{"id":403,"date":"2011-04-20T04:42:37","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T04:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startups.co.uk\/?p=403"},"modified":"2021-05-18T17:18:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T16:18:50","slug":"sam-conniff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/startups.co.uk\/young-guns\/sam-conniff\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Conniff: Livity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Conniff, <\/strong>32
Company<\/strong>: Livity
Web:<\/strong> www.livity.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

“It’s basically a marketing agency with a youth club in the middle,” says Sam Conniff, describing the controlled chaos that is the Livity workplace. The agency works with 12 to 21-year-olds to produce campaigns and content for clients including Google, the BBC and the Cabinet Office.<\/p>\n

Conniff and co-founder Michelle Clothier started Livity in 2004 and after a few years struggling against a “do-gooder” tag are now seeing their social aims also pay off in a commercial sense, with turnover up to £3m. A quarter of Livity’s profits go into bursaries for young people, but Conniff is justifiably most proud that his business gets around 100 young people into education or employment each year.<\/p>\n

2014 update:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s 13 years since Conniff and Clothier set Livity up and the company, which turned over £4.1m in 2013, is rightly proud to remain employed by the first two clients it secured in 2001.<\/p>\n

With its socially innovative campaigns, communications, content and communities for 12-24 year-olds delivering for clients such as Google (for which it is a partner agency for internet safety among young people), Barclays, Tesco and Childline, it’s no surprise the business has received support from successive UK prime ministers.<\/p>\n

It is also the lead creative on youth communications for Public Health England, which helped to secure a £7m investment for a project – somewhereto – that matches young people with spaces across the UK.<\/p>\n

Conniff – who is mentored by Pret a Manger co-founder Sinclair Beecham and ex-Fifteen restaurant CEO Liam Black – was named in the top 5 of the Observer’s<\/i> 50 New Radicals and won the Ernst & Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2011. He now sits on the board of the NESTA and Cabinet Office’s £15m Social Action and Innovation investment fund and mentors dozens of young entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

In addition, the company was recognised with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2013, alongside David Cameron’s personal nomination of Livity for a Big Society Award. Now a media regular, Conniff has spoken at the hugely popular TEDx conference and arguably most importantly was named the UK’s best dressed social entrepreneur by The Guardian<\/i>. <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Conniff, 32 Company: Livity Web: www.livity.co.uk “It’s basically a marketing agency with a youth club in the middle,” says Sam Conniff, describing the controlled chaos that is the Livity workplace. The agency works with 12 to 21-year-olds to produce campaigns and content for clients including Google, the BBC and the Cabinet Office. Conniff and co-founder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91469,"featured_media":404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-of-2010"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSam Conniff: Livity - Startups.co.uk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/startups.co.uk\/young-guns\/sam-conniff\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sam Conniff: Livity - Startups.co.uk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sam Conniff, 32 Company: Livity Web: www.livity.co.uk “It’s basically a marketing agency with a youth club in the middle,” says Sam Conniff, describing the controlled chaos that is the Livity workplace. 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