The Guild has a new Friend in Ian Storey, whose involvement with farming began as a teenager, helping bring in the harvest on a local farm, de-horning calves and attempting to plough during school holidays.
“These days, I’m MD of the agency I founded in 2002,” says Ian. “Hive brings together the diverse skills needed for fully integrated business-to-business campaigns.”
Before creating Hive, Ian was a director of Primary Contact, the Ogilvy Group’s specialist B2B agency in London, looking after international brands such as BP, Boeing, Bayer and Racal.
But Hive’s biggest market sector is agriculture, with clients such as Bayer CropScience in the UK and Europe, Genus ABS, and Intervet before the business was taken over. The agency also works in other B2B sectors, such as IT, finance and aerospace, and Ian believes that experience in these fields can bring new ideas to help stir up the status quo.
“Hive is a media-neutral B2B marketing communications agency,” he explains. “Research among blue-chip client MDs and marketing management told us they wanted an antidote to large, single-discipline London agencies and their overheads.
“At Hive, every client has a team of specialists built according to their needs,” Ian adds. “We work with market leaders and challenger brands; in some cases we’re introduced as their marketing team.”
In his spare time, Ian paints (with scope to improve, he says), enjoys long walks with friends and tries to keep his TVR running. He has chaired a C of E school’s Governors, gained the RYA’s Yachtmaster ticket, and achieved an ‘almost-black’ brown belt in Shotokan Karate.
But he’s still on the look out for further challenges and achievements: “I was lucky enough to be invited to the Guild’s terrific Harvest Service and Lunch, where I met lots of great people,” Ian says. “I’m hoping some of them might teach me a bit more about growing my own veg.”
