Good

GOOD: AT A GLANCE

Name: Max Burt

Title: Co-founder

Company: Good

Focus: Communications agency, providing marketing and advertising services

Launched: 2004

Max Burt’s CV reads like an A-Z of advertising. With more than a decade’s experience working for agency giants such as Abbott Mead Vickers and D’Arcy, Burt planned and led campaigns for the advertising world’s biggest spenders, including BT, Mars and P&G.

Tellingly, seven current heads of planning at the UK’s largest agencies learnt their trade under Burt’s tutelage. He’s been out of the game for four years but now he’s back with Good, his own communications company.

Co-founded last year with Andy Larson, another award-winning ad planner and former head of art at a number of leading agencies, Good isn’t about big companies and big budgets – it’s instead looking to bring big ideas to growing businesses. “Ideas are the currency of the future,” says Burt. “People often say advertising is the last legal way to gain an unfair advantage in business, but I disagree, it’s not the advertising itself, it’s the ideas.”

And that needn’t mean advertising. Burt wryly admits he and Larson are ‘ad people’, but says Good is about improving the way small companies communicate as a whole. “Good isn’t about taking people’s money and making a fancy advertisement they might not necessarily need,” explains Burt. “We look to understand companies and the levers which generate their business and improve the way they think and portray themselves. If advertising is what’s needed we’re delighted to do that, but it could be that some PR or direct marketing is needed.”

Burt and Larson, unsurprisingly, have an array of proven and talented ‘free agents’ they can call on to bolster their own expertise and use bespoke teams for each project. However, despite the sudden availability of two top-level advertising names to the small and growing business market, Good has received a mixed reaction. Burt’s four years out of advertising were the result of a near fatal car crash, which left him in hospital for eight months and paralysed down his left side. He also now suffers from a speech impediment.

BRAND RESPONSE

“People have preconceptions and make judgements, and while they tell us it’s not because of how I am or the way I speak, it’s clearly cost us business,” says Burt. In reality, he says the experience has left him even more determined and focused on his work – something many clients have recognised. “Because it’s been harder to gain interest than it should have been, once we do, people seem to believe us more. They can see I’m not interested peddling halftruths or gilding the lily for the sake of a quick buck.”

Burt’s philosophy on life since his accident has also shaped the culture Good is looking to promote. In addition to the communications offerings, Good is also working with companies to improve corporate social responsibility policies – or as Burt prefers to call it Business Brand Response. “CSR is a buzz word splashed across every board room and annual meeting at the moment, but very few companies take it further than bolting on an allowance to their budgets and ticking a box. Good is about exploiting potential and the good side of business and we’re helping companies realise they can make real and positive changes.”

So Good has a strong pedigree and is promising to deliver at an affordable price for small businesses, but does it really cut the mustard? Why should businesses like yours be interested? “When you’re running a business you’re very close to it. We’ll bring big ideas about how to make a real step change to the way you’re communicating and doing business,” promises Burt. “Not just the incremental changes you might otherwise make.”