Manchester agency leader Jenna Livesey is launching a new consultancy designed to help independent agencies and brands identify and overcome barriers to growth.
SUNNY will operate as an Agency & Brand Growth Partner, providing businesses with experienced senior support around particular challenges or opportunities without requiring them to make a permanent leadership appointment.
Livesey has spent 17 years working in agencies, beginning in account management before progressing into senior client services and leadership roles.
After starting her career at independent agencies in London, she returned to Manchester 10 years ago and spent almost a decade at BJL, which later became Dentsu Creative following its acquisition. She joined Zeal Creative as Client Services Director last year.
During her career, Livesey has led client services teams, major client relationships, pitches and growth strategy, working with global brands including Coca-Cola, Heinz and Ferrero as well as growing businesses.
She said: “A lot of my career has sat at the intersection of client relationships, marketing and commercial growth: getting underneath the bigger business problem behind the brief, helping teams become more commercially confident and finding opportunities to deepen and grow client partnerships. That experience is really what SUNNY has been built around.”
For independent agencies, the consultancy will examine areas including client and account performance, commercial decision-making, ways of working and leadership to identify where growth and profitability may be constrained.
Its work with brands will focus on the wider marketing and commercial challenges behind individual briefs, connecting shorter-term marketing activity with longer-term growth.
Livesey said the decision to launch SUNNY followed a desire to be more deliberate about the next stage of her career as agencies face a more challenging commercial environment.
She said: “After 17 years, I reached a point where I wanted to be really deliberate about the work I chose for the next chapter of my career.
“When I looked back, the work I’ve always been most drawn to wasn’t simply delivering campaigns. It was helping agencies grow, strengthening the client relationships they never want to lose, and getting underneath the bigger marketing and commercial problems businesses were trying to solve.
“At the same time, the agency landscape is changing. Growth is harder won, numbers are under greater scrutiny and genuinely experienced senior leadership is incredibly valuable, but that doesn’t always mean adding another permanent senior hire.”
She added: “I saw an opportunity for a different model: experienced senior support that comes into a business around a particular challenge or opportunity, gets under the skin of it quickly and works alongside the team to make change happen. You don’t have to be a permanent fixture in a business to make a lasting difference to it.”
Livesey is already in discussions with agencies and other businesses ahead of the formal launch, although no clients or projects have yet been publicly announced.
She will initially lead the founder-led consultancy herself, with the potential to introduce other senior specialists in response to particular client requirements.
“The ambition isn’t to build headcount for the sake of it, but I absolutely want to build a meaningful growth business,” she said.
“Over time, I can see SUNNY bringing in additional senior expertise around particular client challenges and opportunities, while keeping the model experienced, flexible and close to the client.
“I want to prove the proposition first, learn from the work and let the business grow in response to where clients find the most value, rather than starting with a predetermined agency structure.”
The consultancy’s name reflects Livesey’s belief in the commercial value of optimism and the idea that “optimism creates momentum”.
She said: “I’m naturally optimistic, but I’ve seen throughout my career that optimism can be commercially useful too. Optimism creates positive energy. That energy helps people see possibility, spot opportunity and actually do something about it. And ultimately, that’s what creates growth.”
A second strand, SUNNY Club, will create a women-only community for ambitious women across the North seeking professional and personal development outside traditional networking events.
Livesey will facilitate sessions featuring speakers and practitioners from across the North West. The programme will bring together personal development, mental fitness, physical movement and meaningful connection.
She said: “It’s deliberately designed to feel different from a conventional networking event: less about drinks and small talk, more about investing a couple of hours in yourself alongside an interesting group of women.”
A pilot event is planned for this autumn before SUNNY Club’s wider launch in January. It will initially run quarterly, with the pilot helping to shape its future development.
Livesey added: “The pilot will help us shape what comes next, but the ambition is to build a genuinely valuable community around growth, wellbeing and connection.”
