Creatives urged to help start-ups

London’s leading creative directors are being urged to help those

among them who want to break away and set up their own agencies.

The idea is to put creative chiefs who have founded start-ups in touch

with those who are thinking about it and to assemble a central registry

of expert advisors ranging from lawyers and accountants to estate

agents.

The plan is being mooted by Chris O’Shea, the joint exe-cutive creative

director of Banks Hoggins O’Shea/FCB, and will spearhead his agenda as

the newly elected chair-man of the IPA Creative Di-rectors’ Forum.

In a letter being sent to forum members this week, O’Shea says that

start-ups stimulate creativity and that he is committed to encouraging

as many as possible.

’The more start-ups there are, the better the work will become,’ he

said.

’I want to spark more breakaways and make it as easy as possible for

them to get going.’

O’Shea insisted the forum would not be used to persuade its members to

form their own agencies but only to help those who were already thinking

about it.

O’Shea, a founding partner of Banks Hoggins in 1991, said the history of

world advertising had proved that the most significant creative

breakthroughs during the past 50 years had been achieved by

start-ups.

’From CDP and Boase Massimi Pollit in the 60s to St Luke’s and Mother in

the 90s, the thing that binds them together is a belief in creative

standards,’ he added.

’I’m not saying that agencies such as BMP DDB and Abbott Mead Vickers

BBDO don’t still do brilliant work, but their tradition of fine

advertising can be traced back to when they set up 20 or 30 years

ago.’

He said he hoped the forum would become a place where creative directors

thinking of going it alone could talk confidentially to those who had

already done so about practical problems such as choosing the right

partners and learning the kind of clients to avoid.

In his letter, O’Shea points out that start-ups have always been ’run by

people who were unshackled by corporate nonsense’.

This article was first published on Campaign