James Burstall, CEO of multi award-winning production group Argonon, on finding the gap in the market. And filling it.
‘I’ve always felt that in order to be successful, you need to find the gap. And that’s in everything; relationships, your professional life, or in any creative endeavour. You need to look for a space which has not been exploited to the maximum yet, so that you can stand out.’
Argonon is an impressive creation, comprised of several independent companies with offices in London, Liverpool and Glasgow, New York, LA and Oklahoma. With hit shows such as The Masked Singer (ITV), Dispatches (Channel 4), Worzel Gummidge (BBC) and Hard Cell (Netflix) on its books, I am amazed at the vast range of genres they cover and the global audience reached. The Masked Singer alone has become embedded in popular culture, discussed in playgrounds and offices alike. So how did it all come to pass? Argonon was only formed in 2011, but it is clear that the foundations were laid long before this in a uniquely purposeful way, with humour, ingenuity and a whole lot of hustle.
After studying languages at Bristol, James moved straight to Paris to cut his teeth as a journalist. ‘I was working on reception at Passion magazine - an American publication, a bit like Time Out. The phone rang one day and this editor from the Evening Standard said, ‘our columnist is on holiday this week, so I’m looking for someone to write a story. Is there anybody available?’ And I said, ‘well actually there’s nobody else in but there is me, and my name’s James Burstall and I would be delighted to do this for you’. It was a bit ballsy, I have to admit, but I thought look, I’m an impoverished graduate trying to get into journalism, if I don’t push myself, nobody else will. She called me back a few minutes later; I wrote 600 words and got a half page column in The Evening Standard the next day. That was the start of my portfolio.’
James’ early opportunism quickly blossomed into a fully-fledged career. ‘I then got a job as an editorial assistant for Condé Nast Traveler, working for Harold Evans. I was also at Vanity Fair for Tina Brown and at Vogue for Anna Wintour. I would get phone-calls asking if I would mind popping down to Vienna that afternoon to do a story, and of course aged 21 the answer was YES. In order to get ahead in the media, you’ve got to be willing to be a hustler.
‘I was in Paris for five years and it was a time when I didn’t have very much money, but all the giant fashion brands were promoting their products with incredible goodie bags. So my friends and I were all pretty impoverished, but we were writing articles about Versace and Gucci, Hermès and Yves Saint Laurent, and going to all these incredible events. We didn’t have two francs in our pockets, but we were dining on petit fours and champagne! It was a lot of fun.’
It’s clear that storytelling is in James’ blood, but the world of print journalism proved too sedentary for him, so after returning to London and a job at Tatler, he decided to move into television. ‘A lot of people didn’t have a journalism background, so they didn’t really know how to tell a story. When the BBC producers spotted me, they realised I had this particular expertise. You stand out, you’re in the gap.’
He credits Janet Street-Porter, who was producing influential youth segment Def II on BBC2, with giving him his first television break. ‘She was an absolute trailblazer. What she dared to do was spot talent and throw them in at the deep-end. Many of us who came from that stable have gone on to run television, so I really do take my hat off to this rather extraordinary professional, who dared to break the mould.’
Filling the gap in this case meant being prepared to learn new skills on the job, and in 1990, James was given a camera he didn’t know how to operate and sent off to Glasgow to make a film about racism. ‘I found this very engaging Scottish-Asian man called Fahim, who was roughly my age. We spent a week running around Glasgow in deep snow being pursued by the BNP, who were extremely powerful and threatening. We were hounded out of pubs and faced people shouting at Fahim in the street that he was the wrong colour. So as you can imagine, this was very visceral, handheld footage. It was the start of me making films which were intimate, extreme, and exploring very difficult subjects that matter.’
The subversive Big Breakfast came next, Channel 4’s landmark early morning live TV show. ‘Chris, Gaby and Paula were brilliant. They were very funny, led from the front and were always pushing boundaries. When you saw everybody laughing on set, it’s because it was genuinely hilarious. It was a real opportunity to put the camera in the hands of ordinary people. We broke lots of conventional rules including the fourth wall, in the sense that we often turned the camera on ourselves. We became part of the scene, if you like. So it felt very freewheeling; like it was breaking down boundaries.’
I wonder how he views the platforms that are available to ordinary people now, and the content that is being produced. Is it a threat to the television industry? ‘I love the fact that we’re constantly playing with the medium, it’s always changing. We’re seeing people now with these hugely successful channels, broadcasting themselves. I love that transformation. I think it really started with that early youth TV; we were saying television is not stuffy, it’s an incredibly vivid, vital, dynamic medium. Let’s put the camera and editorial control into the hands of everyday people.’
Being such a fan of the subversive and so engaged with the importance of finding a new angle, it’s no surprise that James ended up working for himself. ‘I realised that there was a gap in the market for an integrated UK / US production company, based in New York and London. There was no international format-focused production company in NY at the time, so by setting up [Argonon precursor] Leopard Films in 2001, I hoped that I would be able to not only come up with some good ideas that would work in the UK, but also translate them across the Atlantic.’
After a successful freelance career, I imagine it was a big leap of faith. ‘It was me and a colleague called Will Sergeant in a room in Turnham Green with a blank sheet of paper, thinking ‘what on earth have we done?’ Following three months of furious pitching both here and in New York, they won their first commission with the BBC, which was swiftly followed by the major and life-changing coup, Cash in the Attic. ‘It was sold very quickly to the US and then into 167 different countries around the world. It became an overnight success.’
The very notion of overnight success, however, undermines the blood, sweat and tears that went into getting this far. Were there ever any doubts? ‘In life you always have to have a get-out clause, I never take anything for granted. You’ve got to be on the front foot, you’ve got to be restless, you’ve got to be thinking about what’s next. My job as Chief Executive of the Argonon Group is to be 12 months ahead of everybody. Now of course you can’t know everything that’s coming down the track, as we learned with Covid, so you have to remain very flexible. And that’s why I wrote my book, The Flexible Method: Prepare to Prosper in the Next Global Crisis. What with climate change, Ukraine, inflation and the cost of living, there are constant challenges. But if we remain flexible in our thinking and crucially, if we put our people first, then we can make sure that we’re always ahead of the curve.’
I’m desperate to know how James transformed the single entity, Leopard Films, into Argonon, the international super-group. And I won’t take ‘overnight success’ for an answer. ‘Well, of course, it’s back to the gap; there were no truly diversified multinationals in the UK with between 10 and 100 million turnover. So we went on a journey starting in 2011 and now have several companies, which are a combination of acquisitions and joint ventures. We’re across all the genres from documentary to art, reality, history, science, technology, scripted comedy and drama. We work for all platforms, which means we’re not quite so exposed to the vagaries of success and failure, feast and famine, that many production companies face; when one thing goes out of fashion and gets cancelled, there’s another thing coming up that’s in a different genre to replace it. It’s interesting when you talk to people on the stock market; investors are now looking for sustainability. They want businesses that have got a strong management team and are in it for the long haul, who have survived crises and come out on top.
On this high-flying note, our time is up. A deep-dive into the life of a CEO has left me exhausted, empowered, exhilarated, and unable to think of another word beginning with ‘e’. I have so many more questions. How do you know when a gap is a gap? Spotting it is one thing, but building a business empire quite another. I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes peeled and if James’ success is anything to go by, urge you to do the same.
March, 2024
