“We were running out of space in our old office and had been there for about ten years. It had become quite cramped. Moreover, the flow of the office was dated for how the agency has grown over the last 20 years, the finance department was split from the rest of the agency, which meant that the team was never really together,” says, Lisa Currey, MD of Hamiltons Advertising.
Meanwhile, the creatives, who have been working on various exciting store designs, as well as the new Food Lover’s Market Head Office, were hankering for their own project.
A new chapter
The new offices, located in Bella Rosa Park, certainly ticks all of the boxes. The entire team now sits on the same floor, in well-appointed hubs, designed to cater to more creativity and better efficiency. The client service department is now far more client accessible and is located right next to the main boardroom and bar space, while the creatives have their own space which is usually buzzing with energy.
A very important part of the space are the meeting and social areas. As with all creative agencies, a premium is placed on collaborative think tanks and brainstorming. For this reason it was vitally important that the new offices had a space that could accommodate more than one meeting area and, most importantly, has a big enough boardroom to handle client meetings with ease. The bar, which adjoins the main 25-seater boardroom, means that teams and clients can go from meeting to socialising with ease.
Hamiltons in Production
An exciting new addition to the agency is Hamiltons in production, which boasts a separate 250m2 film and photography studio, with its own fully equipped kitchen.
“To be more efficient, we really wanted our own film studio. At the moment we shoot about five commercials a month and as our clients are in food retail, we needed a suitable adjoining kitchen space and photography studio as well. We do quite a bit of stills photography on a weekly basis and we needed a fully equipped kitchen that could accommodate our photographers and stylists as well,” says Currey.
Hamiltons now have the capacity to conceptualise, script, style, shoot, edit and sign off a commercial in 36 hours.
“The fact that we have the film studio lends itself to a nimbler process. With the sudden market fluctuations and pricing changes in the retail environment, it means that we can accommodate our client’s last minute requests and reverts very easily. Moreover, we’re able to do this and stay as competitively priced as we’ve always done."
The relocated office is certainly popular with both team members and clients. “The flow of the new office, the bigger boardroom, ample parking and, of course, the capacity to enjoy a cold beer in our bar has certainly been a hit with clients.”
With the stress of working in the advertising industry taking a toll on many in the industry, Currey places keen emphasis on encouraging social and health interests to foster a happier, well-rounded team. To that end, Bella Rosa Park boasts a fully equipped gym and swimming pool which are free for use by Hamiltons employees.
“The combination of a bigger social area, the gym and the swimming pool has led to some interesting changes around the office. Some guys are looking buffer and there are definitely far more socials happening around the office post-work,” says Currey.
“The new space is an absolute reflection of how far Hamiltons Advertising has come in the last 20 years. We’ve developed into an agency that keenly understands the retail environment that we work in and can easily anticipate, and cater to, what our clients are looking for. I am very excited to see what the next ten years will hold.”