#SpillingTheTea - with Antonio Lewis

For our penultimate interview in this series, we headed to the Clocktower Cafe to meet with Antonio Lewis – the founder of TVOX creative agency. As a content first agency, TVOX has built a talented team of local creative talent (including film crew, marketers, editors) and is producing some impressive content for a range of businesses across London. 
 

We’ve met you in various guises over the years – but can you give us a bit of career background?
Not sure how far I should go back (!), but essentially, I studied music production at Uni and ended up taking on a few jobs along the way. Alongside music, I’ve always been into camera work, graphics and visuals, so was often called in to help take shots or videos for friends’ projects or small businesses. Most of my skills were self-taught - You Tube was (and is!) my Sensei! By the time I graduated, I’d had a bit of “freelance” experience under my belt including two years working with Carla Marie Williams. (Songwriter for Britney, Beyonce, Sean Paul & many more). Whilst getting a glimpse into the nature of running your own small company, I got to develop a wide range of creative skills (including social media management, content creation, events management and digital marketing). After I graduated, the self-employed journey became clearer and I continued worked with an increasing number of artists and small businesses, engineering, filming, editing, marketing. I moved back home (to Sutton) but had good friends in Croydon including SeeOur7 who were a super talented collective of 7 guys with a mad range of dance, rap, beatbox skills. I did various bits of filming with them, and they quickly became my gateway into the Croydon creative scene – introducing me to loads of locals including Sam and Dave from Front Room. I moved to Croydon and throughout Covid, those guys helped keep me in work. One of the projects I did with them was #FrontRoomSessions. It was their first dabble with filming and my first dabble with multi-camera live performance, but the results were great, and they really helped champion my name around the Borough as someone who could execute this stuff well.

And what made you decide to set up your own creative agency?
My freelance work had been growing quite organically, through referrals - and my camera work, particularly, was really becoming sought after. As the jobs and responsibilities grew bigger, I started to hire other people to help me - increasing our quality of production, and capabilities. Around 2022, I set up TVOX, building a brand identity around what we were doing. As I’d hoped, this move enabled me to land much bigger fish including the GLA (Greater London Authority), English National Opera, RocNation, various Local Authorities (including Croydon), other recognisable names and over 75 clients.

What does ‘Content First’ mean to you?
As a team, we’ve got a good understanding of marketing and the first thing we go to when thinking how to achieve client goals is content. Visual content is our favourite weapon to use to push brands forward. Whether the client’s focus is on driving brand awareness or sales, we believe that high quality videos that tell a great story are key.

What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a creative agency, particularly in Croydon?
Any challenges I’ve had haven’t been to do with location. In fact, I can only give Croydon props in terms of how it’s helped me build an agency. There’s such a great creative community here – demonstrated by this morning’s interactions (Note to reader: we ran into three mutual creative connections in the café that morning!) I think the fact it’s both close enough but detached enough from London, really helps. In my experience, Croydon people are keen to champion and promote local talent first, but they also have a network that connects people to wider opportunities. For me, I guess the biggest “challenge” surrounds educating myself on larger scale business practices (my own, and of my clients) – and at the same time as delivering great creative work. It’s been so useful growing my team with other local creative people (like Mark from Olive Tree Productions) because they understand the challenges and we can go through them together.

Has your Croydon location benefited your business?
Definitely – as mentioned previously. Also, I love the fact that Croydon is its own bubble and that there is a strong creative community here that I feel quite tapped into. I love that we were London Borough of Culture for a year. Before that, I had worked with a lot of the independent producers (e.g. Croydon Composers, Finesse Foreva and Michael Fuller who put on the Mad Professor gig) but never on the scale we were able to during Borough of Culture. That status (and funding!) was a catalyst to enable much more to be done (especially in light of cuts to various Arts funding pots). Towards the end of it, we were brought in to document the closing weekend. It was a bit of a full circle moment – as one of my first contacts at the Council was Chetna Kapacee (who years ago had asked me to film a project with Croydon’s Poet Laureate, Shaniqua Benjamin). Chetna went on to work for the GLA (who essentially run the Borough of Culture programme!). That introduction was transformative for my business. Marcus Harris is another person who has championed my career journey. Amongst other things, he introduced me to the Creative Digital Lab which is a brilliant space that gives locals (especially filmmakers) access to incredible technology. The concept has taken a while to bed in but there are now some great case studies coming out of the space.
 

How has the rise of short-form video and social media affected the kinds of campaigns you create?
Interestingly (despite all the hype around socials!) the main content we produce is longer form (3 minute) horizontal videos for websites. A lot of our clients want to clearly demonstrate impact to their clients, funders etc and these longer form videos work best for that. But from there, we create content that is “thumb stopping” – videos that are specifically designed to grab attention quickly on social platforms and lead people to the website.
 

In what ways does TVOX engage with or give back to the local creative community?
The most tangible thing we do is source work and put together projects and use our roster of upcoming local creatives to get the job done. We also take on local interns, and individuals for work experience - who have had a great journey with us, often citing the fact that they’ve not been able to find similar opportunities with other, larger organisations.

Another outlet for us has been working with the Creative Digital Lab. Essentially, we offer a subsidised rate create high quality content, marketing support, help develop their business strategy and showcase their offering. That could be anything from advising on the curriculum for the training programmes they deliver or capturing content that helps showcase what they do.

We’ve got long term aspirations of TVOX being able to offer free creative digital training programmes to the wider Croydon community. I’m keen to keep gathering feedback from locals as to what types of workshops would be most useful to them and think it would be useful to potentially partner with a local youth organisation to help feed young people into this. Also, (and you might say I’m biased!) but I do think that as an agency, we tend to go above and beyond in terms of helping local small businesses as we have a vested interest in the local economy doing well.
 

What are your thoughts on Croydon’s role as a “creative hub”, and what would you like to see more of in the community?
Obviously, London Borough of Culture has helped bring much more attention to local arts and cultural organisations and shown the value of creativity at a wider level. Equally, the Creative Enterprise Zone has been hugely valuable for those who’ve put in the time to get involved in the programmes it offers but it is not particularly well known by the average Croydoner.  I think for Croydon to be regarded as a genuine “Creative Hub”, I’d envisage a specific location that welcomed all types of creative practitioner and hosted a wide range of creative events, training and networking events. The Creative Digital Lab does this to an extent but is unlikely to work for all types of creatives. Ultimately, we need lots of these spaces and ensure they all connect and work well together.

How do you stay inspired and avoid creative burnout?
I think I get the opposite! I’m energised when a new project lands on my lap, and I get to think about the various creative approaches we could take. What tends to exhaust me, is all the other stuff. The other aspects of running a business – the finances, the admin – and running up and down from my flat to the car to move equipment from job to job!

What are you working on at the moment and what are your goals for the next few years?
Aside from developing some sort of training academy (which I mentioned earlier), I’m working on some really exciting projects with the GLA, the CHINIKE! Orchestra, and other agencies such as Hero Films and White Label who send me around the country working with some pretty big brands. This week, I’m mostly focused on editing all the footage I shot for Croydonites festival – a perfect opportunity to watch local creative talent while I work!

For more information about TVOX, visit www.tvox.uk or
follow @TVOX_Agency

Further info:

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