When two women, Lisa Clunie and Jaime Robinson, decided to establish an agency in 2016, they viewed it as an act of rebellion against traditional male-dominated agencies, which were often named after their founders.

Finding that rather conceited, they discussed the women who inspired them, and the name Joan kept cropping up. “We call them the muses,” shares Tom Ghiden, Joan London’s managing director. “Joan Rivers – one of the first females to have a late-night show. Joan Jett was told she couldn’t make rock ‘n’ roll music because it was not for women. The OG: Joan of Arc … the first female revolutionary.”

History’s most famous Joans and their drive to rebel against systems that exclude others inspires the way the agency works and the work it does. And this sense of rebellion has now been reinterpreted across the seas by Joan’s grittier sister agency in the UK, which Ghiden launched alongside Kirsty Hathaway as executive creative director in June 2023.