Adland's Entrepreneurs.

Agencies' staff don't just limit their skills to clients' brands - some have applied them to their own, Emma Barns writes.

Advertising is an industry full of natural entrepreneurs, so it comes as no surprise that the business is rife with inventors whose branding skills simply refuse to be confined to their clients' business.

After all, if you spend all day on clients' marketing, new product development and communications budgets, inhaling creative ideas and predicting consumer behaviour, you might spot a market gap you could fill with a brand of your own.

And once you've spotted your opportunity, your day job will probably enable you to design and execute your brand with the finesse and expertise that the everyday inventor-in-a-shed lacks.

Take Camilla McLean, an account manager at McCann Erickson, for example.

Her advertising experience was a key ingredient in the launch of her range of forfeit cookies, MissChief, available in Harvey Nichols and Selfridges.

Meanwhile, Brian Turner, a creative at Clemmow Hornby Inge, has put his creative bent to good use with the creation of, ahem, a home pole-dancing pole.

Rather more proven success stories are also aplenty, though. Peter Scott, one of the founders of WCRS, found his own brand opportunity in his backyard.

After discovering a spring on his Hampshire estate, he set up Test Valley Water in 1995 to distribute the mineral water he branded Ashe Park. …