Big, Dumb, Moving and Fun: Get to Know the Team at DROOL
DROOL is the production company of director Freddie Powell and executive producer Genevieve Sheppard. It was founded in 2020 with the intention of staying small and focusing on better. It is an entirely bespoke approach to production, hell bent on getting the best out of the work. Heart and soul is poured into every millisecond and you can feel it in their house style which oozes with energy, love and craft.
Here we catch up with Genevieve Sheppard to find more about how the relatively new kids on the block are giving everyone a run for their money…
Q> So Gen, who is DROOL? Where the hell did you come from?
Genevieve> Chances are you know our co-founder and director Freddie Powell’s work from his years as creative director at Wieden+Kennedy. He’s behind some of the agency’s most lauded and admired work like Nike ‘Write the Future’, Three ‘Moonwalking Pony’, amongst others. We initially met at W+K many years ago. I’d spent some time producing long-form before my stint in advertising. The two of us had a blast working together back in those days and we both shared the same ambitions.
Freddie has always been a filmmaker at heart and when he returned home from working out of W+K Portland running the KFC account, we immediately met up and started brainstorming what a production company might look like. Then our friends at Pablo called and gave us the opportunity to pitch on a Deliveroo campaign. We didn’t have one piece of work on the reel, not even a website. But they entrusted us with the creative freedom to go away and make something fun for them. We all loved the experience and the output and from there we started to take off. We quit our day jobs and decided to go full-time with the DROOL thing.
Q> What is DROOL's manifesto?
Genevieve> Having impossibly high standards but having just as much fun at the same time! What would we say of ourselves? That we are both highly driven but also admittedly can be ‘quite hard work at times’. We constantly strive to create the best work possible and push the boundaries which can be exhausting and hard to manage financially. However, the projects the pair of us have worked on since 2020 are testament to our high standards and why it’s important to keep pushing.
If you ‘just want something done’, we are not your people. We also ask ‘why’ an awful lot; why don’t we do this? Why are we settling for ok? Is this good enough? We never stop pushing. We probably care a little too much. Is that a bad thing? Not for us. We’re sure it might be a turn off for some people but then they are probably not our people!
Joy lies at the core of who we are. We love making creative things and we want to be better, not bigger. We know who we are and are more than happy to be a lean machine. We do not have huge overheads, we are not egotistical, expensive directors with big glamorous offices as lovely as that may be. We want to stay small so you get the cream of the crop.
Q> Do you think you have an advantage coming from an agency background?
Genevieve> Absolutely! We know what works and what doesn’t from an agency perspective. In fact, some of the directors we most admire come from an agency background. We also understand what the journey is; the endless script changes, the multitude of creative decks, the client demands...
Our job is to inject new life into the project. Agency culture is in our DNA. We’re a big fan of collaboration for sure.
Q> Do you have plans to expand your offering?
Genevieve> Staying small and independent has always been the backbone of our own success BUT we are always open to collaboration with people that share our ethos.
Look out for rising star Tiffany Whitney Chang who is DROOL’s creative assistant as well as having many other hidden talents. Tiff recently won Best Young Director at the British Film Institute and Best Short for her film ‘Stir’ at the London Short Film Festival and we can’t wait for her to put out more of her own directing projects with DROOL.
Q> In a landscape of thousands of directors and production companies, what would you say makes DROOL unique?
Genevieve> We are definitely the ‘antidote’ to the traditional director-led company model. Because we have teams globally who we trust implicitly, we can select teams and crews as well as choose projects that suit us to provide the best creative work possible. It might seem an obnoxious thing to say in this current climate but we really strive to deliver the best of the best. Not to sound cocky but so far, so good!
Q> Your work is quirky with high production values yet you remain small which attracts clients worldwide. What's your secret?
Genevieve> I’d like to think at DROOL that we ‘spread the joy’. Yes, we keep standards impeccably high but we also like having fun doing it. That’s ultimately why we all got into advertising right? I’d like to think people want to work with us because they have a laugh but also because we’re nice people.
Q> What would be your dream brief?
Genevieve> BIG, DUMB, MOVING and FUN. But even more important to us is who is sending the brief. We’ve learnt that it’s more about who you’ll be working with than what you’ll be working on. The results show for themselves when you work with people who share our same commitment to quality and push every possible lever to get the best end product.
Q> Rumour has it you're the ones to watch. What can we expect from DROOL in the near future?
Genevieve> Expect to see us everywhere! And for the work to get even better.
We are also writing and developing some non-commercial projects with some exciting collaborators so expect to see more short films from us in future.
We’re excited to be represented now from coast to coast in the US (Champion on the East, Baer Brown MidWest and Bueno West Coast), and to be developing strong relationships with agencies and clients stateside.
