The moments that made millions

GET BACK TO BASICS

Sam Conniff, executive producer, Livity 

The path from handing out chewing gum outside nightclubs to being one of the country’s most successful social enterprises was not a smooth one for marketing agency Livity or its co-founder Sam Conniff (below). Formerly the head of Don’t Panic, which targeted youth culture through nightclub handout packs, the entrepreneur attempted to move into the wider world of marketing.

“I wanted to do more with my life than sell gum,” says Conniff. “I could see the incredible power that marketing had on young people. Nike or PlayStation are far more important to kids than Gordon Brown or messages with meaning. So I thought: what if you combined the power of marketing with important messages? So, in 2001, I started Livity with Michelle Clothier.

“The business plan was ‘Is ethical marketing an oxymoron?’, but we took on too many projects that weren’t really what we were all about. In 2005, I had the worst day of my adult life, when we made every single full-time member of staff redundant. We were ready to give up. Perhaps you couldn’t have ethical marketing. Maybe nobody gave a sh*t.”

Conniff realised that an ethos shift, going back to basics and not compromising, was the only way of rescuing his ailing company. “I said, ‘If it’s not about a cause or a positive message, we’re not doing it,’” he says. “Within two months we won a major piece of work – a government-funded project called Rhyme4Respect.”

The company now has a turnover of £2m and employs 27 people and, in 2007, Conniff was asked by Ed Miliband MP to become one of 25 Social Enterprise Ambassadors. At any one time, you’ll find up to 50 young people in the office working on various youth-related projects. They get a foot in the door of the working world and the marketing company gets to interact on a daily basis with the very people they’re trying to reach. A happy ending, indeed.