Never sit still: Agent’s Paul Corcoran on AI, the four-day week and surviving 20 years in business

North West marketing business was one of the first to move into emerging Baltic Triangle regeneration zone

“It’s unbelievable how much you can fit in in 20 years” – that might be an understatement from Agent Marketing boss Paul Corcoran as he looks back on the 20th anniversary of a firm that survived Covid and the credit crunch while striving to grow the North West ’s marketing sector.

Paul is one of the best-known names in marketing in the North, thanks to his work at Agent, its training academy and beyond. His work at Agent has seen the business lead the move to Liverpool’s famous Baltic Triangle regeneration zone and promote socially responsible business, while it has also weathered the big storms that have battered the British economy.

As he marks Agent’s 20th anniversary this month, Paul talked to BusinessLive about everything from AI and flexible working to the strength of the creative and digital sector in the North West as a whole.

Paul and his then business partners started Agent in 2006 after spotting a gap in the Liverpool market for an integrated marketing agency bringing together disciplines from PR to marketing and design.

He recalled: “When I look back at it now, back to the very beginning, at the tenacity that went into getting something going… wow. And (there was) loads of naivety, definitely. But I am glad that I did it.”

At Agent, Paul and the team aimed to create a business where “clients weren’t having to go to lots of different people – they could come and you were able to deliver it all.” That, he said, is much more common now but was rare two decades ago.

Credit crunch and never sitting still

Just two years into Agent’s existence, the business had to weather the credit crunch and resulting economic downturn. The Agent team got through it, Paul said, by “digging deep and working hard”.

He added: “No one was going to turn up and say to me ‘oh here’s all your work’. You had to go out, you had to meet people, you had to be at events. I was going to things and being eager and learning, learning, learning – never, ever, ever sitting still.

“And then, like everybody else, we were taking a punt on what were the best types of businesses to be around, and what were the ones that were going to weather that storm.”

‘It felt exciting’: Betting on Baltic Triangle regeneration

Paul bought out his original business partners in 2011 and the business continued its growth. And after a few moves around Liverpool, in 2012 the business moved to the emerging creative quarter around the Baltic Triangle, as the first tenant in the Baltic Creative warehouse on the corner of Jamaica and Jordan Streets.

Why did Paul consider the Baltic so early? “Because I’m really nosy,” he laughed.

That meant he saw the area’s early potential as Jayne Casey, Mark Lawler and other Baltic pioneers began developing buildings in the area through the Baltic Creative CIC.

He said: “I’d been to see a client and I’ve been down in the Baltic – and remember the Baltic was almost redundant, it was going to be a red light zone! Then I saw what Jayne and Mark and others were doing down there, restoring these old warehouses.”

Paul told Baltic Creative he wanted to move in, and that he had ambitious plans for the space. He remembered: “They asked, ‘Why would you need pretty much 4,000 sq ft for 10 people?, and I said ‘We’re going to fill it’. And we absolutely have.”

At first, with the Baltic still being a half-empty industrial zone, Agent was somewhat on its own.

“When we went down there,” Paul recalled, “Our clients would say. We’re not coming down there. We’re not leaving our cars down there’.

“But it felt exciting. The team really enjoyed it. We had a big massive space, as much car parking as you could possibly want.”

Later that year Baltic Creative opened officially, complete with flagship coffee shop and wooden shed offices for its tenants, and the area’s rebirth stepped up a gear.

The Covid ‘storm’

Meanwhile Agent was growing its work across the North West and beyond, and five years ago opened a Manchester base at Bruntwood’s Portland Street office building. That came at a time when Agent was dealing with the effects of the Covid pandemic.

“I made the decision at the very beginning that you plan for rainy days in business,” he said. “And that was a storm. But I always believe that you have a moral obligation to look after your team. Even when you feel uncertain you have to make everyone feel as safe and secure as they possibly can. And what I didn’t want to do was say ‘let’s put everyone on furlough’.

“For us it was hard because we were so used to being a face-to-face agency, where we would always have clients in big working sessions with noise and collaboration, to then being completely separated.

“But we weathered that storm and when it was safe to do so, we all came back to the studio. And then that’s when we opened the Manchester studio.”

‘You almost become used to the shocks’

There’s another set of storms right now, with businesses still facing high costs across the board while the war in Iran is causing more economic uncertainty. But Paul hopes his and Agent’s experiences in previous tough times will help see them through this time too.

He said: “It would be ridiculous to say ‘We found a sector that isn’t affected by this’, but we are in clean growth, we’re in net zero, logistics, tech for good, general ‘good business’.

“When you’ve been doing it for this amount of time, you almost become used to the shocks. So when they do come, you’re winded for a short period of time, and then you go, ‘well, what lessons did we learn last time? Okay, well, we’ll apply them in a different guise’.”

Lessons from AI and the four-day week

All firms in the digital and creative sector are now wrestling with using AI. Paul is confident that creative workers don’t have to panic about technology just yet.

“AI will be fantastic for troubleshooting and making sure that things are accessible and tested and everything else,” he said.

“But will it ever be the person in the room that will connect you to your next big client? No. Is it going to be the person that’s going to showcase amazing ingenuity when it comes to a marketing strategy or a piece of creative or anything else? No, it’s not.

“So that’s a challenge but also an opportunity.”

For the last three years, Agent has offered its staff a four-day week. “That works really well,” said Paul. “Our retention is amazing… when we recruit, people really value it.”

Agent Academy: Helping young people into the sector

For the last 12 years, Agent has also tried to help the talent of the future get started in the industry, through its sister social enterprise Agent Academy CIC. That academy is focused on helping young people into the creative sector, especially people from diverse and under-represented backgrounds.

Paul said: “We are going to help young people get into the digital and creative sector and to get long-term, permanent jobs. Not going on a course, not anything other than getting them into good jobs.

“There are people who are now marketing directors and communications directors who were on zero hour contracts, working in Tesco or Sainsbury’s, or working behind a bar and thinking. ‘How am I going to get out of this? Because I know I can do something else.’”

North West creative sector on the rise

Beyond Agent, Paul spent four years as deputy chairman of Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse theatres, and chaired the School for Social Entrepreneurs North West. Paul also served as the co-chair of the Creative and Digital Board at the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership from 2017 to 2023, helping “bang the drum” for the sector.

“I love to see the collaboration across the city region and the North West,” he said. “It’s great to see because we need an ecosystem here.”

And he added: “Liverpool’s creative sector is much more commercial than it’s ever been. It is much more confident as a city region.”

Asked what’s next, Paul joked “a rest”. But that’s not likely, particularly with Agent’s latest Good Growth summit coming up in Manchester in July. Agent itself became a B Corp last year, and Paul says the conference will focus on “being good citizens as well as a good business”.

He said: “There is an amazing lineup of people who are travelling from all over the country – senior CEOs, CMOs, investors – all coming to the North West to celebrate what we do best, which is good business that benefits people and place, and hopefully leaves the planet a little bit better than how we found it.”