About Charlie Hoult

Charlie squints for the Next Big Thing in brand, marketing, design and digital

Charlie Hoult is a successful serial entrepreneur. He is currently working as a non-exec director and advisor to a range of marketing, digital and media firms – advising on new business activity, fund raising, growth strategy, business planning and mergers.

In his last role, Charlie built marketing services group Loewy from 20 to 400 people in four years, exiting in May 2008. The group had annualised profits of £50m and profits of £5 million per annum. Charlie led a 2007 fundraising of £16 million in structured finance to continue growth through merger and acquisition. This growth path makes Loewy ready to take on some of the majors in marketing, like M&C Saatchi or Engine Group.

At 41, Charlie has made his mark in several areas of media, marketing and publishing: he was a dotcom entrepreneur (profiled by the FT magazine at the time), wrote a book on green issues in 1992, did a stint as the Evening Standard diary column writer and was even a big nightclub promoter at college. His event was, with some pride, named Time Out’s Worst Named Nightclub of 1992!

Charlie featured on BBC2’s Jeremy Vine show and in the Evening Standard in defense of the 2012 Olympic Logo and was recently profiled in PR Week as “the next Martin Sorrell” and in Design Week’s 2008 Hot 50. He is a regular speaker at conferences on entrepreneurship.

He made his mark building Incisive Research, then a newsletter publishing business, which he sold to the firm subsequently floated as Incisive Media plc. He built up a profitable serviced office and incubator business, Metrocube, through 1999 to 2002 with investors Luke Johnson and Joel Cadbury. Simultaneously, he spent ten years expanding Wilson Harvey, corporate design specialists, which he brought into Loewy in 2004.

Loewy is building a new collaborative agency model, bringing together a diverse team of marketing communications specialists into one stable. Loewy specialists cover market research, brand design, PR and internal communications. With growth, Loewy has developed an eye for the quality of merger partners with hot shops joining, like Williams Murray Hamm, The Team, Seymour Powell, Mantra, Branded, Rainier…

Loewy traces its heritage back to iconic design work for Lucky Strike, Greyhound Buses, SkyLab, Concorde, Coca Cola and many more. A hot challenger agency, Loewy is ranked UK No. 2 independent agency in Design Week’s current rankings – but No. 1 for creativity and effectiveness, with three Presidents of the Design and Art Directors Association (D&AD) on the team.

The Hoult family has been involved in entrepreneurial activities in the North-East of England for several generations. Charlie’s great-grandfather founded a transport business in Byker which operated the first weekly truck deliveries from Newcastle to London and became a Top Ten UK furniture remover. His grandfather acquired and ran the famous and collectible Malings Pottery and his father has transformed the furniture depot Hoults Yard into Newcastle’s new media hotspot. Most recently, father-and-son have worked on a new facility at Hoults Yard – The Kiln office space.

Charlie is past Chairman of the Next Generation committee at the Institute of Family Business, attached to London Business School. He studied at Manchester and Cardiff Universities and still cycles to work.

What separates Charlie from the “usual” entrepreneur-CEO-type is his relaxed, empowering leadership style – which works well alongside a “federation of entrepreneurs.” Charlie’s passion for people, acute business sense and inherent entrepreneurial flair combine to make him incredibly successful in a professional capacity.

The above biog is an update from the submission to the CBI’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, for which Charlie was a finalist. See here.

Press coverage

Design Week profile

Letter to the FT

Charlie on video on the Loewy collaborative model

Charlie on video on the importance of networking