“If you can’t answer ‘what does diversity mean to you’, there is something wrong.”
- Meet the 25-year-old marketing CEO who’s multi-million agency sees diversity as more than a tick box exercise.
- London-based growth agency Monumental Marketing has grown by 900% in just over two years, headed up by LGBT activist, Jamie Love.
- Diversity is at the core of the business, from the people hired to the client Monumental engages with.
- Monumental’s goal is to make marketing and PR accessible to businesses of all sizes.
A 25-year-old marketing CEO has told how he has defied the stereotypes thrown at him by building his own award-winning, multi-million pound agency which genuinely empowers diversity.
Jamie Love is Scottish-Italian, brought up in the Middle East and openly gay. Growing up, he did editorial modelling and even from a young age was interested in how products were merchandised and shot in a certain way so that people would buy them.
He went on to study Psychology at University of Stirling out of obligation, but inside had a burning passion to start his own company. Even whilst studying he launched a creative hub that offered commercialisation of creative skills to businesses and after one year of university, Jamie dropped out.
“I thrived off hard work and grafting – academia just didn’t suit my personality at all.” He recalls. “I only chose psychology as my degree because I thought that was what I was interested in when I was wondering why to choose that background in a photoshoot. It wasn’t until I got my first marketing job out of university that the penny dropped and this was what I’d been obsessed with the whole time. The school I went to championed vocational jobs and professions, so marketing wasn’t even presented as an option to me.”
Jamie’s first job was a marketing internship for a pet store’s head office, where he grew one department from turning over £2,500 per month to £30,000. “I even did influencer marketing before it was a thing!” he said.
He then went onto another in house marketing role where he started to encounter marketing agencies. He said: “Agencies to me just seemed very smoke and mirrors when it came to results and strategy. They didn’t seem to focus on what was important to clients but rather focused on vanity metrics. I’d only been working in marketing for a few years but I already felt confident enough to start my own agency with a unique offering, focusing on hard core, bottom line results.
Jamie launched Monumental Marketing in 2017 when he was 22 years old. He invested all his savings and any money made from the agency went straight back in. Monumental prides itself on its holistic approach. Unlike other agencies that are very channel focused, Jamie has ensured his team are multi-channel trained and instead looks at the business objectives of clients and how they can best be achieved rather than a prescription for all.
But what is extremely important to Jamie is that Monumental Marketing truly empowers diversity.
He continued: “Within my experience, I’ve always been looked down for being too young, too gay, too feminine, the list goes on. I’ve had people say ‘we don’t feel you’d be authoritative enough to lead a team.’ I was tired of being put down because of the way I look. It sent me spiralling to think about other people who would be affected by this as well; POC, women, people who didn’t go to uni. I knew there must be a whole pool of talent out there that wasn’t being given the right opportunities.
“We now attract diverse talent when we post jobs. We actually put out a job post (pre-covid) that had 1,200 applicants within 48 hours and nearly all cited our championing diversity as their reason for applying.
“Even so, we still make sure the first question we ask applicants before they are hired is ‘what does diversity mean to you?’’ If they can’t answer that, there’s something wrong.”
Jamie’s passion for diversity extends to his work as well. Client side, he checks over diversity policies with a fine-tooth comb.
He said: “Lots of corporates now have shiny diversity policies but they aren’t always what they seem, so I just ask the question I ask my employees and see the response. I will happily turn down business if it does not fit with our beliefs. I like to call it operationalising our values – they aren’t just empty words; we truly are driven to help others like us and that is at every touch point of Monumental.”
Monumental now has 20 clients on board and has recently won the UK’s best Growth Marketing Agency award from The Business Excellence Awards.
Jamie’s mission is to carry on growing the agency so he can spread the message of diversity. He is very vocal in his views as well, as this recent open letter to press demonstrates where he calls them out for only covering LGBT stories during Pride month.
Monumental offers digital marketing and PR solutions for businesses of all sizes and budgets. It is completely industry agnostic and has experience in growing businesses operating in technology, FMCG, alcohol, LGBT, fashion, music and more.
Source: Monumental Marketing
