Campaign: Lucie Simpson, Always A Dark Horse
I’ve come across many wonderful people in my 30 years in the advertising industry, but few who have affected me as deeply as Lucie Simpson. She was just one of those extraordinary people who you felt privileged to have circled within the same orbit. Relentlessly positive, raucously funny, and resilient beyond imagination. She was the very definition of the Chinese proverb: “Those who burn brightest burn half as long.” In Lucie’s case, it was just 28 years.
Nothing prepares you for a colleague’s death. I spoke to many agency leaders in the ensuing weeks, as I tried (pretty unsuccessfully) to manage my own grief, while simultaneously trying to show leadership, support and direction for the rest of the team. And across all the people I spoke to, no-one had been in this position before (for which there is much to be grateful). There simply isn’t a rule book. The one thing I would say is that we must all remember and talk about them. I want to talk about Lucie all the time. We must keep her spirit alive, for she will always be a Dark Horse. Let me tell you a bit more about this incredible woman.
Lucie started as a designer at Dark Horses on 14 March 2022, just a month after discovering she had breast cancer. Her treatment began almost simultaneously. She would work Monday to Wednesday, have chemo on Thursday (often doing a few little tweaks on things for us from the hospital), recuperate on Friday; and rinse and repeat for 12 weeks. This was followed by two months of radiotherapy, and a double mastectomy. All in less than six months.
Yet, despite this brutal schedule, she was a constant source of energy and light. The contributions to her reviews were almost embarrassingly complimentary. Everybody adored her and felt she was an amazing asset, a Dark Horse through and through – talented, speedy, collaborative, accurate, no ego, fun and “she does literally everything with a smile on her face and a positive attitude”.
And her attitude in messages to her ongoing treatment showed her extraordinary strength, determination, positivity, empathy and humanity. “Absolute piece of cake”, “crushing this thing”, “doing really well, been extremely well looked after”, “I’m ready to come back to work and get some normality into my days”, and our favourite, indeed the Dark Horses Slack post of the year on her return after surgery was simply “YAY!” and this gif.
We talked. A lot. Despite being young enough to be my daughter, we had a lot in common. She absolutely adored dogs, she was a massive foodie, and was a lover of cheesy music. Totally my kind of girl. My flatcoat retriever Nelly was a big fan, and Lucie’s desk was the first place she’d make a beeline for whenever she came into the office. That’s when you really knew we had a good ‘un. She had also been put into temporary menopause as part of her treatment, so we had many conversations bitching about memory loss, sweats and aching joints. She even wrote about it for Creative Brief.
She embodied everything you would want as a contributor to agency culture. A proud feminist (on Jacinda Ardern’s response to a lazy journo question: “She is amazing, he is clearly a dick”), an agency cheerleader (just a smattering of examples of her comments on agency posts below), and an educator (the agency meeting she was hosting consisted almost entirely of pictures of corgi butts because they look like adorable hearts” – they do, check them out).
In January 2023, Lucie started getting headaches, and within two weeks had a brain tumour diagnosed and successfully removed. Yet again, she bounced back to work (within two weeks, despite our protestations to the contrary) with vigour and positivity, worrying about letting people down, and telling us that she had never felt better. “I AM SO HAPPY TO BE BACK!!”
For the best part of four months, we had Lucie with us full-time, on the best form, knocking out stuff left, right and centre. Having us in fits of laughter with all her stories and always accompanied by her filthy laugh. She was a magnet for us all, no-one could resist her optimism, humour and humanity.
But at the end of May, she started getting a sore back. After a couple of weeks of what we were anticipating would be recuperation, we learnt that the cancer was back. After that, it was shockingly and devastatingly fast. After a Whatsapp message where she told me for the very first time that she was finding it a bit hard to deal with, “really struggling mentally with this round, in quite a lot of pain”, she was rushed into hospital, and then intensive care. And within less than a week, it was suddenly and almost inexplicably over. Our gorgeous Lucie peacefully passed away at 4.30am on Saturday 17 June, in the arms of her husband, Toby.
When you have an agency of only 40 people, one person leaves a big hole. When it’s someone like Lucie, that hole is disproportionately huge. One year on, I don’t think I have had a single day when I have not thought of her at one point or another.
Since then, we have stayed in touch with Toby, and Lucie’s parents, Sue and Pete. And on Saturday 1 June, a bunch of Dark Horses, along with Toby and some of Lucie’s friends will be doing the third “Tour de Luce” – a cycling, running and walking challenge around Richmond Park. Some people are going to bang out 200km, some 3k. But we’re all doing it to remember and honour Lucie’s memory. If you’d like to contribute to our fundraising for Guy’s Cancer Charity, please click here.
Lucie Simpson will always be a huge part of our lives, and she will always be a Dark Horse. We were incredibly lucky to have had her.
Melissa Robertson is the chief executive of Dark Horses
For resources on coping with grief, we all already had access to Spill’s mental health support, but also ran a group grief counselling session, recommended a range of alternative resources and podcasts, and provided the Cariad Lloyd book You are not alone’ to all members of staff.