In the summer of 2000, Frazer Gibney, Drew Saunders and Tim Doust launched a new independently owned agency called inferno.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a journey, working with some fantastic clients and agency people along the way. When we started the agency, we had no clients and no prospect clients, although that changed very quickly! How things have evolved! The first ten months we were working in a flat in Wimbledon, which we knew we had out grown when Drew’s office had to be relocated to the toilet, infact his Mac was balanced between the sink and the loo! (some of his best work came from that loo!)

Our founding clients were Gunwharf Quays and Budweiser, Gunwharf Quays are still with us and we said goodbye to Bud only last year…. Not a bad innings. We moved from Wimbledon to the West End by December 2000, not just because we had run out of space but also because we couldn’t attract the best creative talent down there.

When we moved to Palladium House, opposite Libertys we were situated on just one half of the first floor with around 18 people, we sub-let the other half, but we continued to grow and win business. Prudential came on board and we were doing more and more for Budweiser and other clients like Telewest (now Virgin Media) also came on board.

Our growth continued in the following years, picking up Visa, Premier Inn, BBC, Sony Playstation and Nokia along the way. Consequently we moved onto the 5th floor and the other side of the 1st floor as well. Infact we have now outgrown that space too and I am very excited about moving this summer to a bigger premises in Soho this Summer. I am also very excited about our own brand refresh and the new web site, which is almost ready!

We are now about 65 people with a lovely blue chip account list and I think the things I am most proud of is that what we set out to achieve in 2000, was to be able to deliver right across the media and to retain our independence…..long may that continue. We have a fantastic group of people here and we will continue to have some fun on the journey.

Tim Doust
(The young looking fella on the far right in the top pic!)

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