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An Evening With Tom Hashemi

The founder of Cast from Clay talks about the death of think tanks, Brexit, and bonfiring his brand.

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Holson House
Date:

I met Tom Hashemi because of a brand: this one.

My opening line was definitely something like, “You know this site about moms? Do you think you could build me one for foreign policy?”

Despite all that, he did, and we became fast friends, aided by the fact that he is truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

In addition to design, Tom’s team is leading the field in research on think tank communications — breaking the bad news, again and again, that folks had better shape up or ship out. And, sharing the good news that shaping up means learning to tell a better story. To, “bring the human back into policy communications.”

So it’s no surprise that earlier this month, Tom and his team took a page out of their own book. They scrapped their original name in an effort to better tell their own story.

I asked Tom about the new brand and lessons learned from his three years at the helm of one of the most cutting edge communications firms in foreign policy.

The highlights of our talk are included with the photos below:

 

Tom Hashemi
I didn't particularly like school. Didn't want to go to university. Dad told me to go to university. I thought if I'm going to study anything it’s going to be Middle Eastern politics. Went on to do a masters in King’s war studies department. Briefly worked at a think tank after that, counter-radicalization think tank. Then went to Edelman. Worked in Edelman’s comms strategy department and specialized in trust — how do you create trust between consumers and brands? — which I found very interesting because it was more of an academic question.
Tom Hashemi
I thoroughly bought into that idea of research and communications. As a teenager I was interested in the Middle East, foreign policy, and building websites, and then I was like, ok, well, let’s bring those things together. Set up a research-driven website agency, that focuses on national security and international politics and that was kind of the initial concept. Well that’s a lie, the initial concept was “let’s just build websites like I’ve always built websites as a pocket money thing.”
Tom Hashemi
The business was reborn after the UK voted to leave the EU. It was a result that mortified me. I neither agreed with, nor respected, the Leave point of view. I wanted the UK to remain a part of the trade bloc, and preventing a vote like that happening again became my focus. Given my background, it seemed strengthening general public engagement with policy ideas would be the best way I could contribute.
Tom Hashemi
My views have developed since then. I must have presented to over 1,000 think tankers over the past three years, of all ideological persuasions. Repeatedly I've found that people of all ideologies get into politics and policy because they want to make a positive difference. I may not agree with how they propose getting there or indeed where they want to get to, but I cannot question their motives.
Tom Hashemi
This holds true for Brexiteers and Remainers, Labour and Tories, Republicans and Democrats. It feels like we don’t recognize that as a society.
Tom Hashemi
And I think a lot of the issues that we've had in the UK around loss of our industry have been because the government hasn't done anything to retrain the people that lost their jobs. When you go to some of the northern parts of the UK and there's nothing there because they were hugely industrial bits — shipbuilding and mining and all this kind of stuff — and they just took it away and didn't do anything. And you can't do that. You didn’t just destroy people's lives, you destroyed entire communities. It’s happened here – it’s probably one of the reasons why Mr. Trump is where he is. It's fine to destroy industries – industries sometimes have to be destroyed and something better created in their place – but you don’t have to destroy the people that work in those industries at the same time.
Tom Hashemi
In my view, it's crucial for policy experts to engage the public for two reasons. The first is the moral duty. Society only evolves when knowledge is shared and distributed. Arguably, this socialization is what turns information into knowledge. And there's a more pragmatic reason, based on the way democracy has changed in the UK, US, and elsewhere. The public have access and influence over policy makers like never before. Decisions are not made in a vacuum. If experts don't engage in public conversations, don't be surprised if their expertise is ignored when policies are formed, in favor of those who have.
Tom Hashemi
There's been a lot of talk about the death of think tanks. People love this phrase. I’m not sure that think tanks are anywhere close to dying. That doesn't mean that they won’t slowly lose market share to people like McKinsey who can do exactly the same thing — they've got the brainpower in-house. They've also got the communications skill. McKinsey, and all the others like them, are fantastic communicators. Think tanks won’t die overnight, but the industry will slowly erode if it doesn’t start adopting 21st century communications techniques.
Tom Hashemi
Think tanks often place the PDF report at the heart of their communications strategy. This doesn't work, not for the public, nor for policymakers. We need to stop thinking of 42.5 page documents as ticking the box when it comes to communications. By the time someone engages with an output like that, they most likely already agree with what you say. Why else would they spend a chunk of time going through the document in detail? What your comms should be doing is getting people to that point. And to do that you need to insert yourself in their day-to-day lives. Where do they go to get information? You need to be there.
Tom Hashemi
We're playing around with lots of different ideas — of rethinking how an agency works, what the structure is. One of those things is contemplating doing five-hour working days. How can we draw down – how can we make the business sufficiently efficient and make ourselves sufficiently productive? You know when you say this to people, they think you're nuts and you've got no chance to make it happen. But why not? Henry Ford took the concept of the working day from seven days a week, 12 hours a day, to five days a week, 8 hours a day. And that was a hundred odd years ago. I think we’re about ready to rejig that.
Tom Hashemi
The idea was that everyone still has to produce the same amount of work. You still have to tick off all the boxes. X still needs to be done by the end of the day. But if you get it done by the end of the day, which is 1 p.m., then go to an art gallery. Go draw inspiration from something else. As long as we produce, as long as we continue to produce good quality work, maintain the relationships with our clients, maintain long term relations with our clients, I don't care. As long as the client’s happy and we're happy with our work, those are the only two things that matter.
Tom Hashemi
Been playing the guitar since I was young… early teenager. I played the bass and the drums as a kid. I actually started off learning the french horn. And then I learned the saxophone. I was pretty good at the saxophone. Saxophone was like a school instrument that my mom made me learn. Bass and drums were what I wanted to play because they were rock. And then my mum had an acoustic, so I used to play the acoustic now and then. My mom was a professional musician – she wasn’t heavy metal, I was – she was very classical music.
Tom Hashemi
I've still got the guitar I used to play on as a kid, and I still play it. But it's now got friends, my pride and joy is a six-string guitar, incredibly sexy, made by a brand called Mayones. It's a Duvell 6. Not that anyone's going to know… some people might care. They're gorgeous.
Tom Hashemi
The concept behind We are Flint was that we would light a fire under brave ideas. For the last 12 months we’ve felt that that wasn’t the right foundation. It is not enough to light a fire under a pre-formed idea and then expect it to spread on its own. This is a common issue we see many think tanks and research-focused organizations grappling with. Often, ideas only get to the communications team when they are to be put out into the world. At which point, they’re often already in the wrong form for their purpose.
Tom Hashemi
Ideas need to be molded, worked, reworked, and only then cast. They need to be shaped by their end goal in order to have salience and impact. They need a human touch. Our new brand, Cast from Clay, speaks to this.
Tom Hashemi
Tom Hashemi
It talks to the universality of human storytelling, to our need for narratives that explain who we are and what we believe. And it reflects the work we do – crafting policy ideas into human-shaped stories, and breathing life into them.
Author bio

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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