RD Content: A commercial success story where content is always king
RD Content: A commercial success story where content is always king
Ryan Dean is in the business of storytelling - so it’s no wonder his production company’s origin story is impressive. Dean founded RD Content in 2009 from a desk in his bedroom. Cut to 14 years later and he employs around 100 staff in offices in London, New York, Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
Clients include Williams Formula One, Qatar Airways, Barbour and Clifford Chance. In 2023, the company is looking at a projected annual turnover of £11m, up from £3m in 2019 and £7m in 2022. The RD Group recently expanded to include RD Studios, building, and occupying a 45,000-foot full-service film studio in Park Royal, west London.
With sustainability front of mind, this bespoke high-spec build, which opened its doors in May 2022, includes electric vehicle stations, solar panels and the ability to harvest rainwater for use in the toilets.
With a clear vision for the future of content creation, Dean also plans to create a further 250,000 feet of studio space in London over the next five years.
Here Dean, who was named as One to Watch in the LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders 2022, shares his vision for the future and offers advice to other entrepreneurs.
- Business growth story
- Early challenges
- Key turning points
- Marketplace agility
- Market trends
- ESG performance
- Staying motivated
- Motivating workers
- Growth opportunities
- Risk areas
- Recruitment
- Expansion plans
- Advice for entrepreneurs
We spoke with Ryan Dean, founder of RD Content.
Can you talk about your business growth story and the journey your company has been on over the past few years?
I started my career as a journalist, writing about gaming and technology. When I left university, I met someone from the BBC who suggested I work for a production company. YouTube was becoming popular, and my job was to explain to businesses how we could make content specifically for it.
One of the first campaigns I worked on was about teenage pregnancy for Leicester Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Partnership.
We shot it as if it was a fight in a comprehensive school on a mobile phone, so it had this rough, grainy footage of the kids. We released it without any branding, and it went viral. Even Good Morning America ran stories on it.
I was at the production company for a couple of years, but in 2009 decided to set up my business and specialise in creating content, primarily for YouTube. Rather than rely on freelancers, we wanted to bring as much of it as we could in-house.
Now we have a business that’s difficult to compare to any other in our sector because we have a large full-time staff that has been consistently growing.
What challenges did you face in the early days?
I won a job with the NHS, a sexual health campaign, and they paid me £15,000. I remember thinking how I’d never be able to spend it. But six months later, all the money had gone. One lesson I’d give to entrepreneurs is that the beginning is unbelievably tough. Making the first £10,000 is significantly harder than the first £100,000.
I was close to throwing in the towel when a phone call came in leading to a global four-month Bacardi campaign. When I returned, I decided to approach things differently.
For the first six months, I'd been so pleased with the fact I'd won this big job that I'd rested on my laurels. I haven’t done that a day since.
Were there any other significant turning points?
The other critical moment came in 2014, when we decided to go to clients directly as opposed to working for ad agencies. At the time, most of our work was coming from the likes of M&C Saatchi or BBH. Within one year, we'd lost 100% of our revenue from these sources, where we had generated all of our revenue for the preceding five years. It was a bold and terrifying business decision to make.
But then we won our first direct to client bid, with Williams Formula One and we’re still working with them today.
How important is it to be agile in terms of taking advantage of strategic opportunities?
Strategically, the big opportunity we saw was to secure professional film studio environments to create commercial content for the brands and businesses we work for. Back in 2019, we decided to hunt for a space, then COVID-19 happened.
But we found the most amazing location and built some of the finest film studios on earth. They are sustainable and built to an extremely high specification. We designed them ourselves and invested a lot of money to make them perfect.
With the creative agency, original content and the film studios, you've got a very exciting package. We rent the studios out to the likes of Apple, Netflix, Disney and Amazon as well as use them for our own productions.
What trends are you seeing in your client base?
The US remains at the forefront of businesses willing to take risks and try different things. The Middle East is interesting, because they’re going through a period where they’re investing heavily in shaping their economies for the next 50 years. As a result, they’re willing to invest and make stories come to life.
The UK remains a hub of incomparably talented, creative individuals, but the business landscape is so pressured that we are falling behind when it comes to brands and businesses wanting to use storytelling bravely. That’s not to say we're not doing huge amounts of work - we are.
We need something to spark things here, maybe some big innovation or a different policy.
Your studios have been designed to be sustainable. How important is environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) to your business and your clients?
Firstly, everyone in the company needs to be passionate about ESG issues because so much of the work we do with brands ends up being about how do we elevate and tell these stories. Secondly, we're a young company.
We're 14 years old as a business, but the average age of the team is probably somewhere in their late 20s or early 30s. These are people who've got many decades ahead of them. Everyone’s aware that if we don’t make significant changes, it's not just going to affect our great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. These are things that will impact - and are already impacting - our lives today.
Caring about ESG is also the right thing to do commercially, as governments around the world apply more pressure to pension funds and listed businesses on the stock market to ensure they are adhering to their ESG targets. That trickle-down effect means that if you’re not embracing ESG, you probably won’t be able to work with most of the big organisations out there.
As an entrepreneur, how do you keep yourself passionate and motivated to continue your business’ growth? What resources and support do you lean on?
I did a mini-MBA, funded by Goldman Sachs, and that introduced me to 70 other business owners. That's been a great resource. We have a WhatsApp group and often share advice.
Also - and I know lots of founders will say this - the group I have around me, I've worked with for a long time. For some, it was their first job and they have been with me since university. Members of my management team have been with me for over a decade. That tight-knit bond is important.
How do you continue to motivate your people to believe in your vision and transform your strategy into action?
You need a strong ethos of what the business is about. We describe ourselves as makers, not middlemen. We’re here to find innovative, exciting ways of telling stories, primarily through film and animation.
If you have that ethos at the top of every conversation and interaction with potential or current employees, that's how you create driven teams.
What do you see as being the main growth opportunity for your business in the coming 12 months?
International growth is a big part of it. We’re becoming an outsource hub here in London because the pound is cheap. One of the most exciting opportunities for us is that a weak pound presents international opportunities for trade.
We have phenomenal educational institutions in the UK, in all sectors but certainly in film. However, further investment is required as the prediction for the UK is that we're going to be short of 25,000 technical staff by 2025.
What do you see as being the biggest risk to business’ growth in the coming 12 months?
I recently read a phenomenal book by Ray Dalio. He founded Bridgewater, one of the world's biggest hedge funds, and now he's giving away all his learnings through various books. The latest book is about economic history but also about predicting what happens to great empires.
It’s alarming how often history repeats itself. What we're seeing now is increasing interest rates to try to combat inflation. Typically, the next thing you see is unemployment go through the roof, which leads to social unrest, which then can lead to more conflicts. We have even started looking at buying a surplus of computers and laptops, because it feels imminent that potentially China will either invade or blockade Taiwan, which is where 70% of semiconductors come from.
Have you experienced difficulties in recruiting for specific skills, and if so how are you managing them?
Six months ago, there was more difficulty with recruitment because the labour market was tight. It's startling how rapidly that is unwinding right now.
But we're fortunate in the creative industries in London and New York, in that we have a deep pool of incredible talent to choose from.
What other markets do you plan to explore in the future?
I'm raising £120m to buy land in the west of London, to build a larger film studio. That's because I believe, for the reasons stated about the lower currency and great concentration of talent, that there will be even more film work coming from the States over to the UK.
The other area we’re keen to move into is original content creation. We're looking at acquisitions in that area. In the core business, international expansion remains at the front of mind. We're looking at more locations in Europe, the West Coast of the US and the Middle East.
If you had to pick a piece of advice from your career, what would that be?
Hire people on their personality over their CV. One of my colleagues says the test is to imagine getting stuck at an airport on an eight-hour delay with the person you’re interviewing. Ask yourself: is that something you would fear?