Liam James Ward of Something Something on Having the Confidence to Share Bad Ideas

Music marketing is moving back to creativity, storytelling and 'gut feelings'

Liam is the co-founder and CEO of Something Something, a content strategy studio that focuses on creative storytelling inside social media campaigns. The London-based global agency works with artists, labels and cultural brands. Clients include The Clash, Billie Eilish, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Declan McKenna and Disclosure. The company is also a creative strategy partner for Meta, TikTok, Google, Live Nation and Soho House.

We spent two minutes with Liam to learn more about his background, his creative inspirations and recent work he’s admired. 

Liam, tell us …

Where you grew up, and where you live now.

I grew up in Stourbridge, a small town outside of Birmingham, a place that gets a lot of schtick for its boring grey persona, but which has birthed great music with Duran Duran, Black Sabbath, Robert Plant and many more. I am lucky to take full advantage of the post-Covid, nomadic, Zoom-driven world and move around a bunch.

Your earliest musical memory.

Bluetoothing early garage tunes like “Heartbroken” by T2 back and forth between friends down the park.

Your favorite bands/musicians today.

LCD Soundsystem. I regularly trot the globe to see them in wonderful whacky places. More recently, I’ve become quite obsessed with listening back to the “modern classic” artists: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Elton John, David Bowie.

One of your favorite projects you’ve ever worked on.

The Wombats were the first band I had free reign to work with at a previous job. And I’m thankful to be working with them at my own company. Knowing an artist so fully, you can have outlandish creative thoughts, and then have the trust and know-how to actually execute them. The team have been running with a fun concept involving the band’s famous on-stage wombat costumes, taking over the band’s socials and scaling the roof of the O2.

A recent project you’re proud of.

Alex Warren. I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and I’m also really proud of the work he’s put in. It was almost a full year of figuring things out before we fully started working with him, mainly because convincing someone with 17 million followers on TikTok that they need social media help was a task of its own. Eventually, the conversation focused on how we could build support systems while leaving him in the driver’s seat. We could free up time to allow him to work on his craft. Alex had just under 1 million Spotify monthly listeners when we started working with him—a good number, but a poor conversion from 17 million TikTok followers. Less than a year later, he’s at 14.5 million with no sign of slowing.

One thing about how the music world is evolving that you’re excited about.

I genuinely believe the industry is moving back to being led more by creativity, storytelling and gut feelings. Everyone became too obsessed with data for a while. But I’ve always felt that we should be “data-informed, creativity-led.” If you’re just following numbers, you’re going to end up doing what everyone else is doing. 

Someone else’s work, in music or beyond, that you admired lately.

I was a big fan of The Dare’s album campaign. There’s the obvious Charli XCX affiliation and many other touch points. For me, what was most interesting was how they used fan accounts and HQ accounts to create a sense of noise.

A book, movie, TV show or podcast you recently found inspiring.

I’m re-reading Meet Me in the Bathroom. It’s a series of interviews with the musicians and cultural leaders of the early-aughts New York rock scene and how that took over the world: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem, etc.

An artist you admire outside the world of music.

I recently “rebranded” all of my social media profiles with the iconic Klein Blue after becoming a little obsessed with Yves Klein.

Your favorite fictional character.

Kendall Roy.

Someone worth following in social media.

My friends Sam, Tyler and Mark have a podcast and social page called Helping Musicians. I dislike a lot of the false idols on social media dishing out incredibly washy or frankly bullshit advice for young artists. These guys do it right: tangible learnings and making it all a little less pretentious.

Your main strength as a marketer/creative.

I wouldn’t quite say “no idea is a bad idea,” because there are some bad ideas. But I have no problem sharing my bad ideas. I’m open to having them torn apart as that might inspire someone else to actually go, “OK, no. But what about this…”

Your biggest weakness.

I can run away with things a bit sometimes and have to remind myself to keep it simple.

Something people would find surprising about you.

I did a science-heavy degree at university. It was in audio technology. Over the years, I’ve often found myself in conversations with artists about quite lofty physics or coding technicals related to music. And they’ve been like, “Wait, why do you know this?”

What you’d be doing if you weren’t in the music business.

Growing up, I wanted to work in a zoo or at the Apple Store. I like to joke that I ended up doing both.