Kathryn and Robert Woolf

When Robert Woolf first launched the company in Gloucestershire, the naming was prescient; seven years later SEA Communications is firmly established at Jubilee Wharf, Penryn, close to his favourite Cornish surf breaks. As he tweeted recently: ‘If work is my gin, surfing is my tonic’.
He and Kathryn Woolf headed West in 2005 as a lifestyle choice rather than a business decision, and since then they’ve grown the creative marketing and design consultancy (and a family of two sons) together.

Now in their thirties, they first met on the same degree course, and Kathryn says: “Friends say they don’t understand how we can do it - a married couple working together. But actually it’s very successful; we bounce ideas off one another and support each other really well. We’ve got complementary skills, and we’re constantly challenging and pushing each other.”

It helps that they also share the same strong ethos. Both are committed to developing a profitable and successful company with solid commercial credentials - but also one with a clear ethical philosophy, intent on delivering social, economic and environmental benefits to their clients, whether private or public sector.

The New Work Cornwall project website designed by SEA Communications. Click the image to find out more…

Kathryn says: “It might sound corny, but it’s a genuine desire to help people, to feel I’ve given something back to communities. Working at agencies and creating websites to sell phones or power tools wasn’t very personally rewarding, beyond getting the job done well and getting paid; it isn’t something where you go to bed at night thinking I’m really glad I did that today.
“There’s also a desire to prove wrong those who say you have to be shrewd and hardnosed in business – to show you can succeed while doing things ethically.”
Robert was inspired professionally and personally by E.F. Schumacher’s book, ‘Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered’, a collection of essays championing sustainability and human-scale appropriate technologies, and adds: “We want to make a difference to people, but in a way that benefits society generally.”

Those ambitions have been finding form in their work for Dott Cornwall. SEA provided the strategy and project management for the Dott Cornwall website, and conceived the multi-viral approach behind the Media Innovation Award-winning ‘Dott Shot’ promotional microsite.
As Senior Design Producers, they are also successfully delivering the community engagement project ‘Designing Communities’ on the disadvantaged Pengegon estate in Camborne – where their innovative research methods have been widely praised by residents and policy makers alike - and a major LSC-backed project, ‘New Work’. This is one of Dott’s most ambitious projects, aiming to enhance the skills of people affected by redundancy so that they can compete for better-paid jobs in Cornwall's growing knowledge-based economy.

Kathryn says: “We’ve been able to grow in Cornwall and employ two more people, developing a team that can provide a wider range of services. We’ve learnt an enormous amount and it has also been an opportunity to demonstrate what we can do; Dott encourages us to be really creative, whereas sometimes it can be hard to persuade a client that stretching boundaries and using things like film are worthwhile.”

She was brought up near Bristol; a horse-riding rural childhood in the Severn Vale. She majored in graphics and 3D design during her art foundation course at Filton College in Bristol, but developed a strong interest in media and photography, and opted for a Media Arts degree at Plymouth University’s Exeter campus.
Robert grew up in Stroud. At school, he excelled at maths, but decided to follow media studies through to university. “I relished the Media Arts course. I’m good with technical things, quite analytical and I was into everything there – computers, film, photography. There were few facilities at the faculty and we made our own entertainment, such as heading off into Cornwall to shoot films. That creative expression was probably as important as the course itself and I grew up a lot at uni. I became somebody prepared to take risks and be creative – and of course, met Kathryn.”

The couple moved to Bristol after graduation in 1996 where, over the following five years, they both gathered wide experience in the emerging internet and new media fields. Kathryn as an agency account manager handling design and marketing projects for clients including Screwfix – then the UK’s biggest e-commerce website – and Orange; Robert as first a multi-media producer for a computer-based military training company and then as an agency Programme Manager overseeing website projects for Visit Britain, Orange and Peugeot. He was subsequently poached by a major telecommunications company for what appeared to be a dream job in online marketing; professionally, it was a success, but he quickly realised he wasn’t cut out for a corporate life. Eight months later – the day he and Kathryn returned from honeymoon - he quit.

We struggled to find work in Cornwall, but worked hard to keep relationships going with existing clients in Bristol and Swindon. We could have given up and gone back there – but we are either more stupid or more determined than that.

They left for Stroud in 2001 and Robert went freelance, successfully pitching for what became a lengthy chain of online operational work with the insurance company Zurich. More finance sector contracts followed – and SEA was born in 2003.
Kathryn, meanwhile, developed her interest in social and regeneration programmes working on projects for Gloucestershire County Council and the Welsh Development Agency, went back to college to gain a CIM marketing qualification, and finally joined Rob in the business six months after it was launched.

“I don’t really know why we then decided to up sticks and move to Cornwall. I think it’s because we’d gone straight into agency work from university and wanted to do something different,” says Kathryn.
“We were visiting and sitting in the Blue Bar at Porthtowan one day and just said ‘let’s do it’,” adds Robert. “We did say we’d initially try it for 12 months – but that was nonsense, because from day one we fell in love with the place.”

It meant starting again virtually from scratch. Kathryn says: “We struggled to find work in Cornwall, but worked hard to keep relationships going with existing clients in Bristol and Swindon. We could have given up and gone back there – but we are either more stupid or more determined than that.”

SEA gradually grew again, moved into the offices in Penryn and attracted its first major Cornwall-based client…. Robert says: “Dott has been a brilliant opportunity for us.
“Our personalities are reflected in our work and we are so emotionally committed to SEA. This is a fantastic experience in itself – but it is also a springboard to exploit the connections we are making both locally and nationally to continue to grow a sustainable business.”