Interview with Graeme Davidson, Partner of Little Greta, UK

We are originally from the Czech Republic in 2005 when my colleagues Jan and Tom started Little Greta with them still in university. Driven equally by logic and heart, in 2016, we set up in London to further accelerate our growth. Now a company with international reach, we cater for clients of all sizes and often work with HORECA and F&B brands.But it's the work for beer brands in particular that we got most recognition for – after all, you can't deny your DNA, can you? Also, through our sister company VRCOT, we focus on innovative technologies such as AR, MR and VR.

It always feels great but equally – if not more! – important is the feedback we get on our work from international markets. That’s the primary indicator, I think.

Submitting our work for Primator Brewery and Morous Brewery followed a long winning streak with our other beer design, Jarosov Brewery. The Jarosov branding has recently received its sixth accolade for German Design Award, and thus became one of the most appreciated and recognised Czech beer designs. We said it was enough though, so this year, we withdrew Jarosov from all competitions and started competing with our design for Primator and Morous, which we thought had equal qualities.

Primator exports their beer to 30 countries and so we had to create a design that would be universally understandable in each market while still reflecting the brand’s heritage stretching back to 1872. In doing so, we decided to abandon the traditional, yet boring and overused clichés associated with a classic Czech beer – heraldry, ornamentation, crimson, green, gold... This resulted in some traditionalist dodos claiming we created a design for motor oil or some chemicals.Morous was a completely different story – they’re a Czech regional family-owned and operated microbrewery, so the brief was much looser and less strict. By the way one of the greatest things about running an owner-operated creative agency is that you get to meet and talk to other owners with whom your work has a direct impact on – which is what we loved about Morous best.

Awards are lovely- it shows that we are doing the right things and being recognised in our industry will undoubtedly help drive our business.

1) It’s fun 2) You learn something new everyday 3) You get to travel

Historically, Little Greta comes from the Czech Rep., a country most people would associate with Prague, Skoda, Kafka, Havel, and beer – but not creativity or design. To some extent it’s a misconception – a majority of my colleagues graduated from the Faculty of Multimedia Communication, one of Europe's most creative academic institutions. So the creative potential is there for sure. And when you combine it with beer as the key theme, this creates a very interesting business niche for us to focus on.

Once regarded with scepticism, augmented, mixed and virtual realities are showing promise as a hugely powerful marketing and sales tool. We believe these innovative technologies will play a crucial role in exploring, marketing and selling brands and products — and not in a distant future, but within a single generation, which is why we now have a major share in an agency specializing in this.In the past, AR, MR and VR was not something companies would necessarily need to worry about investing in largely due to high costs and extensive development time. However, far from being a niche tool for global brands, the technology is slowly becoming more affordable and much easier to use, and particularly the dawn of 5G networks will further accelerate the growth.

Just go ahead and give it a shot. We, too, were reluctant as to whether or not to submit our work, thinking there was so much great design out there. The we said sod it – and now we’re at 12 awards and counting.

Lots of studying and reading the best out there. Learn from the expert, but don’t be afraid to show your own skills too.

If we weren’t a creative agency, we’d be an institution focusing on solving some of the hottest (sic) topics of modern era – global warming, resources dwindling, fake news. The least we can do being a creative agency is that we work with these great man and women trying to do our bit.

My wife. She is fantastic in every way and has a work ethic unlike anyone else I know.

Be, and do, good

There are much more important things on this planet than revenues and followers. Ecology should come first, and even more so today, which is why we support our namesake Greta Thunberg, the schoolgirl climate change warrior, as the Guardian once called her.