Contagious was born on the back of a beer mat in a London pub in 2004. It was a time of ferment in the marketing industry. Mobile was beginning to get smart, social media was primed to explode and people’s relationships with brands were becoming a whole lot more interactive. New media and behaviours meant the audience had run ahead of the advertiser, so we figured that the communications industry needed a fresh guidance system to make sense of the immediate future.Hence Contagious. Founders Paul Kemp-Robertson and Gee Thomson wanted to create a platform to explore alternative advertising ideas, assess the impact of emerging technologies and champion a greater sense of purpose for brands. This feeling is encapsulated in our name. Contagiousness is in the stuff that people choose to care about and feel compelled to share. It’s a spirit and a mindset that reaches beyond siloed disciplines, fusing creativity and marketing, technology, design and behaviour.