Nielsen billings 2017: £61m (-3%)
Declared income: £5.5m
Total accounts at year end: 14
Accounts won: 7 (biggest: Genius)
Accounts lost: 8 (biggest: On the Beach)
Number of staff: 50 (-9%)
Key personnel: Neil Henderson, chief executive; Al Young, chief creative officer; Julian Vizard, creative partner; Dan Hulse, chief strategy officer; Richard Denney, executive creative director
Star player: Ed Palmer, managing director
It has been a solid enough year for St Luke’s, which continues to be a healthy independent on the scene. Declared income inched down from £5.6m to £5.5m, while staff numbers also slipped by five to 50.
The agency won seven clients, but parted company with eight. To be fair, the losses were mostly small, one-off projects that came to a natural end, rather than retained relationships. The biggest loss was travel company On the Beach, with billings of £1m.
Wins in 2017 included gluten-free food brand Genius, plus Heineken’s Birra Moretti and Maltsmith. The latter account was handed to the agency by the brewer after it had impressed on the Birra Moretti pitch.
St Luke’s also diversified its client base, snaring tech start-ups Gett Together and cryptocurrency DasCoin. For the former, St Luke’s has been briefed to help the taxi-hailing app build a visible brand in the UK and explain its unique fixed-route proposition, while for DasCoin it handled the global branding and launch.
Standout work included a TV ad in what may turn out to be a farewell for Aunt Bessie’s Mabel and Margaret, who stormed off in protest at the idea of Veg Chips, and a film, starring Bill Nighy, for the Jo Cox Foundation, encouraging people to tackle everyday loneliness.
The agency will no doubt be looking to new executive creative director Richard Denney, who joined from MullenLowe in July, to boost its creative firepower further. Of the 14 accounts St Luke’s holds, 11 are project-based, so one ambition for 2018 must surely be to add to its retained clients.
SCORE THIS YEAR |
SCORE LAST YEAR |
SELF RATING |
| 6 | 6 | 6 |
Agency's year in a tweet
Client list from heaven #allkillernofiller
Score key: 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival in question
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