Meanwhile
Manchester
Website: Meanwhile
Founder: Alastair Marchant, Tim Jones & James Cross
Year founded: 2022
UK headcount: <50
Offices: Manchester
We want to hold on to that startup vibe and buzz as we move into the next phase.
Profile
Meanwhile’s journey began two-and-a-half years ago with a mantra to find a better way to do better work (and with a launch party that has since seen hype man Bez from the Happy Mondays become a bit of an agency mascot). This year has marked a significant turning point for this fledgling creative agency though, which is just moving out of its startup phase and beginning to scale.
Headquartered in Manchester, Meanwhile was set up by former agency execs Alastair Marchant, Tim Jones and James Cross, who wanted to create an independent agency that had the freedom to focus on client work, creativity and unconventional thinking – without being controlled by financial targets.
Fundamentally, they wanted to get back to enjoying it again.
There are currently 17 employees working across brands including Tombola, Travel Supermarket and Coventry Building Society, specialising in strategy, creative ideas and production (no paid media or pay-per-click). Alongside the conventional categories like brand, content and digital, Meanwhile does something it calls ‘ethereal’. This refers to creating fame for brands through stunts and unexpected activations, for example wrapping a tram and Coronation Street illustrations and creating an inflatable billboard for Travel Supermarket.
The work is underpinned by a unique a model structured around ‘circles’, whereby there are fewer account handlers and more senior creative people working directly with clients. These non-hierarchical 'circles’ consist of four people – an account director, art director, copywriter and designer – and work on dedicated projects to give brands consistency.
There are two circles today, with the agency targeting four or five in the next year or two, which would double its headcount. In the spirit of maintaining that independent start-up mentality, Meanwhile does not want to become an enormous agency and is not measuring success by revenue and headcount. It has worked with some clients in Europe and work sometimes extends into the US, but it is happy maintaining its focus in the UK for now, which is yielding “lots of great work and opportunities.”
“Our growth ambitions will be measured more against the type of briefs we’re getting to work on, which we want to be the best briefs there are for agencies to work on in the world,” says Alastair. “We will be the size of agency that we need to be to unlock those briefs, and if we do it in a really good way the money will follow.”