Are you sitting comfortably?
It was January 1998. Sonny Bono, the other half of Sonny and Cher had just died in a skiing accident. Cher didn’t seem that bothered. Neither were the three friends who sat on a cold bench in a Soho pub.
They were too busy wondering if the agencies they were working for were moving with the times. They were asking themselves if, together, they could
do better. In over an hour they’d hardly touched their pints. Unusual.
They decided they could do better. That it was time to jettison the old agency model and the jaded off-the-shelf thinking that goes with it. To bring together brand, direct and digital under one roof.
In perhaps the most creative moment of their lives – and one that helped change the marketing industry for good – the three friends agreed what this radical new agency should be called. They, um, put their surnames together: archibald ingall stretton.
Oh well. You can’t always get it right.