#BehindtheSelfie with... Mark van Rooyen

Winding down on the renowned FoxP2 balcony.

1. Where do you live, work and play?

Van Rooyen: I live in Plattekloof, work in Kloof Street in town and play wherever there is fun to be had.

2. What’s your claim to fame?

Van Rooyen: I have no claim to fame yet. I am still stumbling my way through life.

3. Describe your career so far.

Van Rooyen: The dream was to be a helicopter pilot and fly in some remote part of the world. But unfortunately, I failed the eye test two weeks before joining the pilot academy. From there I did the usual gap year to the UK, which I didn’t enjoy – too cold and miserable for me. So, when I got back to Cape Town I kind of fell into what my dad did, which was advertising, but focused on the business side.

I got a degree in marketing from Cape Tech and from there worked my way through ad agencies doing both ATL and BTL brand communication. I joined FoxP2 in 2012 and in 2014 I was appointed managing partner for FoxP2’s BTL agency until last year when I met Andrew Whitehouse, who’d recently returned from a three-year stint in New York. Meeting Andrew is where things have really started to get interesting for me. He offered me a job as head of operations for FoxP2 Design and that’s where I am now.

Andrew has encouraged me to explore and experiment with design and more recently, how technology can enhance one’s experience of a product or brand through design. My learning curve has skyrocketed, but I am loving it. We have a small prototyping lab where Andrew and I spend half our time at the agency, experimenting and testing new ideas. It’s an unknown area and every day we are learning new things – building on a passion I have only recently discovered. Exciting times!

4. Tell us a few of your favourite things.

Van Rooyen: My home life with my wife and best friend, Kimberley, and our two mini-dachshunds, Toast and Frankie. They are our children.
When I’m not at home I’m usually surfing, chilling out on the beach or going on a road trip somewhere – we love the outdoors.
I love the smell of bacon, the taste of Deluxe coffee, vintage motorbikes, ice-cold beer and sitting around a fire watching the sunset. The simple things in life. Cape Town is amazing for all of the above.

5. What do you love about your industry?

Van Rooyen: The people I get to work with. Advertising has a bad reputation and in many cases, it’s true – so many egos and corporate climbers to deal with. But the guys I work with are the best in the industry and love what they do. Yes, we work hard and play hard but we also understand that at the end of the day it’s all about using creativity to solve problems. This kind of mentality is something I will always surround myself with.

6. Describe your average workday, if such a thing exists.

Van Rooyen: My day usually starts around 5.15am when I head off to gym in town to miss the morning rush-hour traffic. Most days I am at work between 8am and 8.30am and at 9am we have our morning status. After filling out timesheets and having a couple more coffees, each day varies from client presentations, briefings and internal operations through to building a Chladni plate to testing cymatics patterns or placing ferro liquid under UV lights to see how it reacts to magnetic fields. You may have to Google the last two things to get a better understanding!

7. What are the tools of your trade?

Van Rooyen: My MacBook Pro – love that thing. And naiveté.

8. Who is getting it right in your industry?

Van Rooyen: When we started I looked around to see who we are up against and sure, there are really good agencies out there getting it right. But we aspire to those who are also getting their tech work right like Art+Com in Germany and Ideo.

9. What are the biggest pain points/challenges/areas for improvement?

Van Rooyen: My skills in coding (or lack thereof) and the time it takes to source parts and components, especially in SA where what we are doing is so new to the industry.

10. What are you working on right now?

Van Rooyen: On the design side we are launching two new ranges of craft beer, from packaging through to CI, but I can’t say who yet. We are also in the process of two rebranding jobs – one for a local financial institution and another for Uganda’s number one selling beer. On the tech side we are busy building an installation as a show-piece. It features a lot of mechanised test tubes.

11. Tell us some of the buzzwords floating around in your industry at the moment, and some of the catchphrases you utter yourself.

Van Rooyen: We like to refer to our work as Technology Integrated Design. But other trending terms are Engagement Design, Brand Engagement, Social Engagement and The Connected Idea.

12. Where and when do you have your best ideas?

Van Rooyen: It’s Andrew who has the ideas. I help make them happen.

13. What’s your secret talent/party trick?

Van Rooyen: I can throw an 85mph fast ball. I played baseball for Province back in the day.

14. Are you a technophobe or a technophile?

Van Rooyen: It depends. If it’s used for communicating like a cell phone or email – I am a technophobe. If it’s something fun like a robotic arm, I am a technophile.

15. What would we find if we scrolled through your phone?

Van Rooyen: Pics of my dogs, Kim and a ton of dirty memes from a very particular WhatsApp group.

16. What advice would you give to newbies hoping to crack into the industry?

Van Rooyen: Work in a place that allows you to do what you love and with people you enjoy being around. To me, company culture is so important.

Simple as that. Click here for more on FoxP2 Design, visit their website, or follow FoxP2 Design on Twitter.

*Interviewed by Leigh Andrews.