Labours of Love

Such a statement could certainly be deemed to be arrogant. However, with a client list that boasts the likes of Nike, Playstation, Warburtons, Umbro, Dr Martin, Bettys & Taylors of Harrowgate, Microsoft, Bank of America and the BBC to name just a few, Sim’s confidence perhaps could also be well-founded.

Following the agency’s recent success at The Roses Design Awards (pictured above), which saw Love scoop the Grand Prix prize for its work with Silvercross – as well as winning Designer of the Year and both of the joint Young Designer of the Year awards – The Drum sat down with MD Alistair Sim, and creative director David Palmer to figure out just how the agency’s ambitions were being fostered.

Love is now seven years in business and the directors are keen to develop the agency to help take it forward.

Two Days

The Drum broke the news of Love’s proposed venture with former partner Jonathan Rigby, Two Days. Then, shortly after, had to report that the agency had decided to pull the plug on the plans after the details were leaked.

According to Sim, the Two Days venture was backed 100% by Love but “it got a bit messy and the PR affected people’s perceptions of it and what it was going to be.”

He continues: “With Jon’s planned departure we thought it would be a good vehicle for expansion, but it wasn’t fully rounded and, at the end of the day, it didn’t feel as good an idea as the other plans we’re working on. I think it’s called ‘killing puppies’. It’s something you have to do when you have lots of great ideas, you have to get rid of some of them.”

However, Sim has now revealed the details of the agency newest plan... A plan that, this time, will launch.

New Initiative

Sim and founding partner Phil Skegg will lead a new initiative called Make alongside Rupinder Ashworth. Sim will act as managing director, Skegg as the creative head and Ashworth will lead the business strategy.

The venture is thought not to be too dissimilar to the idea for Two Days. The initiative will look to create ideas and hold the intellectual property for those ideas that come to fruition and allow the agency to actually become the client with any successful brand that is created.

According to Sim, now is a good time to launch a new business and reflects the entrepreneurial sprit that has helped drive Love forward over the last seven years.

“We’ve achieved a lot of what we set out to do, however, the next phase for us is to restructure. We have to plan for growth. To do this we have to allow people to come up through the business to reward them.

“The founding partners – myself, Dave Palmer and Phil Skegg – need to step up and look at the wider development of Love, so we’re going to create a board of people who will run the agency day to day,” Sim explains.

Part of their strategy is to create a second tier management board which will be given the responsibility of running the agency and allowing the main directors to concentrate on developing some new initiatives – like Make. That second tier board will be made up of Darren Hughes, Richard Hall, Chris Conlan, Dave Bevan, Jono Brain and Paul Chorlton.

Way Ahead

Palmer says that the team is being referred to as The Way Ahead Board, which will confer with the founders on a frequent basis but will see them given the autonomy to make many of the big decisions from day-to-day.

“When we launched Love we had this idea that we would never be bigger than a certain number of people,” says Sim. “Around 40 was a cultural decision and as the time has gone by we now think that it might just be 40 in one location or one sector.”

Sim continues: “We also believed that the traditional client-agency model is a bit fucked and heading into a recession helps you to understand that. Sometimes the value of what creative agencies do is far more than what they get paid for by an hourly rate. They rarely benefit from seeing that idea come to fruition and see that idea turn multimillion pounds worth of income.”

This is where Make comes in with the directors hoping to strike gold with an idea which could be developed by the agency and see it develop a whole new revenue stream through their creative talents.

“London agencies have been very good at getting their ideas around value charging,” continues Sim. “You put a value on something and that’s what you charge the client. That’s what they think it’s worth. Most agencies will just try to get close to their hourly rates. We were a bit more interested in creating other businesses and creating our own intellectual property. The remit of ‘Make’ is just that, to develop and share ownership of IP on concept product services.”

Toy

Another initiative to recently come out of Love is Toy – led by young designer Chris Gray who will be assisted by a commercial manager, who has yet to be appointed. Toy will be a global creative talent agency and will look to hone and develop young artists across disciplines such as music, design, illustration or film making.

“They’ve already got jobs which they are working on and it was also part of working out how Love operates internationally. We’ve been working with international clients but it’s important that we continue to operate outside of the UK. It’s a good exercise in testing how we bring groups of people together and we always felt that we could probably build a virtual creative agency without having to build or buy. It was always an underlining thought, but Manchester seemed like an unusual place to start it,” Sim explains.

Despite its international cravings, Love has a history of helping small, local clients grow quickly, and Yorkshire Tea and Silver Cross are two examples of that. But the agency continues to balance them with blue-chip, “bankable” clients such as Playstation and Nike.

However, it was recently disappointed when it lost Yorkshire Tea’s advertising business to Beattie McGuiness Bungay following a review. Love has developed the brand since 2005.

While it has recently created a campaign for another of Betty & Taylors of Harrowgate’s brands – Taylor’s Coffee – Palmer admits that the loss of the tea brand to BMB isn’t great for the regions. But he also admits that losing a brand, which was grown by the agency, is something that comes with the territory. “Taking a brand into prominence means that ‘bigger’ agencies will always end up sniffing around.”

The loss of Yorkshire Tea did raise a few eyebrows despite the agency’s name appearing on advertising pitch lists against the more established names of the above-the-line fraternity in recent times.

Love again, though, silenced its doubters with the announcement last month that it is to create the international campaign for Playstation’s PSP 3000 – no bad replacement.

The agency’s bullish talk might not always win it friends among its local rivals. But while talk may be cheap, creativity is a valued commodity. And if Love’s plans for a creative expansion pay dividends, then their rich vein of form looks set to continue.