Nitro opens in UK with Unilever brief.(buildings and facilities)

Chris Clarke, the man whose Nitro agency recently snatched the US Twix brief from under the nose of Grey, is teaming up with Paul Shearer to launch in Europe.

The start-up will launch with a pan-European Unilever ice-cream brief that poses a threat to McCann Erickson, Unilever's principle incumbent on its ice-cream brands.

Clarke has persuaded Shearer, the former Leo Burnett and Wieden & Kennedy executive creative director, to be a partner in the new agency, as well as its chairman and creative director.

The agency will position itself as a creative and strategic hotshop that operates with as few middlemen as possible. Shearer will set up with a staff of eight, including a senior planner, two junior account executives, an office manager and production staff. He has already secured offices in Clerkenwell, central London, which will open its doors for business next week.

Nitro will only target large international clients which need quick turnaround creative work for their brands. Creatives and planners from the agency will base themselves within clients' offices to improve their understanding of the advertiser's problems and to speed up the turnaround of work.

Shearer told Campaign: 'If agencies of 300 people are not able to meet clients' needs they are going to have to change.'

The agency has already ...