the entire length and breadth of the communications landscape.”
ON PIONEERING
“I think the term pioneer is overused, especially in fashion, especially in NYC – I think at my core, or SWG’s core, we just have a really good sense how to connect with consumers no matter where they are in world. If you mean are we open to using new tools and making a real effort to understand the future and invest in that, then yes, we are pioneers. In terms of going where no man has been before… I hope so.”
ON ACHIEVEMENTS
“I think the past 24 months have been the biggest achievement of my career – we have grown our network globally, made sense of the fashion/traditional communications/entertainment/digital communications landscape, made some really bold moves in terms of hires and acquisitions and all of this in a recession. Also, half of my company gave birth, including my wife. I think that’s the most amazing accomplishment of all, as women mostly drive our business and amidst having kids and having time off we still achieved the above. They say, behind every good man you will find a good woman – well, you will find about 20 behind me.”
AND DISASTERS
“You won’t give me enough pages! And I don’t enjoy typing that much.”
www.starworksny.com
by Natalie Dembinska
Photograph by Maria Ziegelboek – www.mariaziegelboek.com
