No pitch deck. No cold calls. Just relationships - Lauren Tauben
Episode 27 - THAT MOMENT
Most agency origin stories follow a pattern. Business plan. Market research. Pitch deck. Network aggressively. Land first client. Scale. Lauren Tauben's story doesn't follow that pattern at all.
From Nintendo to a Kitchen Table
Her path into marketing started with a design course at London Metropolitan in the late 90s, back when courses taught you photography, architecture and design management all at once. Work experience at M&C Saatchi came through knowing people. Good relationships early on, opened doors that cold pitching never would.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
Lauren was working at BD Network, a creative agency, on the Nintendo account, during the era of the Nintendo DS and the Wii launch, when motion controlled gaming reached families who'd never thought of themselves as gamers.
BD decided to launch Wii Sports Resort at the NEC in Birmingham, transforming the entire arena into a real-life version of the game. Two thousand GAME employees attended. Ant and Dec hosted. Bowling, boxing, tennis, a giant fun fair (Dodgems), all brought to life.
Lauren ran around that event and felt something she'd never felt before. Not excitement. Not just adrenaline. A clarity.
"I'm just where I need to be. I want this feeling for the rest of my life."
That feeling became the north star for everything that came next.
The Operating Philosophy
After Nintendo, Lauren moved to Evoke on the adidas account, then winning PlayStation as a new account. Both experiences reinforced something she'd learned: relationships with clients aren't transactional, they're foundational.
"You're only really as good as your last project and your last conversation."
Every email, every conversation, every presentation is treated as if it's the one that defines the relationship, because it might be. So when Lauren sat at a kitchen table chatting to her best mate deciding to start an agency, the decision wasn't really about starting a business. It was about asking a question:
"Agencies do an amazing job, but I think maybe it can be done a better way."
How Agent42 Actually Wins Work
The answer to "how do you win clients without cold calling" sounds too simple to be true: you talk to people you know. You reach into your network.
Lauren didn't hire a new business team. She called people. Her first clients were Topshop, Nintendo Europe, PlayStation and Acer, all through relationships that already existed. Later came Slush Puppie. Then more.
Agent42 The agency doubled in size by hiring people Lauren and her business partner knew and trusted, building a team with skills beyond the traditional agency mix: food photographers, ballerinas, pottery makers, professional athletes.
What held it together wasn't a process. It was culture. It was trust and great relationships.
The Moment Everything Changed
Lauren grew Agent42 with intention, staying focused on organic growth through relationships rather than chasing growth for its own sake. But she also stayed alert to the right opportunity.
That opportunity came through a friend from her Nintendo days, who introduced her to Matt Robinson, founder and president of Atoms and Space, a collective of specialist agencies. The fit was immediate: the same vision to launch Agent42 into other markets.
Most founders sell and leave. Lauren stayed, not because the acquisition forced her to, but because it aligned with her vision: launching Agent42 into USA and beyond while keeping the relationship-led, human-first culture intact.
The acquisition wasn't an exit. It was an expansion of purpose.
What This Actually Means
On the surface, Lauren's approach sounds impossible by modern standards. No new business team, no scaling playbook. But you don't grow an agency that way if you're optimising for speed or market share. You grow it if you're optimising for culture and relationships, slowly and deliberately, through quality rather than volume.
"If you have intent and purpose, you're driven, you have vision, you get there no matter what."
Agent42’s work reflects the values it was built on: human first, relationship led, focused on creating that feeling Lauren felt at the NEC in Birmingham, the sense that you're exactly where you need to be.
Relationships matter. Trust matters. The last conversation matters more than the last pitch. Culture compounds. And purpose gets you there no matter what.
About Supo:
Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people.
For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk
About Lauren Tauben, Agent 42:
Lauren Tauben is founder and CEO of Agent42, a London and NYC based social, digital and PR agency that connects culture and commerce. Her career spans M&C Saatchi, BD, where she led the iconic Nintendo account and the Wii Sports Resort launch, and PlayStation at another agency, before founding Agent42 on the philosophy that marketing should be relationship-led and human-first. Under her leadership, Agent42 has grown entirely through relationships and word of mouth, no cold calling, just trust. The agency was acquired by Atoms and Space in 2024, and Lauren remains CEO, continuing to build Agent42 across EMEA and the US while maintaining the relationship-driven culture that made it work from day one.
For more information about Agent 42: http://www.agent42.co.uk/
Ready to discover why the hardest decisions often lead to the strongest growth? This episode isn't about morality. It's about what actually works - when you have the courage to find out.