Female Disruptors: Oberon Sinclair of My Young Auntie Creative Agency On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Be Honest — “Always be honest with your clients, even if you disagree with them. They will always respect your opinion, and in doing so, you will deliver work you are incredibly proud of.”
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Oberon Sinclair.
Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the PR, Branding & Creative Agency, My Young Auntie. Since founding the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with, consulted for, and managed an array of notable individuals and clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food, and lifestyle sectors. Oberon has worked with many noteworthy names, including Hermes, Vivienne Westwood and Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum Magazine, Fat Radish, Rizzoli Books, Island Records, David Lee Roth, Free People, Neuehouse, and many more.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I grew up in London and was bitten by the creative bug at such a young age. I landed my first job at Motown Records and later worked for MTV Europe, where I moved to Hong Kong to promote music across Asia. After three years in Hong Kong, I moved to LA and worked in production at Wicked Films. A documentary exploring the nightclub scene led me to New York, where my inherited punk nature synced immediately with New York’s Edge.
My previous employer encouraged me to start my own business back in 1997. We were good friends, and he saw my capabilities in more than one cross-culture field. He gave me my first account, an art retrospective for the artist, Jamie Reid, who created album covers and posters for the Sex Pistols. It was a huge success. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate, consult, and manage an array of notable individuals as well as brands from high luxury, art, fashion, food, and lifestyle sectors.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
I differentiate my business from others by being a disruptor and thinking outside (and under the box). My ideas are different and can be completely out there. I am always mixing things up with campaigns, creatives, as I wear many different hats — production, creative, PR, marketing, branding, collaborations, event planning, etc. One of my biggest campaigns that I am incredibly proud of was promoting the vegetable, Kale. I launched a guerilla marketing campaign that was a global domino effect into the biggest vegetable trend in the last century. I created the American Kale Associate, and wrote ‘Kale’ on chalkboards around New York and menus of cool restaurants. From Celebrity Chef adding dozens of recipes to make with Kale to Lifestyle Guru, Gwyneth Paltrow goop-ified this cruciferous vegetable and started a kale cult following. Queen Bey even wore a KALE sweatshirt during its popularity to make everyone love it. This marketing campaign helped Kale reach its superfood status.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first started my company, we had a launch event for a fashion client. We hired a well-known social photographer to photograph the event. Once the photos went online, the photographer had posted a photo of the client and his wife and mistakenly captioned it as his mother. It was super embarrassing, and the client was not happy about it. The lesson I learned from this was to always give the photographer a list of all the important people with the title of who they are in relation to the client. Lesson learned!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Andy Spade has been a mentor to me since I met him back in 1996. He asked me to help him create a men’s brand called Jack Spade. We created a person named ‘Jack’, and built a lifestyle around an imaginary man. We created a self-published book called “The Honest Campaign, “where we dropped wallets around Manhattan filled with money and other items ‘Jack’ would have in his wallet with a return address. We had a photographer document the experience. Some of the wallets were returned, and the remainder, not. We created a survey of the most honest neighborhoods and published a book with all elements of our experiment, which we sold in the Jack Spade stores. This is one of many intelligent marketing exercises we had a lot of fun executing. Andy is one of the smartest in the industry on so many levels. He is someone that I brainstorm out-of-the-box ideas with and go to for advice. I am very thankful to have Andy as a mentor.
Another mentor has been RoseLee Goldberg, founder of PERFORMA, Art Historian and curator. She is basically the godmother of the performance art world. Her performance artists and video artists are very inspiring. She is the hardest working woman I know, and the most creative and intelligent woman in the art world. She is a complete disruptor and someone who has inspired me along my journey.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disrupting an industry can be positive in specific industries, but it also can be negative. However, when you solve a problem or present a new way of looking at something, it can be positive. It depends on what type of product you are working with, for example, the Kale Campaign. The disruptive campaign behind Kale was positive and incredibly successful. It was a one-off campaign, where I went to restaurants, put Kale on the menus, and started promoting it. Another example of where being disruptive is a positive is when we launched SIIA Cosmetics. A luxury cosmetic brand that believes everyone deserves beauty, making prestige cosmetics accessible to the greatest number of people possible. It can also be negative when there isn’t transparency. Being disruptive isn’t so positive when you are putting things out just for attention and does not add any additional value to the consumer.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Stay Curious
“Stay curious about everything. You can never stop learning. Look outside your comfort zone. Sometimes new approaches haven’t been tried yet in the industry. I encourage my team to have a far reach and not just PR — the more you can do, the better the campaign. I encourage them to stay curious and watch for new trends & technology.”
- Always Over-Deliver
“The biggest lesson I learned was having to think outside of the box, more than ever before, over-delivering for clients and reinforcing positivity for the future. I am always looking at trends and people’s habits. If you can see where trends are going, you can adjust any campaign to work. I offer more than PR. I layer PR with strong marketing, creative direction, branding, events, and more. The more you can do for your client, the better the results.”
- Be Honest
“Always be honest with your clients, even if you disagree with them. They will always respect your opinion, and in doing so, you will deliver work you are incredibly proud of.”
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We shake things up with every campaign that we work on. For example, we have started working with a national environment renewable natural resources company. They are transforming organic waste into renewable natural gas and creating innovative approaches to plastics renewal. We were brought in to work on their branding and PR to bring awareness experientially for the first time. Since we are in the early stages, we cannot give away many details, but it will be a very exciting project.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
I don’t see a difference between being a ‘women disruptor’ or ‘male disruptor.’ When you are a disruptor, you are a disruptor. Subsequently, my reputation has spoken for itself. So if you love what you do, care about the campaigns you work on, and select who you work with carefully, you will succeed. I have never worried about being a female, and always believed if I were capable of doing a job well, I would succeed, no matter what.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I have a few favorite books, Midnight Children by Salman Rushdie, which is about India’s transition from British colonial rule to independence and the partition of India. Another favorite book of mine is The Price of Illusion, by Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, about her fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. Lastly, Intelligence for Dummies by a friend, the late and wonderful, Glenn O’Brien.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
With the past two years being so surreal in our lives, many people have had a hard time leaving their homes and re-entering their social worlds, because they have been in their houses so long with the fear of covid. What got me through, and still does, is facetime dance parties with my friends. It has a huge positive impact, and I would love to do them nationally because it brings instant happiness to people and makes them feel better. I like doing things that bring positivity and optimism to their lives.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.
With my agency, I make sure to collaborate with companies and clients that align with my values. As an agency, choosing who to work with has made my working life happier. It’s essential to work with people you connect with, their products, and their message.
How can our readers follow you online?
Readers can connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram at @oberonsinclair or @MyYoungAuntie. I am also at [email protected]
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Oberon Sinclair of My Young Auntie Creative Agency On The Three Things You Need… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.