A year ago, Kiran and I (Lucy) were sitting at my kitchen table, surrounded by sheets of paper, trying to make a brand out of post-it notes. Never did we imagine that we’d be where we are now – it feels like we’ve fitted five years of work into one!

Back when I was a student, I knew I would love to run my own PR agency one day, but with all ambitions like this, I never really put a date on it. My career took off, and in 2019 things fell into place to start the conversations that would lead to Lucky North, and once we started talking about it, we couldn’t stop! From there, an ideas session became a market research session, which led to a branding session, which led to one thing after another until we snowballed into our first birthday. 

What a year it’s been. I mean, we know every business owner faces challenges, but nobody expects a pandemic! 

Major global catastrophe or not, 2020 has been a wild ride for us, one we’re thrilled to have been on. But even though the team might not have spent as much time in the same room as we’d imagined, what we’ve achieved in this short time has been incredible. We set ourselves ambitious targets, but we’re ticking them off confidently and moving on to the next big stage with every one.

What’s in a name?

It makes me laugh now to think back to our earliest days. Kiran and I were trying to come up with a name for our agency that reflected our personalities and the brand we wanted to be. I wish we’d kept the longlist now, but names like Pollen and Dollop will never be forgotten! 

Finally, certain that Lucky North was the way forward, we took a leap of faith. Both of us had just gone through redundancy. We had no savings, no build up to the perfect time, just a window of opportunity and the determination to explore what we could turn this into. It helped enormously that our first clients showed us so much loyalty and believed in us – we’ll never forget how blessed that made us feel to have people backing us from day one. 

Most people think of the business world as competitive, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hugely supportive too. The kindness of our friends in the agency world really built our confidence as we spent lunchtimes and coffees picking their brains and hearing their top tips for starting out.

One thing was certain. We knew from the offset we didn’t want to blend into the agency world, we wanted to lead it. At the start of the first lockdown we launched our insight and branding project. We wanted to know our own brand inside-out before putting it out in the world and we knew we’d spend a lot of time investing in this. How would we define ourselves? How would others define us? What kind of balance should we have?

We wanted our peers to lead on this, and we spent time talking to our clients and audiences to find out what our space in the market looked like. We were starting as a small team, but our ambitions were already so much bigger. Our unofficial motto became ‘room for a little one with big ambitions’, and it’s still strongly what we believe today. Once we’d found what was missing from the industry, we knew we were perfectly placed to fill the gap for dedicated PR, and take our clients on a fast-paced journey of growth. 

Fast forward a few brilliant campaigns and Lucky North found its first home at Munro House. Like all big moves, it was a memorable moment for us when we got the keys, and just like any new home, we’re so grateful that our neighbours at digital marketing agency, Engage have been incredibly welcoming and excited to have us share their space – and we’re all happy about the bar downstairs! Next up we’ll be getting the paintbrushes out to properly settle in.

And finally…

This, here, what you’re reading now is the icing on the cake. We put a lot of energy into launching our website and didn’t press ‘live’ until we were confident it was exactly right. Our website and social media aren’t just tools to look pretty (though don’t they!), they’re an invitation into our world. Everything we do is two way, we want to get to know everyone who comes across us, so drop by and say hello!

Are you following us on Instagram yet?