If Jason Chaney, Todd Mackie, Carlos Moreno and Denise Rossetto were to compete in a relay race, there’s a good chance they’d miss the starting pistol while under a Tai Chi trance.

“In our previous lives [at network ad agencies],” says Todd, a partner and one of the three CCOs at Broken Heart Love Affair, “strategists would work with clients for months until they figure out the strategy. Then they hand it over to the creative department. [At BHLA], we’re all together, all the time and we’re moving in the same way.”

While CSO Chaney and CCOs Mackie, Moreno and Rossetto ideate in unison, CBO Beverly Hammond is their conductor. The five ad execs – with a collective 116 years at 14 network agencies, where they led some of the most celebrated campaigns on the awards circuit from Cannes to CASSIES – founded the boutique agency to be a powerhouse stacked with senior talent.

The question is, how do five highly decorated agency heads, who are used to running the show, not get in each other’s way? “Well, Carlos says it best: ‘No matter how we come at it, we all have the same intentions,'” explains Rossetto, describing BHLA’s mission, which is to “bring the love of advertising back” to clients, consumers and the creative community. “And that leads to chemistry that you just can’t manufacture”.

The idea to open an agency with an inverted model, where experienced talent create advertising instead of just managing it, was initiated by Chaney when he became fed up with hearing about straining client/agency relationships and the disdain consumers have towards ads. The antidote, says Moreno, was to create a shop that focuses on building Masterbrand platforms that “stand the test of time” and “are able to deliver the emotional messages that human beings need.”