Emotive CEO Simon Joyce called ARN “the best partnership” after it sold majority of its shares in the creative agency.
Speaking of Emotive’s future, he told Mediaweek: “We’re fully autonomous, there is nothing holding it back – not that ARN was really holding us back.”
Joyce also took to LinkedIn on Thursday to mark milestone moment and recalled pitching to ARN and Ciaran Davis, CEO and managing director, about buying a in the creative agency, which he said: “at the time was nothing more than a business plan wrapped in big belief.”
“It was non-synergistic, high-risk, and almost unheard of…a media company investing in a creative agency. But they backed me and our vision to operate independently from day one.”
Over a decade of changes and challenges of the industry, Emotive has grown from strength to strength, with over 20 blue-chip brand partners and a plethora exciting creative work.
Mediaweek: How did having ARN as an early investor shape Emotive’s growth in the early years?
Simon Joyce: They were incredible because we wanted to launch with a bit of scale.
It couldn’t just be me pounding the pavement and it allowed us to launch with a team of six and create momentum and have client discussions at the highest level, knowing that you had the team to immediately play ball should you partner with that particular client.
They gave us that initial funding injection to launch with a bit more scale than perhaps you usually would in a startup creative agency.
MW: Having [Ciaran] Davis on the board must have been great to have his backing?
SJ: He’s been so good because it’s a non-synergistic investment, as you can see, a media partner investing in a creative agency startup.
But he’s just been a great strategic support, but he also understood that we needed to run independently given the business that we needed to carve out, and he was very supportive of that the whole time.
MW: What does ARN sale mean for Emotive going forward?
SJ: This is probably the exclamation mark on it.
We’re really well structured at the moment and everything we do now, we can have a longer-term lens. We’re fully autonomous, there is nothing holding it back – not that ARN was really holding us back.
We can have a longer-term view on how we run the business and the decisions we make.
That’s all been unveiled in what I put out there a couple of weeks ago from the new brand identity to what we’ve done with our fame thinking offering to the AI specialist unit, how we take them retainer models.
All of those elements ladder back to this is. This is one of those points to further unlock the agency and ensure we’re attracting the best talent.
MW: Now as a fully independent agency, what can the industry expect next from Emotive?
SJ: Lots.
We’ve got some new client announcements coming up, big new work that’s got a really different shape in how the ideas come to life.
We’ve got the research play that we’re launching. Our purpose ideas change how people feel or how we’re proving that the change that our work has created, which I put in that release a couple of weeks ago.
Those are some of the big headlines for now.
Final words on the partnership:
SJ: It’s been the best partnership. I can’t get over how fortunate I’ve been. The non-synergistic aspect really helped because it’s allowed us to run it independently and carve out our own way, and the proofs in the success of the agency.
That feels like pretty irrefutable given the momentum we have as a business and everything we’ve achieved over the last 10 years.
Mediaweek has reached out to ARN for comment.
Evolving Emotive
Emotive recently launched its new identity at to create ideas that change how people feel.
Created entirely in-house and designed to reflect the ambition of the agency, Dan Mortensen, Head of Design, said: “We always push our clients to make bold, unmissable work, so our aim was to create a design language that reflects that.”
“We wanted to move past the expected and create something that really moves you on a sensory level. Whether it’s motion, colour, type or sound, every element was crafted with the goal of making people feel something. Just like the work we aim to put into the world.”
The brand identity is underpinned by five evolutions across agency:
1) Emotive’s Fame Thinking model with the hires of Jessica Cluff, Head of Earned and Michelle Lomas, Head of Partnerships. The structured approach combines strategy, creative, design, and earned with social, talent, PR, partnerships, and brand experience, designed to unlock the emotional impact of every idea.
2) The agency’s new advisory team and appointments of Sarah Scott Paul as Director of People and Culture, who brings a focus on mentorship, wellbeing, and growth pathways for the Emotive team.
3) Emotive has introduce a flexible retainer model to allow brands to shift its budget as budget as requirements and priorities change. The model also includes performance-based incentives that tiess agency earnings to results.
4) The launch of the specialist AI headed up by Hayley-Ritz Pelling, Head of Production, and Paul Sharp, Creative Director, which uses AI from brief to final delivery of a project. The AI unit aims to accelerate productivity, boost creativity and streamline processes, and train its team up on how to use it.
5) Emotive also has a new measuring system in the works aimed at understanding how people feel. It is aimed at shaping creative ideas, how well they work and likely emotional responses.