Michael Gough

I live in Hackney, which I still call the Olympic borough.

I co-founded a brand agency called Sparks Studio, ran it for over twenty years, and left three years ago to do more thinking and less pitching. Since then I’ve been consulting, helping organisations stop drifting and find focus in their brand and marketing.

Some of you will know me from the Pier rebrand. I’ve been working alongside Toni and Charlie for a couple of years. Mark and I go back about ten years, to his Heartwood days. He hired me anyway.

My job title is Head of Marketing. My actual job is to help grow the business by making Pembroke impossible to ignore and easy to trust. That means working closely with Anna on partnerships and Meena’s planning team to bring in the right enquiries, and making sure everything we say sounds like us, and us alone. Some people call marketing colouring in. They’re wrong.

Outside work, I’m usually doing one of six things. Sitting in the Hackney Picturehouse’s 8pm slot watching whatever’s on. Standing at The Stoop with my son, shouting at the referee and pretending to know the nuances of scrummaging. Drawing, occasionally. I have a Master’s in Fine Art and once had a studio on Brick Lane in the mid-nineties, cooler than it sounds. The curry and beer were cheap though. Writing a poetry Substack called Quiet Experiments with Words, which comes with more enthusiasm than subscribers. Attending a community church in Bethnal Green, which runs a foodbank and homeless night shelter. And cheering on a son who’s training for the Hackney Half in aid of CALM.

My sister studied wood and ceramics at Brighton University. She got the useful skills.

At home, I’m married with two kids. I’m still working out where the years went.