RVBBERDUCK: From postroom to After Party

What is your career journey? 

In 2013, I persuaded my parents to let me drop out of education if I found a job before the end of the summer holidays. I sent 200 emails, got seven replies, and one interview. This was for ‘office services assistant’ (aka post boy) at BBH. My boss later told me he gave me the job because I was the only candidate not using their phone when he collected me from reception. 

Aged 17, I walked into BBH London, and it blew my mind. My job consisted of delivering ASOS packages to people’s desks, moving chairs around to make space for morning yoga, and booking Addison Lees. I realised the postroom was the beating heart of the agency: a safe space to shelter from one’s account director and a marketplace for gossip. 

Like Amazon’s answer to Santa Claus, the best part was wandering around with my parcel-laden trolley. I was exposed to advertising’s pioneers: you could bump into Sir John Hegarty and Sir Nigel Bogle, alongside people who embodied the mindset that made BBH so brilliant. It was electric. I’m eternally indebted to that postroom, as well as the people I met passing through, for the career I have today. 

Above: RVBBERDUCK directed All The Small Things for NOTWOWAYS, through Afterparty Studios. 

After two years in the postroom, I heard that Anthony Austin and Dan Keefe were starting up Black Sheep Studios, BBH’s in-house production company. I begged them for a job. In June 2015, I started as a production assistant. By October, I’d handed my notice in, much to Dan and Anthony’s confusion.  

I’d received an invoice from a camera assistant for £350 for one day’s work, which was not far off what I earned in a week, and I figured I preferred playing around with cameras. So, I quit to become a camera assistant. One month later, Dan hired me as a freelance camera assistant on a branded content series for KFC.  

A few weeks later, I started helping Callum shoot and edit his videos. I had to work in the shadows because it was frowned upon for YouTubers to have help; it was seen as selling out your authentic self. I was introduced to KSI and The Sidemen, and I spent the next year working for some of the world’s most popular YouTubers.  

In 2016, I joked to Callum that we should start a production company. He took my joke seriously. By the end of October, myself, Callum, Richard Mansell (Callum’s manager and a pioneer of the Multi Channel Network space) founded After Party Studios.  

Above: Endurance, Grit, Timing, directed by RVBBERDUCK and produced by YRS Truly. 

What drew you to writing and directing? 

I’m addicted to people laughing at my work. At school, when I used to play my terrible little films and my classmates laughed, it made me feel warm and tingly. If something I have made can give the audience some escapism, my work here is done.  

What were three occasions when everything changed in your career?  

1. My whole family thought I was mad when, aged 19, I left Black Sheep Studios, a stable job with a decent salary. But this moment taught me that sometimes you have to place a bet on yourself. Nine times out of ten, you’ll figure it out. If I hadn’t left that job, I wouldn’t have met Callux.  

2. Meeting Callux was the knocking over of the first domino that led to everything else. If I hadn’t met Callum on that KFC shoot, I wouldn’t be a director, as he introduced me to KSI. I’d never have started After Party Studios. And most importantly of all, I’d never have met my wife, the director Edie Amos, who I met on the set of a music video. 

3. KSI replying “this is sh*t lol” in 2018. I’d just spent the past month making a one-shot short film set in a Mexican restaurant starring KSI for his YouTube channel. I proudly sent the Vimeo link to him, and 30 minutes later, received his response “this is sh*t lol”. At the time, it stung deeply. But then I realised his critique wasn’t of the work in an artistic sense, but in a YouTube sense: it didn’t adhere to the rules of the platform: it was slow and lacked a reason for people to stick around. Receiving this feedback made me fearless. From that point on, I had nothing to lose, and it made my ideas bolder. 

Above: RVBBERDUCK directed All Eyes on Revolut, for online bank Revolut, through Afterparty Studios.

What makes your creative approach different? 

Spending the last decade watching over the shoulders of some of the internet’s most legendary creators, yet coming from a more traditional background, has meant that boundaries between genres and mediums are blurred. Creators don’t think about fitting into a certain box, or in a certain medium; they think about what connects with audiences. In fact, that is ALL they think about. They are one-person production companies who single-mindedly know how to excite and delight their audience. When you take this mindset, mix it with what makes good advertising great – an idea that can balance on the tip of a pencil – you have the ingredients to make amazing content that cuts through the noise on social feeds. 

You like odd combinations of people in your work. How do they come about? What’s been your own personal favourite? 

It takes a lot to stop me in my doomscroll, but seeing unexpected pairings never fails to capture my attention. Usually, they come about because of some insider info. I’ll hear that two people are friends off-screen or have a mutual appreciation, and then make it my mission to bring them together in a concept, because I know the chemistry will translate well on set.  

My favourite is from 2020, when we sat Amelia Dimoldenberg with Eddie Hearn on a social series for Sky. It was during the early days of branded content, and persuading Eddie to be opposite Amelia felt like a real achievement. They made an episode that was so unhinged that their respective audiences had to see it to believe it. 

In a world where there are no more original ideas, making a cocktail that collides worlds in a way that makes no sense and also loads of sense is one way to get people’s attention.