Bryan Sanderson, outgoing chairman of the Learning and Skills Council, always believed the quango was “more of a Unilever than a Shell” - in other words, it doesn’t need to be well-known to the person on the street.
So perhaps it is just as well he is leaving as the organisation hires a company called 35 to, er, make itself better-known.
The firm was picked from 12 invited bidders to improve the LSC’s branding, for an estimated pound;70,000.
Richard Finmore, one of 35‘s directors, also runs an accountancy firm called The Willow Agency, in London. Its website explains that Willow is “a number of variously qualified accountants who can turn their hands to any set of circumstances.”
Visitors to the site are treated to a photograph of two of its people walking down the street on a balmy sunny day. One, Katri Anderson, was born in Sweden, it explains, and passed her accountancy exams in 2002. And Danielle Wade is from Blackpool but decided “the South-east was a much better place to be.”
Not as good as Coventry, the LSC’s home, of course.
