Louis Georgiou (pic, right), co-founder of Manchester-based Code Computerlove, and Kenny Skelton (left), former-VP of AI Enablement, WPP, have left their global roles to launch a new Manchester-based AI consultancy and product studio: Humans and Algorithms.
Skelton told Prolific North: “We aren’t launching ‘just another AI consultancy.’ We are launching a response to the ‘AI fatigue’ businesses are feeling right now. And doing it in our own special northern way.”
Over the last two years at WPP/Choreograph, Skelton explained that the team trained 40,000 employees across 60 markets, and built two major enterprise AI platforms from scratch. What he saw firsthand was that, while businesses are buying the tech, “they aren’t seeing the adoption.”
Most consultancies, he explained, treat AI as an IT project, whereas at Humans and algorithms “we treat it as a human one.”
He continued: “Our ‘secret sauce’ sits at the intersection of Business, People, and Technology. We know that you can deploy the smartest algorithms in the world, but if your people fear the ‘blank page’ or don’t trust the tools, the ROI is zero.”
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Georgious and Skelton now promise to help Northern and wider UK businesses:
- Unblock their pilots: Moving from “cool demos” to scalable systems.
- Build the culture: Using the training methods we proved at global scale to get teams loving, not fearing, AI.
- Deploy the platform: We are launching Hollee, our own enterprise orchestration platform designed for real work, not just chat.
The pair added: “The technology is ready. The people aren’t. AI adoption isn’t failing because of the models. It’s failing because of the humans. If you don’t meet people where they are, AI becomes something that happens to them, not with them. Get it right, and the technology suddenly starts working. Get it wrong, and no platform in the world will save you.”
For Georgiou, the new venture represents a return to his indie roots. Code Computerlove, which he cofounded in 1999 and saw it become one of Manchester’s best-known digital agencies, rebranded to EM Code in 2024 following a seven-year integration with EssenceMediacom North, a division of global advertising giant WPP, which itself operates a major campus in Manchester, which Skelton now believes is “the perfect place to lead the ‘Human side’ of the AI revolution.”
Georgiou stepped back from much of the day-to-day running of his agency earlier this decade to take a wider role at the parent company, and for most of the last year served as VP Engineering of Agentic Intelligence at WPP’s data and technology company, Choreograph.
