Liam Augur is a senior designer at Leeds-based brand consultancy Propaganda.
Since joining the business in 2023, Augur has led the creative output for clients such as Cloud Nine, Vitawell and Suit Direct.
For over 30 years, Propaganda has worked with entrepreneurial, challenger and leading brands to transform their businesses. With plenty of exciting creative jobs to work on, including, yep, you guessed it, Christmas campaigns already, Augur takes us along for a recent week in his life…
Monday
Always starts with coffee and then secondly I’m on ‘get dressed duty’ with my toddler so that usually involves a nice wrestle to get dressed or a chase round the bedroom! I’m at home usually on Mondays, and so is my wife and 2-year-old, so it’s a noisy day for me!
I’ve recently discovered the NTS breakfast show, with Flo Dil, so that‘s usually on in the background. I’m working on a (Christmas!!) campaign today for hair care brand Cloud Nine so today I’ll turn the concept deck into a photography brief and, between myself and the account manager, we’ll liaise with the photographer, stylist and videographer.
Tuesday
Coffee again, but this time, I’m in the office so we’ve got a nice little morning crew from the Studio team together. Everyone waits for each other to arrive in the office, and then we’ll go to our favourite coffee shop Laynes together. Cute, eh?
Once we’ve all caught up on everyone’s weekend gossip, I get on with today’s assignment in the studio schedule: ‘Creative Refinement’ for one of our recent Discovery clients. Brand Discovery™ is the three-month deep dive our Strategy team does on a client and their industry before we start the creative process. After this, we present them with options for creative routes that will bring the insights to life.
The client I’m working on today has chosen to blend two of the routes together, so I’m refining the ideas into one stronger option that works best for the client.
Wednesday
Some leftover admin for Cloud Nine and a little continuation on yesterday’s Creative Refinement in the morning.
In the afternoon, it’s a train over to Manchester to pre-light the set for the brand film we’re creating for new beauty brand Karen Betts’. That all goes smoothly and I’m really impressed with the set-build the team have put together.
The client takes us out for tea, which is nice! We go to Nell’s Pizza, at Media City… and I get to watch the football, everyone’s a winner!
Thursday
Shoot day! Lots of walking around, talking, checking and staring at monitors. We’re working with a great director today, Chloe Victoria Hughes, to bring our concept to life. A lot of the technical and creative details have already been decided, so the focus today is on getting the shots we need.
I check in to offer suggestions and sign off shots, but I mostly spend my time with the photographer. This is a lot more improvised and we’re playing second fiddle to the video team, so we’re tight on time! Staying out of their way as much as possible while they build and dismantle the different sets, we’re able to sort lots of still life shots that will be needed for Karen Betts’ website and socials.
We overrun by a few hours, and it’s a late commute home on the train. Worth it though, got some great stuff.
Friday
WFH again today, which is always welcome after a shoot day and a late finish. Few things to tidy up on the Cloud Nine Christmas job, as we get into casting now for the campaign.
I also have some social tiles to create for Propaganda’s Instagram/Linkedin – our gaffer, Julian is a bit of a force of nature on Linkedin!
