Years back, I was introduced to Tony and Inii King by Harrison Boyce. The Kings own and operate the most tasteful of creative agencies: King and Partners.
And more importantly, they are part of Harrison’s crew of design and car enthusiasts who live between NYC and Bedford.
The first time we met, we ripped through Ralph Lauren’s neighborhood in vintage sports cars.
The second time we met, they insisted I test drive one of their V12 Ferraris, which would become a theme in our friendship.
Next thing we knew, Intro Limited had become K&P’s talent partner, and they were a tough client. Tough clients are our favorite clients, for one reason: High standards.
Tony and Inii are an inspiration. Not just because they have great taste, blue chip clients and a strong agency, but because they set a great example by living epic lives.
They’re serious about building their business, but they never lose perspective. It’s fun to hear entrepreneurs talk about productivity and output and growth, but there are deeper questions:
What good is efficiency if you don’t savor the time you’ve saved? What good is flexibility if you don’t work from a skyscraper and a beach in the same week? What good is profitability if there are no quirky Italian cars involved?
Below is a conversation about intuition, simplification, slow growth, ugly cars, happiness, humility, building a creative career, and living an interesting life.
MA: One thing that is immediately clear about both of you is that you know what you like and don’t like, without hesitation. If you see bad creative in the wild, you can instantly articulate why it’s a miss. Have you always been like this? How do you know so confidently what will work vs. what won’t?
TK: Always, since I was a little kid. I would fix logos that I saw on the street or in magazines. I think we both have a really good knack for understanding how successful something can be, and how it can be improved. We know how people think, we are aware of the thought process consumers go through when they see an ad, and we have a really good nonsense detector.
We are both good at boiling things down to the simplest, most effective version of itself. A good amount of our time is spent making things simpler -- from visual identity to ad design, copywriting and boiling it down to something deeply effective.
IK: It’s about being an opinionated person and an open-minded person at the same time, then knowing where we need to stand exactly each time. Guiding clients and teams on which direction to move forward with is a huge responsibility; it can’t just come from our personal preferences. I try to grow my own perspective and originality, but also pay attention to how different types of people react to certain things and dig into why.
MA: Tony, you told me a story about guest lecturing at an art school and critiquing designer portfolios. This was obviously meant as a service to the students, but instead the kids got offended. What was your takeaway from that?
TK: Quite shocking. Most of my sugar-coated constructive feedback was taken with offense. When I was coming up through the ranks I had my creative work shot down into a million pieces. I listened, and learnt, I reworked it, and I was so grateful to get honest feedback. I know I sound like an old fart but my takeaway was that the younger talent out there need to toughen up and we all need to be ok with more direct and clear discussions.
MA: How do you see the next generation of designers faring in the business of design?
IK: Much of what we considered as “design” will be commoditized by tools and technology. The next generation of successful creatives will be those who can orchestrate all forms of expression to create multi-sensory experiences that truly resonate with people on an emotional level.
MA: We’ve never really talked about work/leisure integration, but I’ve observed some things about you two. A lot of entrepreneurs can’t, or won’t, allow for leisure and hobbies due to fear that the work will suffer. You’ve obviously been successful at integrating both. How?
TK: It’s clear that you need a balanced life in order to be happy. True happiness comes from finding a healthy balance between work and hobbies. Work gives us a sense of purpose and accomplishment, while hobbies allow us to relax, explore our interests, and recharge. But ultimate life happiness comes when we bring the two together. In our cases it’s cars, travel and nature — mixed with creative direction and brand building. By combining those, we create a rhythm that feels natural and fulfilling. It’s this integration of productivity and personal joy that leads to a happy life where it hardly feels like you are working.
From a work POV, I think clients want to work with interesting people, and people who have passion, interests and taste. Everyone wants to work with likable human beings, not robots. Also they want original thinkers; they want to work with people who can relate or know what their customers want and feel.
IK: Work/leisure integration is a bliss, and I always feel grateful. One downside is that we can never not work, whatever we’re doing, wherever we are. We’re always observing, analyzing, debriefing what we see and experience. Very occasionally, I look forward to the future when I can stop processing these things constantly, and just relax.
MA: What is your least favorite car design?
TK: LOL Nissan Murano Convertible has to be up there! I dislike the blobby generic value engineered direction modern cars are going in, and the vast quantities of lookalike mid-size crossovers.
IK: All these fluid, bubbly design cars from late ‘90s to early ‘00s. I think that was a pretty dark period for any design really.
If you could take over Design for any brand, and execute a “turnaround”, what brand would you choose?
TK: Jaguar is an obvious one, it’s the brand pundits’ favorite LinkedIn subject, LOL (including me). I just know we could nail that one.
IK: LinkedIn. I feel bad I never do anything there, but every time I log in, I run away immediately because it’s just horrible.
MA: If you had to set up shop (both office and primary residence) somewhere besides New York, where would you choose?
TK: Great question - I’d pick Jose Ignacio in Uruguay. I’d buy a classic Mercedes, throw all my shoes away and take on one project a year. I always say it’s one of the best places we have travelled to; we need to go back! Milan would be a close second, we love the creative energy there, as well as the location in terms of access to nature.
IK: If we could choose, I’d love to be in Milan.
MA: You’ve told the story about starting K&P together, hustling your first few clients and executing the work, just the two of you. Now you’ve grown to ~100 employees. What have been the challenges? What have you loved, and not loved? How close do you stay to the work?
TK: It’s been 15 years this year, so we’ve done it quite slowly, by design, we have been in no rush to add bodies to boast about agency size. We would rather let the work product impress people, along with the fact that we have built a financially healthy agency step by step.
When I look back at the bits I haven’t loved, it’s been the times where we have added on services, things I know we could do really well but there’s been a period where we had to really persuade clients to give us a shot; periods where we had to challenge the perceptions of what K&P was in order to grow and move into new sectors - quite honestly that’s been exhausting. There were many “NO”s before we got opportunities to show what we could do.
Beyond those moments of frustration I have loved how we have surprised the industry and moved into new areas in a successful way. We were told “K&P is X, you don’t do Y,” and we’ve gone on to do it, and do it brilliantly.
I’ve loved meeting, working with, learning from so many team members over the years. I also love getting to know some of our best clients so well and becoming so friendly with them — that’s when great work can become easy — mutual trust.
We stay very close to the work by reviewing, there isn’t much that goes out the door without us seeing it, giving an initial direction or signing off on.
IK: The best and the worst part of this whole thing is about people. Losing great people for inevitable reasons, or having to let go of people is absolutely the hardest. On the other hand, it feels the most rewarding and magical when you challenge the team and they take things to the next level.
MA: For every bloated brand or agency that announces mass layoffs, we hear from a handful of small or medium sized ones who are growing insanely fast and need to make hires. The former gets the headlines of course, and sets the mood. What are you seeing happen, and how optimistic are you?
TK: We always want to quietly exist in the middle of those two situations. We want to grow carefully, in a considered manner. We’ve always tried to maintain 20-30% growth every single year, we’ve had years with more, and a couple with less.
We never want it to feel out of control, and never hire so many that we start letting B players in just to get shit done. Once you hire a few B players, then they hire C players and it’s all over.
IK: Tony and I can’t live with things and people not utilized. It truly drives us crazy! Keeping our growth in control and building successful case studies in various categories over time puts us in a better position where we can deliver comprehensive, serious work without being heavy-handed and slow. We feel optimistic but we can’t ever feel complacent because the market is so unpredictable these days.
MA: Have you ever had employees who defy the typical career arc, and grow unusually fast? What are some characteristics do you think those people have in common?
TK: It’s all about INTUITION. They have a built-in sense of how to approach something, when to work with others, when to just get it done, when to ask me for help, when to figure it out themselves. They have a feeling about the best way to get something done in the best way, and they act on it.
IK: People who are exceptionally talented are often exceptionally humble, and they don’t think they are that amazing — this is because these people naturally have much higher standards.
MA: How can ambitious young creatives make the right moves in the beginning of their careers to set themselves up for success?
TK: Take chances, show a wide range of thinking, don’t be afraid to include really rudimentary sketch work or even bad initial ideas — we want to see how you think as much as the end result. Over-deliver. Never just show the work you were asked for; go further.
IK: It’s never been easier for young creatives to stand out. What used to be the bare minimum — things like being consistently present, triple-checking work before sharing, being a humble team player — now feels like a lost art with recent changes in the workplace.
If you’re at your desk on a day you're not required to be in the office, or if you know how to respond with “thank you for your input and advice” when your boss says “great job,” you instantly become an asset.
MA: How do your clients come to you now, vs. back when you started? Have you ever experimented with systematic cold outreach, and/or just personally reaching out to dream clients to say hello? What have been the learnings from that?
TK: Clients used to come to us with defined scopes: ‘’We need you to do X, Y, Z’’. Nowadays clients come to us, tell us what they are working on, and we respond with ‘’OK, here’s some ideas of how we could help, here is what we think you need, here is what the next year looks like, the next five”, etc. We are getting to write our own brief more and more these days.
Our cold outreach strategy is as follows: Here’s a cool brand, they are great — let’s email them and say hello. And we literally send a really simple but personal note saying hi. We do it a few times a year and sometimes it’s ignored but other times it’s actually turned into work. In my experience, the shorter, and more personal the note the better.
IK: At the end of the day, nothing can beat solid reputation that's built over time. There’s no shortcut to true success and growth.
MA: What type of client work do you say NO to?
TK: Boring, unimaginative projects or brands where all the thinking has already happened. We want to be involved at the start to help shape, we want a seat at the table helping to define whatever it is we are working on. The best scopes are wide open for us.
IK: When the organization is not driven by a vision, but driven by chaos, ego, or fear. When we don’t believe in the product. Oh, and when we are asked to deliver creative for a pitch!
