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Chapter

A New Chapter: News analysis

By The Drum, Administrator

June 19, 2009 | 4 min read

Chapter launched in April, headed by a trio of well-known Midlands advertising names. Operating as three mini-agencies, the team aims to take on its larger rivals by staying small.

That’s not to say they will cut corners. Stepping inside the grand converted church in Wythall, near Birmingham, which Chapter calls ‘home’, confirms they are no penny pinchers.

What they believe is that, beyond a certain size an agency loses its “closeness” with its clients, and without experienced people tightly manning accounts, standards slip, budgets are squandered, and no one – not the agency, not the client – gets the results they desire.

“We’re not anti-big agencies,” says Rose, who gave up the role of client services director at Leicester-based Big Communications in April to launch the new agency. “It’s just our belief that bigger than 30 people you lose effectiveness. I think there’s a tipping point past that where it all starts to get incredibly system-driven.”

Heffernan, who along with Boulter was a founding member of Connect in Wolverhampton (the pair left last December to prepare for Chapter), claims a leaner agency will be more fleet-footed than bigger rivals.

What is certain is that Chapter’s structure will be markedly different from that of giant network agencies whose regional offices might have to answer to decision-makers hundreds, if not thousands of miles away.

“The three shareholders in this business are sitting around this table,” says Rose. “We haven’t got a PLC telling us we have to hit a profit number, we haven’t got an external private equity investor; it’s our business, we can shape it how we want.

“Yes it has to be a commercial success for us, and yes it has to be a commercially viable business, but we can chose to do what we want and how we want to do it without someone hitting us over the head with a stick telling us we have to deliver a number.”

The agency’s ambition is to build long term relationships with between seven and 12 key clients. It won’t focus on a particular sector – at previous agencies the founders worked on clients across a spectrum that included B2B, luxury, consumer and automotive. It will offer most marketing services, including digital, but not PR.

The agency won’t have separately defined departments – creative, client services, production and so on. It will instead comprise of three mini agencies, or “chapters”, with Rose, Heffernan and Boulter heading up one apiece. These mini agencies will then handle different clients – and will each likely concentrate on different sectors. Boulter says this approach means they can fulfil their intention of staying close and tight with clients.

“You can only do this with an agency of our size,” says Boulter. “To try and replicate it over 100 people would be unworkable. When you’re this size and you remain in those three mini agencies you’re making things even closer. Everyone has a clearly defined role, there’s an accountability there.”

That accountability means that ultimately, Chapter’s model stands and falls on the quality of staff it can attract, and its founders know that. “If we end up with 30 people and some are good and some are average we won’t get to where we need to go,” says Rose. “We’ve got to get incredibly good people, and we will pay for incredibly good people. But we won’t bring in people if we don’t feel comfortable that they are good enough.”

Heffernan distils it more simply: “In a large setup average people can hide,” he says. “If it’s a tight structure every single person counts.”

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