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Pablo London has struck a partnership with former 4Creative heads John Allison and Chris Bovill, who will work on a permanent basis with the agency's creative team. 

Having collaborated with Pablo as freelancers for the past year – producing work for brands such as Deliveroo and DFS – this latest partnership marks the start of a more established role for the pair.

At the agency, they will work on briefs and with creatives to develop ideas and pitches.

The pair previously worked for Warner Music Group, but left in 2019 to pursue scripted entertainment. Their role at Warner Music was to head its in-house creative and production unit, The Firepit, and develop formats and programming with the record company’s roster of artists. During their tenure, they launched a music channel, created branded content and oversaw Liam Gallagher documentary As It Was.

Prior to that, and perhaps most famously, the two were the joint heads of 4Creative from 2012 to 2017. Together, they rebranded Channel 4 in 2015 and created the award-winning “We’re the superhumans” for the 2016 Paralympic Games.

The agency will tap into Bovill (above, bottom) and Allison’s passion for scriptwriting, in a bid to create a symbiotic relationship between scripted entertainment and branding. It will also act as an incubator for their current and future long-format scriptwriting efforts.

Allison said: “Pablo are incredibly nurturing and attuned to how different people work so as to get the very best out of them. It’s very inspiring.

“Pablo is a bold, entrepreneurial, creatively-led place. It’s a blast working with the team at Pablo, in fact it doesn’t feel like work, which is how the best work works.”

Bovill added: “Pablo are on fire at the minute. It’s always exciting to work with a team in full, confident, hop-skipping stride. It’s been too enjoyable making Deliveroo and DFS to stop. So we decided not to.”

Dan Watts, executive creative director at Pablo, said “Brilliant odd-shaped people, making brilliant odd-shaped ideas that demonstrate a brand's point of view. That’s what we’re all about at Pablo. Chris and John are brilliantly odd too, it was the most natural thing to join forces. Plus it’s fun.”

On a final note about the suitability of their partnership with Pablo, Allison said: “I had a hamster called Pablo once. It escaped and chewed through the wiring. Took out the electricity for the entire building. It may have been small and hairy but it took on the world. Total madman.”