RIA Member Point of View: TRC25 Experience by MJ from Conductor

By MJ Jackson, Founder and Creative Director at Conductor

I love a well prepared presentation. Not the effort required to construct it, of course, but watching it. It’s December and a couple of days of wall-to-wall Diamond League level presentations and I’m lapping it all up. Guzzling evian, standing at the back for a good view and furiously making nonsensical notes on my phone. Notes I won’t decipher later, but I diligently make anyway.

This was Loughborough of course, the middle of England where middle distance runners muddle about winning medals for running. Or, as in this case, runners or runner adjacent people come together to talk running in the gaps between higher-quality-than-expected meals and complimentary alcohol free beer.

I’d picked Andy Matthews of Andy Matthews Studio up from the train station en route, having spent a few weeks listening to him run his talk by me, and longer not telling me how he came up with the name for his architecture practice. He’s having a good go at distilling years of experience into a neat 20 slider to run no more than 15 minutes. We’ve got Peter Sellers, The Mighty Boosh and Michael Gove in there to help illustrate AMS’s retail solutions for Tracksmith, Interval and others.

It’s slick, funny in the right places and above all insightful. He knows his stuff and proves it with descriptions of flow, adaptability and sensory kindness. He delivers this with the energy and confidence of a young Mick Hucknall, whilst wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a single word. ‘Amateur’ it simply read. He isn’t.

The tone was set, from Outside of Ordinary’s carefully curated ‘Creative Assembly’ through to the two full days of keynote speakers there were more takeouts and nuggets than a high street burger bar. And far more nutritious. I appreciated learning more about women’s specific footwear, wider representation in the sport, the balancing act of event curation and so much more.

I was there representing Conductor, the brand-led design and communications studio I founded in 2014. We’ve spent the past twelve years working in running and cycling — designing identities, campaigns and experiences for brands across the space. But this was my first The Running Conference presented by haku as a Member of Running Industry Alliance, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was smart people doing interesting things, conversations that covered more ground than a Sunday long run, and shared misery over IT band injuries. It’s a shame you can’t just turn them off and on again.

I was disappointed to miss Track Stars, instead tucked in my room dealing with some pressing campaign launch details, my running shoes looking back at me sadly. Later, I had a lot of good conversations. The kind that linger – meeting people I’m now talking about projects with. Leaving with a head full of ideas, a bag full of energy products and a Notes app brimming with pearls of wisdom; “Bananas!”, “Threshold (of a shop, not heart”, “Research Felicity”. A success.

We’ve just wrapped a few big projects early and we’ve got room for the next thing, for the work that gets under the skin a bit. I’d love that to be with other RIA members, particularly after this great experience. If you’re thinking about how your brand looks, feels, speaks, moves — we’d love to help.

Or at least have a conversation. You can talk, I’ll take notes. Maybe even ones I understand this time.

And in the meantime, I’ve got the energy products.

Check out our website or get in touch with me directly.

Written by MJ Jackson, Founder and Creative Director at Conductor

Check out the Conductor RIA Member profile here  .