The Bold Story: Martin Orton & Greg Villalobos

It started in 2002. Greg (now Creative Director of Bold) had excelled at St Martin’s College of Art and after graduating set up a successful freelance business, but he found himself working in a design industry that refused to truly engage with the user experience to solve a client brief. I (now Managing Director of Bold), on the other hand, had been labeled a troublemaker by corporates and charities alike, for asking too many questions and challenging the status quo. I’d been working in industries as varied as music and newspapers to digital marketing, but never could understand why a good idea had to be confined to the straightjacket of industry norms.

 

Anyway, the troublemaker and the over achiever made a strange but brilliant team. We had a shared vision of creating truly amazing and effective campaigns and products with real user engagement behind them. We just wanted to ‘do’. We knew we had to strike out and create a company that could do something radically different and give us the freedom to create the change we imagined. We had loads of ideas, an empty studio and a name: bold. 

 

Why Bold? It’s a positive affirmation, reminding us that creating something innovative is an adventure. Next we designed the logo to remind ourselves that everything we do should be people-led - because they are the stars. We developed an ethos that still runs through the company: limited budgets and ambitious, innovative ideas mean that you need to work smarter not harder. This is why we have succeeded at creating big impact projects, working with high profile clients, winning numerous awards, and scaling up our company from virtually nothing.

We’re an agency that brings real value into young people’s interactions with brands and causes: we speak face to face with thousands of young people, give them a voice, make others listen, and bring a bit of magic to the process. 

It’s that simple…

 

Martin Orton,

Managing Director