New Edinburgh creative agency Elvis Is Dead ‘flying in face’ of sector gloom

A creative agency has been set up in Edinburgh in a bid to address the industry’s “uncertain future”.

The founders of Elvis Is Dead said the move was “flying in the face” of a sector that is in the throes of a deep structural shift. Figures from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) point to a 14 per cent reduction in agency staff in the last year amid a range of factors including the impact of artificial intelligence (AI).

The new venture comprises three senior team members of the Edinburgh office of global creative agency Dentsu Creative. The agency has moved into offices on the capital’s Hill Street with two “significant” founding clients on board.

Neil Walker, Blair Grieve and Mark Gorman are the founding members of new Edinburgh-based creative agency Elvis Is Dead. Picture: David Boni

At Dentsu, the team was responsible for the strategy, management and creative work for Albert Bartlett, the Scottish potato producer. Elvis Is Dead will now be responsible for all aspects of Albert Bartlett’s communications including advertising, design and social media.

Supplementing this will be the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, for which the team created a core strategy and positioning film, featuring the voice of Brian Cox, in late 2025.

The three founding partners of Elvis Is Dead are Blair Greive, Neil Walker and Mark Gorman. All three are established faces and voices in the Scottish creative scene and are said to bring with them a wealth of experience across national and global clients such as Ronseal, AmEx and Nutella, as well as Scottish institutions including Tennent’s, Glenmorangie and Jenners.

Greive, the new agency’s managing partner, said: “We’re entering a period of significant change across the industry and, historically, it’s moments like these that give rise to the most exciting agencies.

“We see an opportunity to design a new kind of model: leaner, more collaborative, and powered by the combined force of human creativity and intelligent technology. We believe the next era of advertising will belong to independents who move faster, think braver, and build closer partnerships with the brands they serve.”

Walker, creative partner, said: “We don’t believe great marketing today needs massive spend or old-school advertising that, in some cases, is dead and buried. The industry has moved on and so have we.

“That’s why we left the corporate world to build a smaller, nimbler agency with brilliant thinking born from our experience and supported by a trusted circle of freelance specialists.”

Strategy partner Gorman added. “We want to attract forward-looking brand owners, because everything’s changing, and we believe that positive and open-minded clients get the work they deserve.”

Albert Bartlett’s brand and marketing director, John Hicks, said: “When Elvis Is Dead was in gestation it was an obvious decision to continue our highly successful relationship as a core founding partner of the business.

“We’re very excited about the opportunity to continue our work with the team, operating very much as an expansion of our own team,” he added.