Like many of our podcast guests, Rory McEntee has worked in various roles during his career in marketing so far. London-based, Ireland-native Rory’s philosophy in his professional life is to continually learn and build on his skills, allowing him to constantly take risks and get out of his comfort zone.

With experience on both the agency and brand side of marketing, Rory has a passion for developing disruptive content for smaller brands looking to challenge the status quo. He is currently doing just that as the brand and marketing director at Gymbox—a fitness company offering London’s most unique exercise classes.

At Gymbox, their marketing approach centers around creating a community and lifestyle with their members. Rather than converting leads, they create content to entertain and engage with their audience, as people are naturally drawn to cool and exciting brands.

Taking creative risks is also at the heart of what they do at Gymbox—from their exercise classes to marketing campaigns. One such “risky” campaign was the launch of their Brexfit classes—an exercise class where you can vent your frustrations around Brexit. It could have gone either way, but their gut feel and execution paid off, and the campaign did really well—even getting global coverage.

Tune in to this week’s episode as Rory chats with Kyler Canastra about his role at Gymbox, how the company adapted during the Covid lockdowns with their launch of their Out the Box digital service and more on creating disruptive but not offensive content.

“Being safe with your content and not taking risks is probably the worst thing you can do.”

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, and listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify.

Rapid-fire recs  

• Recommended reading: 
  • Be More Pirate by Sam Conniff

• Productivity hack: 
  • Early morning creative time. “I like to have a bit of thinking time early in the morning, which is my kind of creative time before the day goes crazy.”

• Source of inspiration: 
  • Russell Brand’s take on compassion and kindness. 
  • Kindness in the everyday: “There are some amazing things happening on a micro level where you just see kindness with people in supermarkets, crossing the road, helping more people out… and that inspires me.”

Connect with Rory and Kyler on LinkedIn.

For more on how to create disruptive content:

• The value of transferable creative skills in the marketing world: 10 inspiring stories
• 5 reasons why you should stop trying to create perfect content
• 6 ways to boost your creativity as a content writer
• Take risks that pay off – Noémie Baudouin, B2B content manager at JobTeaser
• Be courageous with your creativity

To read the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.