lemontank
London
Website: lemontank
Type of agency: Creative
Founder: Jacob Rickard
Year founded: 2023
Headcount: 11
Office: London
We're good at something very specific and detailed that no one else is doing.
Profile
lemontank has been making great waves in its fledgling years, due to founder Jacob Rickard’s savvy focus on one highly sought-after audience: Gen Z.
Having worked at BBC Radio 1 for some years, Jacob had been a part of many conversations about Gen Z, but reaching them was a different matter. Simultaneously bothered by the lack of job opportunities for young people, he wondered if he could find a way to do it better.
With no agency experience, Jacob set up lemontank in 2023 – a creative “writers’ room” for young people. Since then, the agency has grown from being a bootstrapped bedroom business to a team of 11 with over 190 18-25-year-old freelancers. It turned over £250k in 2025 and is on track to double that this year.
By and for Gen Z, lemontank provides Gen Z insights to a growing portfolio of brands including Diageo, the National Trust and Wingstop. Artist marketing is its bread and butter, though, and lemontank has worked with world-famous artists including The Beatles, Eminem and Madonna. It worked on a major public-facing whitepaper exploring Gen Z listening habits for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) last year.
In 2026 it is no wonder everyone wants a slice of the lemon pie; lemontank is increasingly being contracted by bigger agencies to be their Gen Z and insights arm.
But it is not just helping brands to connect with youth culture. Jacob is driven by a mission to make a difference to young people’s lives and give them opportunities to gain experience – especially to those from different backgrounds who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to the creative industry.
Over the next 12 months, lemontank hopes to bolster its commercial portfolio and expand its international panel of Gen Z-ers. There are no ambitions to be a full service agency, only to focus on where it has found a gap.
"Because our work is insights and ideas, we're often a smaller part of a bigger process,” says Jacob. “I’m very comfortable being in that realm if we can do what we do really well.”
Jacob and co are certainly in a good position to be making lemonade this year.