Following his morning meeting, Mackinnon joins the team at Taboo’s South Yarra office. Inside, the office is funky and colourful. Mac desktops are spread throughout the vibrant working space, manned by youthful users, many of which you’d be forgiven for labelling ‘hipsters’. The workplace exudes the energy, excitement and creative spirit from which Mackinnon built Taboo.
At the start of the week, Mackinnon holds a team meeting where all the employees get together, canvass the week ahead and set goals for what needs to be achieved.
“We discuss new clients, big pitches, big ideas and people and it gives everyone an opportunity to air their feelings, thoughts, feedback and emotions. This is a really important time because its’ a way for everyone to keep abreast of what’s going on and keep the lines of communication open.
“I do a goal check off from the week before and I do a goal setting activity where I set the new goals for the week. We use some really cool software called basecamp – a project management tool which automatically allows us to update and notify everybody of particular goals which have been assigned to particular people which need to be completed by particular times.”
Following morning meetings Mackinnon begins what he calls “new client ideation”, otherwise known as brainstorming.
“A client will send us a brief with a set of crazy objectives and we’ve got to respond to those using our creativity and knowledge of the market. We’ll ping pong around some of the most loose, crazy ideas you can think of. No one gets shut down for any bad ideas, because sometimes a strange idea can lead to something that’s ingenious,” he says.
Mackinnon says inspiration can come at any time.
“You can be sitting on a bicycle in traffic or at your desk. This week, we had the brief for three weeks and it got down to 24 hours and we still hadn’t nailed the big idea, but with the clock ticking down, everyone thought one layer deeper and all of a sudden we had seven ideas.”
No two ideas are ever the same that come out of Taboo.
“The idea has to pop, it needs to sound good and generate that sort of hype. A good idea should be wrapped up in about 140 characters. Clients don’t come to us for something traditional, they want something that’s tomorrow, the next phase.”
Recently, Mackinnon pitched an idea to a popular shoe brand to deliver footwear via drones to people in need, with speakers playing music and cameras set up to record their reactions.
Brainstorming and creating such out-of-the-ordinary ideas is part of what generates the electric atmosphere in the office, but fostering the right environment is something Mackinnon has always strived to do.
“When we started, we always had to make sure that people loved work because we operate on commission. Building an atmosphere of fun and creativity and being part of a ‘cool’ business meant that despite people not always making much money, they’d still love being a part of it.
“When you’re a young business you can’t afford to pay people the big dollars, so you’ve got to make sure they love other parts of the business and are excited about the opportunities,” he says.
In the afternoons, Mackinnon pitches Taboo’s ideas to clients.
“This means preparing for the big pitch, understanding the new client brief, the campaign objectives and understanding their brand inside and out,” he says.
Each week Mackinnon examines how Taboo is tracking by analysing a variety of business metrics. He says he’s always looking to “fill the bucket” for the next month and aims to create enough business opportunities to hit Taboo’s targets.
“We do a lot of forecasting based on how many briefs we get and our general conversion ratio. My job is to make sure we’re presenting as many times as we can to make sure we’re hitting our targets.
“We also look at our staffing overheads, our costs of goods, sales volumes, ratio of turnover to margin (25% profitability measurement) and we track our monthly forecasting and pipeline in quarters. We also check the stickiness of our site weekly and look at what campaigns people are in,” he says.
In order to stay ahead of the curve, Taboo embraces new, emerging players in the marketing sector by using the “Hollywood” model.
“The way that we build scale is through what’s called the Hollywood model. We work with our best-in-market third party suppliers. If there are services which we can’t offer internally, we actually find the best supplier in the market to do that and we manage that process.
“This means we can offer more services and partner with experts and anyone who is emerging and exciting. Rather than seeing them as threats we work together,” he says.
In the evenings, Mackinnon dons his foodie hat and explores Melbourne’s restaurant culture.
“At night time there are so many new and exciting restaurants which have come into Melbourne. I am a bit of a foodie and my girlfriend is too and we often find it’s as simple and easy to eat out as it is to cook. We’ll often go out with friends or just the two of us.
“Coming back, it will always be more market reading or catching up on the day. I have very limited time at my desk during the day because it’s so often spent on the phone or in meetings or entertaining clients,” he says.
Mackinnon’s long-term plan positions Taboo as the “nucleus” of his life whereby he is able to “create brands, businesses and opportunities which stem from it”.
“Those businesses are there to a) be enjoyed and b) be sold. Taboo is the brains and identity behind those new projects so it needs to be treasured more than anything else,” he says.
In terms of his lifestyle, he always aims to be content with what he’s got.
“I don’t believe in working hard your whole life, it’s about enjoying the journey and removing the idea there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s about making yourself happy at every stage of your life. I want to make sure I see the world and experience as many things as I possibly can and not over-complicate life,” he says.
Mackinnon believes entrepreneurs should “enjoy the journey and enjoy the privileges” but realise there is no shortcut for hard work and experience.
