Clear beats complicated.
Marketing should make it easier for people to understand why something matters.
About Funfair
A new kind of studio.
Not a new pair of hands.
Funfair is an independent marketing studio combining senior strategic thinking, creative direction and AI-powered production. It was founded by Graham Stevenson after more than two decades working across agency and client-side marketing roles, brands, campaigns, communications and major international events.
The studio is new. The experience behind it is not.
Why Funfair exists
Marketing needed a better production model.
Businesses are expected to produce more marketing than ever before—more campaigns, content, channels and proof that everything is working—often with stretched teams and smaller budgets.
Funfair occupies the space between a large agency and a collection of disconnected freelancers: senior enough to lead the thinking, creative enough to find the big idea, practical enough to make the work happen, and powered by technology that allows all three to move significantly faster.
Meet Graham
Senior marketing experience without the agency layers.
Graham has worked both inside agencies and within organisations, giving him a clear understanding of the opportunities—and frustrations—on both sides of the relationship.
- Marketing strategy and leadership
- Brand development and positioning
- Integrated campaign planning
- Creative direction and copywriting
- Digital marketing and content
- Corporate and stakeholder communications
- Sales enablement
- Marketing operations
- Major-event promotion and delivery
His career has included work connected with the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, the 2014 Ryder Cup, the Glasgow 2018 European Championships, EuroSwim and Birmingham 2022—environments with complex stakeholder networks, significant public visibility and deadlines that could not be quietly moved to next quarter.
Thinking and making
Strategy should never disappear into a presentation.
A strategy is only valuable when it helps people make decisions. A creative idea is only successful when it can survive beyond the initial concept. And a campaign only matters when it reaches the audience in the real world.
Funfair brings strategy, creative direction and production together. There are fewer handovers, fewer opportunities for the idea to become diluted and a much clearer route from conversation to completion.
Human judgement. Artificial intelligence.
AI changes what can be made—not what makes it good.
Funfair uses AI-powered tools across research, ideation, design, content, video, audio, websites and marketing operations. Used well, they reduce the distance between an idea and a working result.
AI does not decide what a business should stand for, understand an organisation’s internal reality or know when an idea is distinctive, appropriate and commercially useful. That still takes human judgement.
The tools are powerful. Knowing what to do with them is the service.
Founder-led by design
A studio, not a cast of hundreds.
Clients work directly with the person responsible for the thinking and creative direction. When a project needs more, Funfair brings trusted specialist collaborators, production partners and technical expertise around the assignment. The team expands around the work rather than existing as permanent overhead.
No mystery people on the invoice.
What we believe
Good work should move people—and move.
Distinctive beats merely polished.
Looking professional is the starting point. The work should also have an idea and a point of view.
Production is part of the idea.
Good creative thinking includes finding a route to make the work real.
Technology should remove obstruction.
AI should help teams move faster and spend less time on repetitive tasks—not appear merely because it is fashionable.
Marketing is allowed to be enjoyable.
Serious commercial work does not have to be joyless, self-important or unnecessarily difficult.
The name above the door
Why the name Funfair?
A funfair is a collection of different experiences brought together to create one vivid, memorable world. There is spectacle, movement, colour and energy—but also an enormous amount of structure, craft and machinery working behind the scenes.
That feels rather like good marketing. The audience experiences something clear, engaging and apparently effortless. Behind it sits the strategy, planning, creative judgement, production and hard work required to keep the whole thing moving.
The kind of relationships we like
Direct. Honest. Collaborative.
Funfair works best with people who want direct, honest and collaborative support. You may know exactly what needs to be made, have a problem but no clear brief, or need someone to challenge a direction and take ownership of something that has been stuck for too long. You do not need to arrive with all the answers.
Start a conversationReady when you are
Good thinking deserves to get made.
Bring the challenge, the ambition or the thing that has been stuck for too long. Graham will help work out the most useful next move.
Talk to Graham