Creative Director Bobby Downey on not being afraid to get started

What were the circumstances of your personal reinvention? When did you decide you were a creative director, and when did that self-proclaimed title catch up to you in more literal terms?

So I started at the company not as an owner—but as a woodworker. I went to a tech school, my major was carpentry and I got a job at Wyrmwood, just doing woodworking. But I had some ideas and they gave me a shot, and they liked what I ended up doing. I did some things on social media, I did some things for Kickstarter campaigns, I did some things for an email list—there was no one else really doing marketing or photos or social media or anything like that. So my title was just, oh, Bobby, he’s in marketing.

Then, one of the first conventions I went to, I got invited to some sort of industry party where someone introduced themselves as a creative director. And I just went, I like the sound of that. I was like, I’m creative, I like to direct things. It sounds important. It sounds like no one would fuck with you. And at the time, I just told Doug or whoever else, “That’s my title, I think. I think I’m the creative director.” And they’re like, “Well Bobby, I think you need to direct people and it’s just you. Like, who are you directing?” I’m just like, “No one, but I’m just going to say it so that when I talk to people, they take me seriously and they’re just like, Oh, he’s the fucking creative director.” They didn’t need to know that my office was actually a storage closet and a laptop. They don’t need to know that.

I don’t know if there was a moment when it actually became true, but over time I hired content creators, photographers, cinematographers, animators, graphic designers, and eventually, I had a team that I was indeed creatively directing. And I think that’s how most things are. You decide something and then you go for it, right?

From the moment that you touch the big factory doors in the morning, what could an average day at Wyrmwood look like for you?

So I’m not good at this, but you gotta check emails. That’s probably the first thing I do. I don’t direct the media team anymore, I direct the executives that run departments, so I’ll check in with the head of conventions, the head of media, the head of fulfillment, legacy, ads, whatever it may be, I’ll have one on ones with all of the department heads just to make sure everything’s moving in the right direction. Sometimes I’m doing weird things like sorting dice, you know what I mean? This was just a random thing that I did. I don’t know. I wish that I could pull someone to be like, “Hey, inventory these dice for me, but I’m just going to do it myself.”

Then Wyrm Life can happen at any time. We don’t have call times or planned meetings or anything. Doug will walk in and be like, “Hey, I gotta have a conversation with everybody.” Sounds like Wyrm Life conversation, so then I’ll be dragged away to have a conversation on camera for an hour or two and then it’ll get edited down to three minutes.

It’s insane—I shouldn’t, but I have a lot of freedom. Sometimes I can just be like, “Hey, I think I’m going to buy a ticket to Portland, Oregon, and go to a meadery because I want them to make Wyrmwood mead.” And I just do that. Which is happening by the way. I had this cockamamie idea—because you can infuse mead with wood—so I sent them about 300 oak Wyrmwood dice vaults, and they pour it in the vat and the Wyrmwood dice vaults infused the mead, then they’re going to take it all out. We’re going to take it, get all the moisture out, and then process the dice vaults that were in the mead and sell a bottle of mead that comes with one of the dice vaults that infused it to give it its flavor.

So a lot of it is just thinking. And then, I don’t know, I’m very action-oriented. I’ll think of something and I won’t run it by people. I won’t sit on it. I’ll immediately start haphazardly hacking away at it. Then as soon as I think I have a good idea, I hand it off to somebody who’s more organized and that’s it. So that’s kind of what a day looks like.

What is it about a potential partner that might grab your attention? Or what is it about a potential project that might make you, or someone at Wyrmwood would say, “Yeah, that’s it. We’re definitely doing that”?

I see it as being dealt a hand. I don’t go out looking for my cards, I look at the cards that are there and I’m like, well, what’s the coolest possible thing that I could do with these cards right here?

With tarot, for example, Stephanie [TK] was the first person I hit up, period. I saw what she was doing, I hit her up and I said, “Let’s do it.” I didn’t shop around, I didn’t do anything. She was like, “Oh yeah, I could do that.” Now, a lot of that is because of Kickstarter. We are a company that has money in the bank because we get bursts of cash from projects as opposed to a slow trickle. So we can be a little bit more liberal with marketing and spending and stuff like that.

Action is everything to me. So if I see someone actively doing something, I’ll be like, “Oh, we’re going with you a hundred percent.” Because you’re doing it on your own by yourself. The amount of motivation you need to do that is massive. People talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about what they could do, but if someone is running a Kickstarter all by themselves, you already know that they have what it takes in order to do what you need. So I decide on action and what I see, not what I hear.

Is there something you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t had the opportunity to do yet that you’d jump on if you came across it in the wild?

There are some things that I seek out on my own—and this isn’t a good answer, but it is the first thing that I think of—I’d love to collaborate with Red Bull somehow.

Wow.

So when you think energy drink, I don’t know, you think of a Kyle with his backwards Monster hat and his saggy jeans. It’s not associated with things that are abundantly positive. You see an energy drink and you’re just like, I don’t know, people who smoke a lot of cigarettes and need a Monster at 8:00 AM – that’s kind of what I think of when I see energy drinks. But Red Bull has taken this drink that isn’t any better or worse than any other energy drink and isn’t really even healthy for you, but they associate it with epicness. When you see Red Bull sponsor something, it’s like someone paragliding off of the side of a cliff. It’s someone who’s windsurfing with a parachute or it’s the X Games, it has nothing to fucking do with Red Bull. Like a race car driver who’s going to, I don’t know, do some wacky thing and because of what he asked, we need a custom wooden stick shift for the car or something crazy – just to contribute to one of the cockamamie things that they do.

Collaborating with Streamlabs, having a Wyrmwood version of a really nice streaming chair, that would be awesome. Collaborating with Red Bull and getting to participate in one of their crazy marketing ideas, that would be really cool. Not for sales, just because it would be cool.

Automatically I can imagine some NASCAR stunt driver in a Wyrm-wood-paneled station wagon.

The old Lincolns with the wooden panel around the radio and stuff. Yeah, we’d do that. It’s just a bunch of shields.

What ideas or images or experiences do you want people to think of when they see the Wyrmwood crest or they see a new Kickstarter campaign has launched or whatever it is? What are the signs and the symbols, and the feelings and the experiences, that you want people to have come to mind first when they see Wyrmwood has done something?

I think it was Marty Neumeier, who’s a brand expert, who said, “Your brand is the feeling people get when they interact with you.” So you actually don’t have one brand, you have millions of brands and they all just exist in people’s heads. I really like that way of thinking about it. It is going to be everybody’s interpretation. It’s based on what you put out there. Authenticity, I definitely think, is one thing. I don’t know how long you can hang onto authenticity, but I would like to hang onto it. It’s a little crazy, but authentic is definitely one, and fun, good feelings, and that’s it. Obviously innovation, obviously quality craftsmanship, obviously good service.

Oh, I am familiar with Buc-ees. Buc-ees is legendary.

Buc-ees is goals. I walk into Buc-ees and I’m like, holy fucking shit. I don’t even understand how they make a profit. I’m like, look at all of this merch. I have no idea how they’re doing this. I want to sit down with the owner of Buc-ees so bad and be like, “So was the plan to create the biggest gas station, or was this an accident? How did you achieve this?” I can’t get two pieces of merch right and they’re absolutely killing it. Buc-ees is for everybody, anyone could enjoy Bu-cees. It doesn’t matter who you are You walk in and you’re like, this place is fucking cool and it doesn’t matter. They have great merchandise, they have fantastic service. Their staff is incredible, their bathrooms are immaculate, their food is delicious. It’s visually impressive. Bu-cees doesn’t discriminate. It just feels good for everybody.

So that’s what I want Wyrmwood to be. I want Wyrmwood to be like, “Oh, Wyrmwood’s fun. I like them. Yeah, they put out this shirt, they put out this product, they made candles. Wow, yeah, it’s good. Have you watched Wyrm Life? That’s a feel-good show. Did you see their campaign? Oh, that’s cool, what they did.” You don’t have to be a gamer. You don’t have to be an indie dice creator. You don’t have to be a nerd. You don’t have to be a man, a woman. You don’t have to be anything. It’s just like, oh Wyrmwood. Yeah, that’s good shit. I want Wyrmwood to be for everybody.

Obviously, there’s so much that you’re passionate about as makers, as artisans, as members of your local community, as members of the worldwide gaming community, as artisans. What is the process behind Wyrmwood deciding a cause is important? What makes you want to do the charitable work you do?

So the biggest thing, we don’t publicize our charity work that much. I think if everyone helped silently, it would probably be better. Because it’s not about getting the kudos, it’s about actually imparting help where you can. But at the same exact time, you shouldn’t hide it. There’s a thing at the bottom of our website called Charitable Giving and you can click it and you can read about what we’ve done in the past and what we perhaps are currently doing. But we’re not tweeting out and Instagramming ‘look at what we’ve done.’

I like starting small, I think that change, if you want to help, it needs to start small and then grow. So before you can help the world, you need to help your country. And before you can help the country, you need to help your state. And before you help your state, you need to help your community. You need to start small and then work your way outward. So anytime that I like to work with charity, I like to make it hit close to home as we can. So we’re in Taunton, for example, if I can do something Taunton-specific or Boston-specific, that’s what I like to do. When we did Earth Day last year, we replanted trees in Boston instead of donating money to someplace that said they were doing it in Bolivia.

I try to make the impact where I am, where Wyrmwood is. Then maybe it’s Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, because that’s where our next location is and then… You know what I mean? So if we’re helping anything, we’re helping the people that are nearest to us and not some imaginary, this is helping someone, somewhere.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Meredith Graves.