A fan whirs to life. Before it, a line of alarm clocks beeps incessantly, a swarm of microwaves heats indeterminate dishes and lamps flicker to life for the benefit of nobody. Rows upon rows of TVs show grim images of desperate polar bears, raging wildfires and rampant pollution, while others spin the “climate hoax” narrative. The frame widens further, and we see a beach littered with everyday household objects all plugged into the earth, draining its resources. As the opening riff of thrash metal titans Slayer’s “Raining Blood” blares out and the “Get Mad” speech from the film Network reaches its rousing climax, the camera pans to the ad spot’s hero—an offshore turbine.

For Nils Leonard, cofounder and chief creative officer of Uncommon Creative Studio, the Power Your Life Differently spot for OVO Energy in 2018 was a real “pinch me” moment. “Your first work is defining,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what spaff you say that might attract clients because in ten years, no one’s going to be talking about your press release in a magazine,” he beams. “They’re going to talk about the work you made.”

Now, almost a decade later, that moment has allowed Uncommon to snowball into a raging beast. But that’s not to say it’s been easy.

Having grown up in a working class neighborhood with his teacher mother and tattoo artist father, Leonard’s upbringing was always gearing toward creative leadership. “I think if I’d have been brought up differently, I’d have wanted to be an artist,” he says. “But, candidly, I didn’t believe an artist could make real money. And I was desperate to make money because I was fucking skint,” he says with a laugh from his brutal, bare-brick office on London’s Clerkenwell Street.

“I remember when fragrance ads really started pushing the boat out and I was like ‘Someone makes those,’” he says. “When I turned eighteen, I didn’t go to university at all; I just went to the job center and said, ‘Have you got any jobs in advertising?’ They pulled out their dusty Rolodex, and they had one job in there, a junior at Lintas. I turned up three hours early and got the job, and I was taken under the wing of a very, very talented designer there.”

From there, Leonard graced the halls of some of advertising’s most illustrious agencies; stints at AMV BBDO, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe and TBWA throughout his twenties landed him at the doors of Grey, WPP’s beast-in-residence. As chief creative officer, he steered Grey into highlights such as Volvo’s LifePaint, a product that only showed in the glare of headlights, and The Angina Monologues, a comedy show by Victoria Wood for the British Heart Foundation.

“These bits of work, you know: One of them won a British Comedy Award. The other one was on morning television all over the world,” Leonard says. “I sort of thought, ‘Imagine running a studio or an agency where all you made was work like that.’ And that was the experiment, you know? That was Uncommon. So, I got talking with Natalie [Graeme] and Lucy [Jameson], who were my coworkers at Grey, and we started the studio.”

From standing start to all-out sprint

At that point in time, Grey was a juggernaut within the WPP machine, and suddenly, three of its leading lights were flying the coop and starting a direct rival. “Yeah, they weren’t happy,” Leonard says with a laugh. “At the time, Lucy was chief executive officer, but she was a strategist, and Natalie was managing director. [WPP’s founder] Martin Sorrell was pretty unhappy and tried to sue us and get me in breach of my WPP contract for a year, which made it very, very difficult for us to get Uncommon off the ground.

“We had a genuine standing start,” he continues. “We were being legally fisted, and I mean that sincerely, and all we had was a press release and a bit of clout. So, the reason I’m so mechanized on our vision and everything is because I forced myself to be, because it was all we fucking had.”

It’s easy to forget that Uncommon is still in its infancy compared to some of its peers, but just eight years on from its launch, the agency has amassed an enviable roster of heavyweight clients, encapsulating everyone from telecom company BT Group and Windows to Depop and Instagram. It’s also making moves in the design world that many agencies can only dream of. Just recently, chief design officer Lisa Smith was named president of the D&AD; Uncommon has been named agency of the year by the likes of Ad Age, Campaign and Contagious magazine; and it has made critically acclaimed films with Australian musician Nick Cave, dominated the TV landscape with ITV’s viral Britain Get Talking campaign, and shot the cover of EA Sports’s video game FC 26 with football legend Zlatan Ibrahimović and rising star Jude Bellingham.

Uncommon really exists to dare and be daring. “I’m glad some people like our work; I like it more when they think it’s divisive, though,” Leonard says. “The best work we make really does move the needle in that sense, but that’s also why we make our own stuff, too. You know—art projects, statements, whatever you want to call them.”

Different gravy

Alongside the staple clients that keep the Uncommon lights on, the studio has also produced its fair share of talking points. Last year, it unveiled RATBOOT: a custom conceptual pair of thigh-high leather boots with cages for soles containing taxidermied rats, mixing New York’s penchant for high fashion with the dirt and murk of its streets. Months later, its unconventional rebrand for the London Museum proved divisive when it heroed a pigeon and a glittering splat of its fecal matter. The redesign attracted national press and drew ire and admiration in equal measure. Uncommon approaches what some may perceive as ugly as differential focal points that don’t need to battle so hard to stand out.

“I hear some people say stuff like ‘Uncommon has a different sort of client,’ or ‘They’re much more open,’ but really, they’re the same clients as everyone else has,” Leonard says. “And, we still have all the same conversations that everyone else has: ‘We can’t do this because it’s too much money.’ ‘We can’t do this because xyz didn’t work.’ I think the difference is that we just don’t stop pursuing that next big idea.”

More recently, Uncommon turned heads during New York Fashion Week with a pop-up called PAIN. The only item behind the doors was a grab machine with a single prize: a priceless Birkin bag. Residents and revelers were invited to try their luck, but there was a cruel twist: the claw machine was doctored so it would never be able to grab the prize. “I think PAIN is just very us. If you were to make an album cover for Uncommon, it would probably be that,” Leonard muses. “We view every bit of work, even if it’s an ad for somebody else, as an ad for us. It’s just an interesting exercise. It stops you from being cynical.”

Revolution over evolution

Indeed, having produced the work it has, the agency has an inherent awareness that it won’t be for everyone. “The number of pitches we see where it boils down to a slightly different shade of blue and clients wanting to lower their costs—like, that’s just not it,” Leonard says. “You know, if that’s what you’re after, don’t come here.

“The very first thing we do is ask people why they’ve come, which honestly I think a lot of agencies forget to do,” he continues. “At my old agencies, I was so excited to show them what we had done for other brands and try and win them that way. Of course, when you win that way, you make all this work, and the client doesn’t like it because you skipped that fundamental part at the beginning. So, we say, ‘Why are you here?’ And, they tell us they saw RATBOOT and want to do a bit of that, and I’m like, ‘That’s great, because you understand the work we love to make.’

“When I first got to New York, I went and saw the 9/ 11 memorials,” he adds. “I could hear the pitch, though; I imagined everybody pitching these tall, incredible, ‘You can’t beat us’ kind of monuments, and they were like, ‘No, we’re gonna do these things that go eternally down.’ I was super hit when I saw it because it’s got an idea in it. These are monuments to eternal loss. First, I was moved, and then I was immediately jealous. I wish I could have been associated with anything as important as that.”

And that ethos continues to drive Leonard and his team toward their dream brief: “A monument for Ukraine, in Ukraine, but when they get it back,” he says defiantly. “That was the fantasy way back when we said that we wanted to be on the receiving end of the most important and influential briefs of our time. You know, that stuff matters, from the very moment you get the phone call.”

The way Uncommon is going, it’s hard to imagine that working within that elevated echelon of human endeavor and fortitude will remain out of reach. But, to get there, Leonard knows the agency needs to stay grounded in a sense. “I’m still always terrified that I’m in a dream or it’s all gonna go pop,” he admits sheepishly. “I feel incredibly lucky, humbled and grateful. I also have seen the rewards the world will give you for forcing yourself to believe and having the energy to just never stop, never settle. I don’t think enough of us do the first bit. I don’t think enough of us put down on paper what it is that we’re actually trying to do.”

Here’s to manifesting. ca