Blank page. One question.
Six years ago Spike sat down with an empty document and one question: what does this business stand for? “Honesty and transparency” were the first two words he wrote. They were also the last. Father of 4 has been writing from that line ever since.
Marketing is an industry that can suck. Owners get ripped off. They don’t own their assets. They don’t see how marketing links to sales.
Twenty years running marketing inside AME's & PLCs taught me what good and bad looked like at scale. CDA. Nylacast. Appliance City. Budgets up to £20 million. I’ve sat at the boardroom table, written the brief that became a £4M making campaign, and watched campaigns not land (don't talk to me about Twinnings). The trick was always the same: honesty about the numbers, before the cleverness about the creative.
When I left in 2019 I didn’t want to build “another agency”. I wanted to build the thing I’d wished existed when I was on the inside: a small senior team that turns up, tells the truth, and leaves you with the work in your name. Hence the Playbook. Hence the calculators. Hence why our retainer rooster is small on purpose.
Outside of FO4: I coach youth football until June this year, then I'll be working on player pathways. I’m a governor at Charnwood College. I play guitar in a band called Halcyon when the diary lets me. I have four children who are the only audience I’ve never managed to brief properly. Father of 4 is named after them, and only partly as a joke.
Six years of consulting boiled into a 126-page paperback. ISBN 978-1-0369-5557-1. Free to founders on the audit call and never signed. It's embarrassing.
Two associates. And the dog who runs HR.
Two humans run their own disciplines and pick their own clients. One labrador runs HR. We don’t hire juniors and we don’t farm out to overseas content mills. If they’re on your account, their name is on the bottom of your board pack.
3 years in after smashing her apprenticeship. The doer and the social queen. Amelia is quick on the uptake and throws great ideas in. Truly our dancing queen too: tap, modern and ballet since age four, can pull off a mean pirouette. Actual Harry Styles obsessive.
- , Social media
- , Captions + scheduling
- , Apprenticeship year
- , Resident dancer
Turns your PPC into heaven. The absolute PPC baller who turns ROAS into POAS and makes you money. What Devon doesn't know about PPC could be written on a stamp, a very small one. A travelling man too; loves the sights, smells and delights new places offer. A real globetrotter and all-round good guy.
- , PPC management
- , ROAS → POAS
- , Conversion tracking
- , Globetrotter
The real boss of FO4. If Jasper wants it, you ask how fast. Known to hire and fire (he is the head of HR after all). Our lead mental-health ambassador, offering naps and cuddles on demand. Lives for walkies, treats and toys in the garden. Visit the office and expect a fuss with lots of licks.
- , Head of HR
- , Mental-health ambassador
- , Naps & cuddles
- , Lead toy-tester
Got any freebies? Yes.
We’re not scared of sharing what we know. Take our advice and implement it yourself, brilliant. Watch these and think “I need someone to do this for me,” even better. Either way you’re winning, and the tools are free.
Cost-per-lead calculator
Tap in your spend and your leads. See your true CPL across every channel in seconds, the number most agencies hope you never find.
Lifetime-value calculator
Work out what a customer is worth across every year they buy from you and the spend ceiling you can hit to win one.
30 days of CEO marketing tips
A short film a day for thirty days, aimed at directors who need to understand what their marketing team is actually doing.
What are we thinking?
The real stuff. Not “10 tips to boost engagement” clickbait. We call out the BS in our industry and share what twenty years of doing this has taught us. Here’s the last few.
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SEO is NOT dead
Ladies and Gentlemen, SEO Is Still Alive I’m writing this today because, quite frankly, I’ve seen blogs and threads sent out today that are already out of date. I’ve seen one particularly about the history of Google – how it went from 10 blue links to position zero, then moved to AI overview, and how […]
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to… flip flop marketing
What on earth is Corbett on about now. Well unfortunately people I’m seeing this happen so much at the moment because everyone is looking for their silver bullet. Something has happened to society, personally I blame Amazon, but in reality it’s the internet and social media. We can get our groceries delivered, we can buy […]
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The hotline is the same number that’s been on the website since 2019. No call-tree, no “press one for new business”, no overseas dialler. Spike picks up or rings back in business hours.
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