Who we are

Simon

Having spent a few years rather improbably earning a living riding a bike, he got into
Marketing at Nestle. Wanting to work on image brands he went to Heineken, spending his time trying to reinvigorate ‘Refreshes the Parts’ advertising and trying to keep customers out of trouble in Amsterdam. He wasn’t very successful at either. He had more luck with Stella Artois. He spent some time at London Business School and joined Trinity Mirror as Marketing Director, reporting to Kelvin MacKenzie which was hilarious and terrifying in equal measure. Simon enjoyed working with ad agency ‘Lowe’ in their golden period and so when they asked him to  run their strategy business, he said “yes”. He spent the next 5 years being as amused as he was with Kelvin.  He left to form Muse with James
 

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun”

Rick

After a degree in History from Sheffield University (which is a surprising subject
for someone who can’t remember what he did yesterday) Rick began his working life at Fopp records, but felt the need to move on after opening a box of Showaddywaddy cds one morning. So he gained a postgraduate diploma in Advertising and Strategy, before joining Lowe as a Planner. He came across James when both were working on the Vauxhall account. A few years working on ‘Sure’ and other Unilever brands followed, (whilst moonlighting as a successful T Shirt designer) Then he joined Simon and James at Muse.
In his spare time, Rick fritters his money away on rare vinyl, has a season ticket at a top European football club and tries to stop his house from falling down.

 
James
Inspired by an uncanny memory for advertising jingles (but little else we would
argue), James began his career as an account executive at ad agency Yellowhammer. Despite not being able to convince his mother that he wasn’t in fact an accountant, he went on to work at agencies such as FCB and Ogilvy and Mather. At Ogilvy he ran the Ford business for five years and was Managing Partner of the UK agency. He was also European Client Service Director, responsible for Duracell. He then joined Lowe Howard Spink ,where he was responsible for the Vauxhall and COI business. It was whilst working at Lowe that he met Simon. James regularly falls off motorbikes, supports Chelsea and lives in Wimbledon with his long suffering family. His Mum probably had the right idea.

 

We only employ senior people who have experience of using the output of businesses like ours.
We don’t employ juniors and we don’t tolerate egos.

We insist that we deliver output that is actionable.
Here are a few of us

Nuala

She’s lounging around at home at the moment. Some people call it maternity
leave. She’ll be back in a couple of weeks. We didn’t want to trouble her for a biography  during her time away, so we decided to write it for her. It’s a mark of our caring, supportive culture.

Nuala once came 5th in the World Irish Dancing Championships. Late at night at an awayday in a hotel conservatory, she chose to demonstrate her talent. Unfortunately, being a conservatory (and being late at night at an awayday) she didn’t see the end of the room. You can imagine the rest.
And if you want to arrive in the right place at the right time, don’t let her drive. It’s remarkable how many interpretations can be placed on the words “turn left here.”
Don’t let her do anything that involves numbers either. We suspect the previous problem is because roads are numbered, although that doesn’t explain the “turn left here” thing.

In our view she’s one of the best brand strategists in Britain today. But for goodness sake don’t tell her.
She’s also endlessly tolerant, which allows us to get away with things like this.

She’s now back from maternity leave but we like this biography and so we’ll leave it as it is (and fortunately, she doesn’t know how to change it.)