Meet the Mulberries: Mike McConnell

Mike McConnell, Creative Lead at Mulberry MC

Meet Mike McConnell: Creative Lead

We believe in a ‘People to People’ approach to B2B marketing. Our “Meet the Mulberries” series continues with Mike McConnell, Creative Lead in our London office, who aims to incorporate GIFs, music and creativity wherever possible.

What attracted you to this industry?

I’ve always loved the creation, the ability to play gracefully with ideas. So an industry where there are so many ideas, so many different expressions of those ideas, different constraints, different needs, it appeals to the activity I love to do and the challenge that I want to take on.

What are your favorite things to do in your spare time?

I love going to the Genesis or Prince Charles cinemas. Both are independent places that have a great love for films, old and new. I also play in a noiserock band called I Am Your Wife! so that involves band practice, recording sessions, etc. (when there isn’t a pandemic). I like urban rambling when the weather permits. There’s a great joy to setting out with your phoned turned off to see if you can get lost.

What’s a professional skill you’re hoping to learn?

I’d love to learn to animate, do basic video overlays, kinetic typography, etc. Those sorts of things make such a difference to how a project or a post are received by its audience.

What’s been your favorite place to travel and where do you want to go next?

The first holiday I ever paid for myself was two weeks in Prague. It’s a great city with an interesting history, perhaps more than any other major European city. Its great architecture (the astrological clock, the Charles bridge, etc.) survived the bombing of the Second World War. It’s a wonderful place of jazz and mythology and history and philosophy. Also, when I was there, the communist museum was above McDonalds, which appealed to my sense of the absurd.

I’m hoping to get to New Orleans in the future.

What are your must-have work programs, platforms and tools?

The GIF search tool in Microsoft Teams is essential because sometimes internet cats express what I’m feeling better than I do. In terms of hardware, my Remarkable tablet is essential for writing my notes and ideas, getting them down before porting them into a more digital workflow.

What are your top three most used emojis?

??? though I am also very partial to this guy: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What’s one of your dream professional projects?

I’d really like to do a run of speeches or TED talk style presentations for someone. It involves finding those big points of interest, creating narrative structure and keeping in mind the time constraints of the format. Doing that right would be an interesting collaborative process and a substantial professional challenge.

What books, movies and podcasts would you recommend?

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez is a fascinating book not least for the revelation that everyone thinks of arm and chest pain as onset symptoms for heart attacks, despite most women not experiencing them.

Tyrannosaur, starring Peter Mullen and Olivia Coleman is an amazing film. The Ologies podcast with Alie Ward is great because I believe you do have 90 minutes in your life to learn more about Jellyfish