As tipped by The Drum, former senior figures at Big Communications and Connect have now confirmed they will open a new agency, named Chapter, this month.

The start-up is being launched by Mike Rose, the former client services director at Leicester-based Big, and Ian Boulter and Martin Heffernan who were founding partners in Wolverhampton's Connect.

They say Chapter, based in a converted church in Wythnall, Birmingham, will be a full service agency but leaner than some of its rivals.

“This will be a very different story. A genuine alternative to big agencies that can be inefficient and smaller agencies that can lack weight and experience,” Heffernan said.

Boulter added: “The three of us all have strong views on the whole big agency structure and its downfalls and we’ve developed a model that’s right for the current climate – and, more importantly, for the way the industry should be going.”

Although the founders would not reveal too much about their plans at this stage, it is thought the agency could take a similar shape to Driven, the Cheshire agency which is led by four partners and keeps numbers light, swelling its ranks with freelancers for bigger projects.

It marks a return to the industry for Heffernan and Boulter, who left Connect after 14 years at the end of last year, while Rose quit Big last month.

Rose said: “The three of us worked together in the past and worked well as a team and last summer started talking about doing something together again. This isn't something whimsical that we've dreamt up over night; it's a long time in the planning.”