Podcast Ep 211: Headcase Marketing co-founder Andrew Casey talks about the journey he and his co-founder went on from musicians to creative marketers.
Since the age of 11, Andrew Casey and Olaf O’Moore have been in rock bands and in business, running ventures that include EcoCabs, bike brand FunkedUp Fixies and ad and marketing agency Headcase.
Casey spoke on The ThinkBusiness Podcast about how creativity and friendship hold the key to their bond.
“In business you need those different personalities and different people but also an environment where all of these things can have a voice and just like in a band you need to jam and riff until things come together”
He and O’Moore started Headcase Marketing 17 years ago. They describe the business as a creative activations business that works with brands and organisations using experiences, events and storytelling to connect with audiences.
Recent activations include collaborating with the HSE to increase sexual health awareness as well as working with the Pride Festival.
They were musicians before they were entrepreneurs in the business sense, forging various bands. In a way the band they formed never really broke up because the collaboration has endured through music all the way through to their first forays into business with Ecobabs.
Built on rock and roll foundations
“Success doesn’t mean anything to me unless I have other people around my shoulders sharing it”
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The entrepreneurs met as schoolfriends. “I met Olaf when I was 11 and we were just entering secondary school. Fast forward to today, he was best man at my wedding and is godfather to my daughter. We are both middle children with an anarchic streak in us.”
The logical thing to do was form a band, right? “That band endured through school and college and evolved into a version of funk and punk, a bit like the early Red Hot Chilli Peppers.”
That business aspect gave them their chops in areas like marketing and promotion. “We were honing our skills around creativity, storytelling and how to position this in the market.”
High energy rock became funk which became soul and eventually even jazz music. “The point is we were always in a band and by the time we were in college that band was a business.”
Their band was on its way when the sudden departure of a lead singer caused it to implode.
Unbowed, the band became a marketing agency of sorts. “We started EcoCabs, which was a cycle taxi business and little did we know that this would actually become an advertising business. Because it was funded by advertising it allowed brands to express their sustainability credentials before that was a thing. It became very successful really quickly.”
Running a business is not very different from being in a band
They realised that all of the things they had been doing in music had synergies in business and marketing in particular.
“Fast forward to today Headcase has 12 people and I still like to see it as a band. It’s all about creative collaboration. It’s about great people coming together to try and create really meaningful work and really meaningful experiences to tell their stories and help good clients, but also ourselves, to enjoy it. It’s about really good, creative output and we want to enjoy it, to entertain ourselves and other people.”
He says the band dynamic, when it comes to business and leadership, is not so dissimilar from running a company. “When you are in a band, it is all about shared success. Success doesn’t mean anything to me unless I have other people around my shoulders sharing it.
“These are the people we partner well with too. It’s that ethos of what it means to be in a band and how that translates to the type of leader you are. When you think of people and process, a band is an organisation made up of different functions and skill sets.
“And in a business you have those competing skill sets and you need the solidity of finance but also the off-the-wall creativity and you need all of these things to work together to make it cohesive and create something. So, in business you need those different personalities and different people but also an environment where all of these things can have a voice and just like in a band you need to jam and riff until things come together.”
Casey hasn’t ruled out the idea of he and Olaf actually reforming as a musical entity. “We both still believe to this day that we’ll probably end up back in a band,” he said gesturing to the guitars on the wall behind him.
“Our current vision for Headcase is ultimately creating a special and unique creative communications business that works with the best clients who are purpose-drive … the brands and companies that are needed in the future.
“We have created a cash-generative business and an amazing team and from that success we hope to fuel other start-up businesses.”
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