September 2026
A note from Latte’s Marketing Manager:
This could be the longest piece of written Latte content we’ve ever published. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure if it was worth publishing or if anyone would read it, because we’ve already done the status-quo announcement comms. The emails to our network, the interview with our exited Founder, the official social posts and (my personal win) the PRWeek article. All very official and planned, ducks-in-a-row style comms.
This article is very much a duck-out-of-row.
But, bringing Latte back to its namesake, the best conversations happen over a coffee: proper, real, human, thoughts and stories – none of which are optimised for LinkedIn, restricted by word count, or streamlined with AI. So from that foundation, I have concluded that this less formal, rather ramble-y introduction to our new head honcho could not be more ‘on brand’.
So without further ado, I invite you to grab a latte (pun very much intended), take five, and get to know our new Managing Director, Simon Brown.
Starting with a thank you
Hello everyone, my name is Simon Brown, and I have the pleasure and honour of being the new owner of Latte, having recently acquired the business from Dean Connelly. You may have read about it in our recent posts.
For me, Dean and the business, it feels like it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks. We have worked on this transaction throughout the summer, and before we knew it, things are very real, and it’s time to start telling the people, businesses and partners who Dean and the team have partnered with for a long time that Latte has a new owner.
I have been equal parts excited and nervous about the announcement actually coming. I needed the announcement out, firstly because I was really excited and proud to share the news, secondly because until we told people, I could not actually get stuck in and help. At the same time, I am aware of how well Dean is known and respected in the UK PR space.
Now we are a couple of weeks in, and the comms roll-out is in full swing; I really need not have worried as much as I did. The response to the news has been fantastic, with every business and leader I have met so far being really supportive and very complimentary of Latte.
So, who am I and what is my background?
I’ve been in recruitment for the last twenty years, yet every time I ever write that down, or say those words, I can’t believe that is the case. I really don’t have any idea about where the time has gone.
In my time, I have recruited everything from senior roles at leading Premier League football clubs to supporting fast-growth startups, along with some of the best PR and creative agencies on the planet. And I can still remember, like yesterday, the day we received a call to say that we needed to hire ten dog walkers for Cheshire police!
Over the course of twenty years, I have loved working in recruitment; it’s a great industry, even if the majority of people seem determined to say they fell into it (I did not – I very much intended to end up here!).
How did I end up in creative recruitment?
I would say my interest and later fascination with the creative industries probably started about ten years ago. I was a Managing Director leading a business then, which saw me oversee my first in-house marketing function, and we partnered with agencies on certain projects. We also recruited into a range of marketing roles for other businesses. I always preferred the days I was able to work with the marketing team, ideally on an agency project and listen to the marketing roles we had.
Fast forward a few years and I was lucky to then lead a recruitment agency called Digital Gurus, which had a large agency team in place. That business and the teams within it were brilliant, working across and placing throughout the creative sector, from design agencies, digital, full-service agencies, to global ad businesses, and they did PR.
I could not believe the agency world when I looked inside it. The creativity, the buzz, the people, the ideas, the leaders; I was hooked.
I could not believe they had not told me about this industry at school, and when I did media at college, we somehow managed to skip the agency world altogether. This has long pissed me off, if I am honest, and is why I am so passionate about opening up the doors to creative, so that people from across the UK can realise the excitement that sits within the creative industries (an article for another day).
So, Digital Gurus was my dream job in many ways, leading my dream agency in London and across the UK. But like many dreams, it was not meant to be, and whilst I will always reflect on the decision to leave there, I did leave, and I opened my own agency for creative recruitment called Digital 51 (the number 51 means freedom, expression and personal choice FYI). We might not have specialised in PR (I was not brave enough to niche that much) but we made an impact, I would say, and I loved it.
The journey from Digital Gurus to Latte
At the end of 2022 I decided to sell. It was an offer which made sense. It was to a business I liked. For a leader I really respected. It had all the potential to be a great opportunity for all. I wasn’t sure, but I said yes.
Like dreams, however, opportunities do not always turn out how you think either, and I knew really early on that I had made a mistake. So I twisted; I came out of the deal part-way through the first 12 months post-acquisition, and I was back to square one in many ways.
I went on holiday, came back, and I opened another business as I was being asked more and more for advice and help from other recruitment business owners who wanted to scale, pivot their agencies, and in some cases sell. I also invested in some start-ups and generally worked on projects across recruitment that I enjoyed.
I really enjoyed that business (I still own it: Richard Knows Best is the name). It’s through that business that I met Dean, and without it we would not be here.
But as much as I enjoyed it, I was lonely, as it was more of an independent consultancy with partners, rather than a business I was growing. I realised at the end of 2025 I was missing what I loved to do. I was missing recruitment, and I was certainly missing creative recruitment.
I made the decision shortly into 2026 that by the 1st of June I would have either bought a recruitment agency or started a new one.
Better Latte than never
I made Dean the first offer to buy Latte in May of this year. I was determined to hit that 1st of June deadline!
To many people, completing the transaction to buy a business in less than 12 weeks might sound, or feel, quick. I get that. The truth is that I have been lucky enough to go through a handful of buying and selling transactions now, and I have a framework ready to do just that.
Oh, and Dean and I agreed on a post-acquisition transition period of 12 weeks, as we both wanted to ensure things landed smoothly, so I knew we had time on the other side.
So, why Latte?
I’ve said this a lot recently, but it’s the truth, so I will keep saying it. I have liked Latte from afar for a while now. Previously, when I led other businesses, including my own, we competed against Dean and the team, and we generally lost out. (They were niche: they have always been committed to PR; we were not.)
Combined with that, I would like to hope that anyone who reads this will start to feel the passion I have for the creative industry, and I really do find PR fascinating. It is so much easier to recruit for something if you are genuinely interested in it.
I also love that Latte are fiercely passionate about independent agencies. I love that they work with some amazing in-house brands. I love that they radically support causes like Clean Creatives and We Show the Salary. I am beyond excited to build on those partnerships in the next 12 months.
I could go on, but I will finish with how much their no BS in their approach resonates with me, and I love, love, love how much potential there is in the business.
So, what next?
The PR and Comms landscape (agency and in-house) has shifted and grown massively over recent years; not just across London, places like Manchester are fast-growing and exciting. Freelance is booming and I would love us to be a bigger player in that pool. Plus, there’s so many great UK agencies wanting to expand into the US and the opportunity to support even more senior and confidential hires across the industry.
Oh, and don’t even start me on the opportunity for taking the community that sits at the heart of Latte and supercharging that through meetups, podcasts, and roundtables. YES PLEASE.
The reality is, we are not resourced to support all of those exciting things right now, and we can’t unfortunately do it all at once. But, we do have a plan, and I plan on executing that plan in conjunction with the current team (who have been absolute stars and also deserve huge credit).
Combined with all of this, I want to find Latte, a permanent London home that puts us in the beating heart of the PR industry – and available for in-person coffee meets of course!
The jumping-off point:
So, I’ve shared my story, and I promise I will continue to update and share the exciting things we are doing with Latte over the coming weeks and months.
All of this is what I like to think of as my Latte jumping-off point. I am here now, and I have shared some details of who I am and my background. Now we can move on from that and start talking about what really matters, and that is you, your business, your agency, your team and your career!
Please, please drop me an e-mail if you would like to chat about anything I’ve written here, or about your next career move or hire. Also, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn; I look forward to sharing more behind-the-scenes thoughts, insights and conversations with you.
All the best,
Simon ☕