Ashley Benn comes from a very specific lineage of Cape Town creativity; a figure who sometimes discreetly, and mostly inimitably, has been part of creating what the concept of a ‘creative career’ can be in South Africa in the last decade. From Shelflife to AndPeople, and now as the founder & creative director of Room Studio (noted as an ‘interdisciplinary creative consultancy at the intersection of ideas, product and people’) – Ashley originally studied a science degree; affirming of something I hear time and again from creatives at the top of their game : the most successful stories comes from people whose point of view originates from life rather than a relational degree in creativity. You can’t really be taught what needs to be done to fulfil your career vision inside a classroom or lecture hall; but you have to be ready to learn – from anyone and everything. Creative careers are driven by intelligence, curiosity and intuition.
“My creative career dates back to university. I had started a fashion label called ‘Upper Echelon’ which was mainly focused on creating technical outerwear, and that was my first creative outlet through fashion, which was something I had always wanted. The brand was quite successful – we showed at STR.CRD which was a festival that used to happen in Joburg and we stocked a few stores like Smith & Abrahams. When I started at Shelflife, that was more around product – and I was witnessing this new industry emerge, which is really around footwear and product. I was part of the team that started the Johannesburg store for Shelflife, overseeing the online store, and helping with some buying and product. That led me to the world of adidas – which is has been quite coincidental, as it turns out.“ Shelflife remains South Africa’s most premier purveyor of sneakers; the first to do it, in securing some of the most top-tier accounts with global brands like Nike and adidas. This time that Ashley speaks of, around 2016, is when the seeds of people before like Bradley Abrahams or brands like 2Bop began to germinate into what we see now; an upward trajectory of South African visual story-telling and cultural determination. Now, with Room Studios, Ashley leads the in-house & independent agency for adidas South Africa– more on that later, but it’s critical to note in understanding the story, “we were interacting with people from adidas, and getting to know people in marketing and product – because we were launching their top tier product, and we had Yeezy’s before adidas South Africa had Yeezy’s – and apparel, and through that I connected with Mike and Duncan at AndPeople. When a position opened up in brand strategy, I moved to AndPeople and adidas became my baby, with my experience in footwear and working with the brand already. That was my first venture into the creative agency world. I didn’t really know what a creative agency was or did, which was quite funny. I really winged it at the beginning and followed my instincts.”
With a background in product – perhaps the most critical school you can come from in marketing – I ask Ashley how being product-focused at the start of his career informed his creative advertising skill, “I think it was really everything. I really do believe that marketing and advertising is about selling perception; you’re selling the idea or feeling of a product, and I was really a student of the process and information behind all the products and brands I was exposed to. I am a geek for product – everything from a shoe, to a kettle – anything that works well. Key to that was being at Shelflife, who foundationally built and introduced the culture of ‘hype’ to South Africa, almost single handedly. That taught me how to follow the process of taking something to market through educating people. It shaped my way of thinking, and my understanding of what people want. I always say to the team – marketing is not rocket science, we don’t save lives, we have this amazing opportunity to come into work everyday and have fun, and to do what we love. I’ve never looked at it from a theoretical lens or studied marketing; being immersed in the culture and everything that surrounds it, that’s where you can derive the knowledge to create something and make it work.”
Regarding his time at Shelflife, Ashley acknowledges the experience as a very specific era in which so much today is owed, “I don’t ever take for granted that I was there when this thing started. We had seen sneakers raffles, or blogs, overseas – and Shelflife were really pushing all of those things when it wasn’t mainstream culture. Sneaker culture is like pop culture, now – you can have anything at your doorstep within a week or two, it’s democratised now. We were witnessing this crest of the wave as it was happening, and we went from just seeing camp-outs and raffles online – and the first lightbulb for us was probably in 2015, when the first adidas Yeezy was released. I’ll never forget it – it was happening on Saturday, and we came into work on Wednesday, and people were chilling outside the store. We were like, what are you doing here? And they were like ‘we heard that the Yeezys are coming out, we are here for it.” That was literally like three days before. We took it as a joke at first, but each day leading up to the drop – the camp out line grew. It was crazy. That was definitely a turning moment – that was the start of hype here.”
When AndPeople closed, so too did the prolific agency’s long standing work with adidas. As Ashley puts it, “Room Studio was born from this functional need to fill a gap – and through a series of consulting work that I had been doing, the conversation started to develop into what might it look like if I could take on more, what would that require? I think adidas is a very different business to a lot of other brands, things are always changing – they need quite an agile and close-knit team. We started to conceptualise with the adidas team this idea of in-housing a creative function for their business, which is something that has been happening in Europe for a long time. I’m a very singular person, so if I can work on one brand, or one or two things at a time – and do it really well – then I’m more inclined to that. This is what Room Studios is, we have really been piloting this proof-of-concept for the last two years of creating an in-house creative function for adidas’, and across their varying units.” In cultivating a cohesive and locally contextualised expression of adidas in South Africa; Ashley and his team are wayshowers in the future how global brands can maximise their presence in a region with total authenticity. With stunning campaigns dosed with humour and sentiments wholly South African, Room Studio are behind works like The Office (featuring CEC’s gal Dee Koala) – with Ashley saying, “adidas recognises that our South African market is very nuanced with a mix of influences from europe, to a collective commitment to our own culture and its expression. We get to localise a lot of our content, which is a really good opportunity because of where South Africa and Africa is emerging on the world scene, so timing has been really perfect.” People like Ashley are setting the stage and tone for what lies ahead for South Africa’s continued autonomy, and the celebration of our local perspective as a powerful force for creativity, marketing and story-telling; this is the path ahead. We watch in anticipation.
Written by: Holly Beaton
Published: 24 January 2023
