Walking away from the 'nice corporate job' brought Elaine Knowles' creativity back

/ 22nd June 2025 /

After walking away from the 'nice corporate job', Elaine Knowles, Managing Director of Just Ordinary Folk, explains the evolution of her career journey that brought back her creative roots.

I enjoyed my nice corporate job. The people were lovely. The benefits were excellent, and the company did care for the people who worked for them. (That’s you RSA & 123.ie.)

So, I left.

When you’re younger and starting out in your career, these types of roles are perfect for you.

You learn, you take it all in like a sponge, and you let the powers that be do the ‘big worrying’.

But when you’re more ahem… mature, you have to do a lot more of the worrying.

You become more of a jack of all trades and master of none.

"Why is trading down?"

I’ll find out. Here’s the answer.

"How do we plan for next year and beyond?"

No problem. Let me work all that out for you and how much budget we need.

"Is brand tracking going well?" etc.

It’s the big questions, the hard questions and the great questions that you learn to answer with facts.

You also have to manage people. Manage budgets. Mentor teams and be a representative of the business.

This, I also enjoyed. But it pulled me further and further away from what I loved doing. What I really cared about.

I love Building brands. Advertising. Strategy and planning. Digital and what I like to call ‘actual work'...

I love creating concepts and stories. I love seeing them realised through physical TV Commercials and photoshoots.

I love being in editing studios, doing sound mixes. I even love doing a bit with AI and seeing where that will go.

And I love working with slightly unhinged creative people.

So, I left the PowerPoint decks behind. I wanted to go back to actually ‘doing’ more of that creative work.

Michael Bassett, Design Director, Brendan O’Flaherty, Creative Director, Elaine Knowles, Managing Director, Cherie Clarke, Head of Production at Just Ordinary Folk Ltd

I took the plunge. To love my work again.

Any regrets? None whatsoever.

I’m working with some amazing go-getters. Now, I’m finally getting a chance to share some of the fantastic work we've been making over the last year.

It's good to be back.

Just Ordinary Folk was set up to change how more traditional agencies work, providing consultancy, brand planning and creative campaigns for all media channels.

Established by Elaine Knowles, Brendan Flaherty & Michael Bassett, the company has grown to a team of 10, with clients both here in Ireland and globally.