Saatchis offer arts world a slicker image

MILLIONAIRE ART collector Charles Saatchi and brother Maurice are about to set up a new branch of their business which will advise arts companies on how to improve their image and win new audiences.

They want to give the arts in Britain a slicker and more positive image and help theatres and other arts companies rid themselves of accusations of being luvvies and whingers.

Their advertising agency M & C Saatchi will announce later this week a new division: M & C Saatchi Arts.

It will be the first venture into arts marketing for the brothers, famed for their brash and memorable slogans and images, such as Labour Isn't Working for the Conservative Party in 1979.

During the eighties their agency became a household name and Charles Saatchi also became a driving force behind the Britpack artists, buying and exhibiting the likes of Damien Hirst and other Turner Prize winners.

The brothers will launch their venture at a reception for senior arts figures at M & C Saatchi's Soho headquarters on Thursday. They have hired Judy Grahame, former head of external affairs at the Royal Opera House, to be chief executive of the concern.

Working with Saatchi senior partner David Kershaw, who will be chairman of M & C Saatchi Arts, she will sell the Saatchi expertise to arts organisations, promising, with a typically neat Saatchi slogan: "We won't produce a 50- page marketing report: we will produce a plan for action."

The business will, she says, help arts organisations get new audiences and give them PR and marketing expertise generally lacking in the arts.

Mr Kershaw said yesterday: "The arts are quite good at talking to the people they already talk to, but we can reach the people who don't feel they are being spoken to. And we will use the techniques from advertising that we have built up over the years."