There's a photograph Jen Landels keeps. A horse, tethered to a plastic chair — the kind you'd see outside a café in the south of France. The horse has its bridle on. It could walk away. It doesn't.
"I think I was like that horse," she says. "And I think a lot of women are too. We think we're stuck, but it's our own lack of self-belief that's holding us back."
Jen Landels is the Managing Director of Studio LR — Edinburgh's 22-year-old independent creative agency that calls itself the gutsy creative agency. She's 18 months into her first ever MD role, having taken over the leadership of a business she'd never worked in, with no prior experience of running a company.
In this episode of Scale HER Up, she shares what she's learning — about brand, about leadership and about herself.
The biggest brand mistake
Studio LR's strapline is substance and standout. Their director of strategy and creative, Dave King, put together a slide once — a grid of drinks brand images that could all have been the same brand. Different companies. Identical look. Zero differentiation.
"It's having that courage and conviction in your own product or service to know what you are unique and different about — and being confident about speaking about that. That's the bit that really sets brands apart."
For small businesses and SMEs, the starting point is deceptively simple: understand your audience, understand the problem you're solving for them, and understand why they'd choose you over anyone else. The media channel is secondary. The message comes first.
And the channel matters more than many businesses realise. Jen's example: a Young Scot campaign targeting teenagers about grooming and child sexual exploitation. Not a poster campaign. Not a radio ad. A live, 12-part Snapchat series that looked like a real young person sending snaps to their friends. 20,000 young people. 98% watched the full two days of content.
"If we'd done a radio ad, those young people wouldn't have engaged with it. It's working out the way to capture your customer — and meeting them where they actually are."
A career like no other
Jen grew up in a creative family. Both parents studied at Edinburgh Art College. After school, a year in an American high school, art school in Edinburgh, then Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee. While a student, she became a Red Bull marketeer — the one with the can on the back of the car.
After graduating, she was offered a full-time role. On day one, she and a colleague were handed laptops, phones and a company car, and told to get Red Bull into supermarkets.
"They said, 'I don't know. You tell us.' That was probably my first lesson in leadership and entrepreneurship — no roadmap, no instructions, just trust and empowerment."
In 2007, Red Bull UK brought operations back to London. Made redundant, Jen spent a year doing everything — babysitting, handing out flyers, taking any work she could find — while trying to break into advertising. The breakthrough came through a connection made while babysitting. She got through the door at the Leith Agency. She stayed for 16 years.
During that time, she did two and a half years on secondment at the Scottish Government — working on Scotland's brand identity, the London Olympics, the Commonwealth Games and national behaviour change campaigns. Then, a decade later, another secondment: this time to Scottish Rugby.
"Shy bairns get nowt. I really took that mantra and ran with it."
It was at Scottish Rugby — working with media agencies, doing creative deals with Lothian Buses and the trams, making things happen with limited budgets — that something shifted. She started asking: what do I actually want?
Personal brand in action
The answer came through a recommendation. A woman who'd been approached about the MD role at Studio LR couldn't take it — she had a young child. But she knew who they should speak to instead.
"Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room." Jeff Bezos said it about business brands. Jen applies it to personal ones too. The recommendation got her through the door. The rest was down to alignment: a values-led, independent, creative business looking for someone to lead its next chapter.
She also did something small that made a big difference. Before making any decisions, before changing anything, she took every single person in the team for coffee — their choice of café.
"We did fika — Swedish coffee and cake. I asked them about who they are, about what their background was, about who they were in their personal life. And as a leader, being able to understand who it was you had working for you, and what made them tick — that was really important."
What leadership actually looks like
Jen is 18 months in. She's a perfectionist and a self-described people pleaser — both qualities that have served her in client services and both qualities that leadership is teaching her to reframe.
"What got me here is not going to get me there."
The biggest surprise? The loneliness. She'd spent 16 years being the senior person who'd bring concerns from the team to the leadership and leave them to solve it. Now she is the leadership. The concerns land with her. The solutions are hers to find.
She also asked Studio LR's owners, Andy and Lucy, for something before she started: mentoring, coaching, and a peer group. They said yes. That decision, she says, has been invaluable.
One of those peer groups is a WhatsApp group for female agency leaders — started by someone she met at an event two months into her new role. When Jen joined, there were 24 members. There are now 53. They discuss lawyers, accountants, HR questions, jury duty letters. They share knowledge freely, even though some of them pitch against each other for the same work.
"If we can grow a bigger pie, there's a piece for everyone."
Imperfect action
Each year, Jen sets six mantras. This year's include: imperfect action. Conviction. Leading my ship. Create and innovate. Vulnerability as a strength.
"No decision is still a decision. As a leader, you don't often have the luxury of sitting on things for as long as you'd like. You have to make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time."
She's learning to embrace the discomfort of that — as a perfectionist, as a people pleaser, and as someone leading a business for the first time.
And for anyone who thinks they're not ready, not capable, not there yet — she comes back to the horse.
"We think we're stuck. But it's our own lack of self-belief that's holding us back."
About Jen Landels
Jen Landels is the Managing Director of Studio LR, an independent creative agency based in Leith, Edinburgh. A former Red Bull marketer and senior account director at the Leith Agency, Jen has spent more than two decades building brands across drinks, tourism, heritage, finance and beyond. Studio LR is a certified B Corp and works with clients including Volvo, Suntory Global Spirits, Historic Environment Scotland and St James Quarter.
