Ex-Waggener execs start agency

New communications consultancy A House Called Alice which was started by Waggener Edstrom executives Nick Meir and Simon Cliffe has bagged duties with charity foundation Dame Kelly Holmes Trust to advise on strategic communications. The agency will be tasked to raise awareness of the trust and its work across the UK.A House Called Alice is an integrated communications consultancy working with brands delivering projects across the UK, Europe and the US. Meir and Cliffe both come from strong media backgrounds. Meir has worked on many flagship BBC programmes across TV and radio as a producer and editor, whilst Cliffe served as group head of news at GCap Media, latterly Global Radio, where he was responsible for the news output across much of the UK’s commercial radio network.Cliffe said: “A House Called Alice is about cutting to the chase. In three steps we make brands feel human then link and engage them with their audiences. The communications industry is far too noisy and too confusing right now – it’s full of clichés, acronyms, complicated diagrams and loud opinions. It should be simpler. It should be about making stories that people actually care about.”Meir added,“ We feel there’s so much opportunity to help make the charity as famous and as iconic as its founder; and the best thing is, we’ll be doing it by combining good old fashioned story telling techniques with an award winning content creation team, and, innovative new digital distribution tools we’ve developed too.”DKHT’s Head of Fundraising and Marketing Hannah Sheedy added: “The coverage[so far] was phenomenal. We saw a 600% increase in our website traffic and a spike in donations.  Meir and Cliffe crafted a great story, created some amazing content and got us absolutely everywhere.”