OwenKessel started in 2008 as two yahoos in a lounge and with a fire in their bellies to create an agency unlike any they’d worked at before. It helped that they had just won the Amstel Lager account on the back of their idea-centric approach to solving brand and business problems. Four years later this ideas agency is a 40-strong team and has a number of SA icon brands in their stable including Amstel Lager and Tanqueray gin (Brandhouse), Aspen Pharmacare, Zodiac Pool Care, Entyce Beverages: Five Roses (BTL) and House of Coffees, and is confidently expanding their international footprint with Diageo Scotland on their Reserve Brands Portfolio for South Africa and the Africa region. As a young agency OwenKessel has had a small showing at awards, (Loeries, Cannes, Clios) but as CEO Felix Kessel puts it, “We’ve only just begun to staff up around our ideals – doing the right thing means getting the right people, the best people. That must lead to the best relationships, the best solutions and that is best work.” Start with a belief: Do the right thing. No matter what. We believe that in order for brands to become more than simply their product or service they need to transform themselves into relevant and convincing content, created to satisfy an increasingly selective yet alarmingly hungry market. They need to redefine the relationship they have with their consumers from the ground up. Hopefully it starts with us.