When Alistair Sim stepped down as managing director of Love in November last year, following a criminal conviction, his departure shocked the industry.

After his surprise exit, talk soon turned to who would replace the man who has been the face of Love during its eight years in business.

Love moved swiftly, and within a week of Sim’s resignation client services director Richard Hall and the agency’s digital head, Chris Conlan, were promoted to share the vacant position. When The Drum meets the joint managing directors in the glass boardroom at the agency’s Manchester office, they seem at ease and at home with the trappings of their new roles.

“I’m really enjoying it so far,” assures Conlan, 34, after little over a month in his half of the hotseat. “There’s a change of mindset where all of a sudden you realise that everyone’s problems are your problems – whatever they might be. You learn to come to work expecting some sort of curveball thrown at you, but never knowing exactly what it might be,” he adds.

While both Conlan and Hall are new to many of the day-to-day tasks expected of a managing director, both men insist they have already had experience of handling crucial relationships with clients in their previous roles – experience they will need to draw on now, given that keeping clients on board will be a duty for which they will be deemed accountable. What they didn’t foresee were the kind of daily frivolities that pepper an MD’s schedule.

“Apart from the stuff related to clients, we’re now thinking about the cleaners, whether the lift is working and how we get rid of the Christmas tree,” says Hall, 35, with a chuckle. “It’s a juggling act,” he explains, “between the stuff you didn’t expect to be thinking about that suddenly starts taking up all your time and dealing with the really, really important business with clients.”

Stumbled
By contrast to Sim, one of Love’s founders and according to many observers, the talisman behind its rise to become one of the best known agencies outside London, Hall and Conlan are relatively recent additions to the agency - but each can bost their own impressive CV. They found Love – or Love found them - after they had each traversed wildly different career paths.

Hall, originally from Chester, joined Love in May last year. He stumbled into advertising and might never have found his way into the industry if his first ambition, to be a musician, had paid the bills: “I lived in Manchester in the late nineties – a failed popstar,” he laughs. “I was in a couple of bands, none of which had particular success. We’d have monthly residencies and the odd meeting with Tony Wilson, and realise it wasn’t coming to anything.”

With the nineties coming to a close and realising his pop dream was fading, Hall enrolled on an advertising post-graduate course in Watford. He then built his career with London agencies – Medicus, Mustoes, RKCR/Y&R and St Luke’s – before returning to the north to head up accounts including Sony Playstation and the BBC at Love. “When I first lived in Manchester I worked in a music shop on six grand a year and Manchester felt very different to now being back here as the managing director of a design company,” he smiles.

Stockport-born Conlan has never done “the London thing” – and though he admits he has been tempted, the “quality of life outside of work” has kept him rooted in Manchester. His first marketing role was in production and art buying at CBJWT, before moving to McCann Erickson to join its account management team and eventually transferring to McCann-i, the agency’s online offering. Digital has become Conlan’s trademark ever since. After spells with magneticNorth and freelancing – as well as roles on the British Interactive Media Association’s executive committee and a BBC steering forum ahead of the corporation’s move north – Conlan joined Love 18 months ago to launch its digital proposition.

Now, Love’s plan is to combine the offline expertise that saw Hall earn a secondment to the BBC’s Future, Media and Technology division as head of marketing last year, and the drive which has led to Conlan’s digital operation being accountable for 50% of Love’s revenue. They are already used to working together – both were part of the agency’s managing board before their promotions – and they share a “cultural understanding” according to Conlan after working closely in their previous roles to knot offline and online together as an integrated package.

Despite the logic behind combining their disparate skill sets, having two managing directors is a significant departure from one figurehead taking the lead. But neither man plans on quietly slipping into the background. “In terms of our public face, then it’s something we’ll definitely do as a collaborative thing,” Hall explains. Some everyday tasks, however, have been divvied up and they will split responsibility for who takes on pitches and projects depending on their nature.

Conlan says we will see “small changes” during their tenure, “but there will be no wholesale restructuring of the board or anything like that”. It was a “unanimous decision” he adds, “not to parachute in some MD from the outside who didn’t have an appreciation of the culture of Love already, because that could have backfired”.

Among the managing directors’ first priorities is to press ahead with two new ventures, Toy and Make – both first mooted under Sim’s management in an interview with The Drum last year. Conlan says Toy is “an opportunity for young illustrators and artists to be put in touch with the key people that are buying illustrations and art – newspapers, other ad agencies or publishers.”

Ideas
Headed by Love’s young designer Chris Gray, and overseen by Conlan, funds generated from Toy will be put back into the business to help participating illustrators stage exhibitions. Make is an internal project spearheaded by chairman, Phil Skegg, which will see Love’s staff coming up with ideas not for clients, but for themselves. While servicing clients remains a priority, Hall suggests some of these ideas could, eventually, end up being the answer to a client’s needs anyway.

While talking about the agency’s developments and plans, the pair’s zest for their new post is palpable. But behind that surface enthusiasm, does there lie anxiety about the task ahead – given the tumultuous economic blizzard they’ve walked straight into?

“It’s something we’re acutely aware of and we’re planning our business to make the most of the coming year,” Conlan stresses. “We’ve got quite a few new client wins and things are looking very good for us at the moment. But in the back of our minds is the economic climate and we’re planning our business to focus on those clients that are perhaps a bit more recession-proof.”

Hall sees growth ahead for the agency, but with 38 staff, it is close to capacity. “It’s important to have everyone on the same floor,” he insists, “and to know more than just a person’s name.”

Manifesto in place, it’s time to get back to the day job, with Hall preparing a pitch and Conlan getting set for a client meeting in London before a weekend mountain climb: “We’re all doing it in the summer,” he deadpans, surveying the office, “it will be a team building exercise.”

They may not want to readily recall how things ended in 2008, but buoyed by the enthusiasm of their new bosses, Love’s team has good reason to look to the future.