Consultancy Lloyd Northover returns after hiatus

Consultancy Lloyd Northover is relaunching as a standalone consultancy, two years after being merged with stablemate Holmes & Marchant.

Lloyd Northover was set up in 1975 by John Lloyd and Jim Northover. Specialising in corporate branding, the consultancy created identity programmes for the likes of BAA, John Lewis Partnership and the Financial Services Authority.

The consultancy became part of the Citigate Communications Group in 1993 and was subsequently owned by Incepta Group and Media Square, which became MSQ Partners in 2011 following an employee buyout.

Sister company Holmes & Marchant

In 2011 Lloyd Northover was brought together with fellow MSQ Partners consultancy and packaging specialist Holmes & Marchant, with the two sharing a management team and back-office facilities.

In September 2014 Lloyd Northover was dissolved and the consultancy became part of Holmes & Marchant.

Now the Lloyd Northover name is being relaunched as part of MSQ Partners and as a sister company to Holmes & Marchant.

“A top boutique corporate brand consultancy”

Lloyd Northover will be led by chief executive Simon Ward and creative director Jeremy Shaw, who both hold the same roles at Holmes & Marchant.

Ward says: “Lloyd Northover is, and always was, a top boutique corporate brand consultancy.

“I believe in specialisms. The respective specialist skills needed for global packaging design for FMCG clients (Holmes & Marchant) and brand consultancy for UK-based corporate clients (Lloyd Northover) are very different.”

Informa rebrand

Ward adds: “In the last three years we have been organised to make them work together at scale, so Lloyd Northover has been (the corporate) part of Holmes & Marchant, but recent experience has shown that clients value specialism even more than ever, so we are recognising this by re-organising ourselves from the ‘outside in’ with clients needs in mind.”

Ward says Lloyd Northover is working on corporate identity projects for a number of brands, including Abellio.

The Lloyd Northover team has also created a new identity and brand system for publisher Informa Business intelligence, which the consultancy says has enabled Informa to “focus on the strength of its vertical offerings” while retaining the equity of its individual brands, which include Lloyd’s List.