Almost a decade and a half after the debut of the iPhone, does your brand actually need an app, when an excellent mobile website might do the same job?
I bought a foldable mobile last month (yes, I am that person). When it comes to tech, I’m a researcher. I covered a lot of ground to make sure I didn’t miss the best one. But, if I’d downloaded the app of every website that offered me one during the search, I’d have about 10 new apps clogging up my shiny foldable screen by now that I would have no regular use for.
Apps can provide a brilliant customer experience for users, and unrivaled behavioral and transactional data for brands. But it seems to have become almost a foregone conclusion that every business needs an app. If you’ve got a well-designed and user-focused website that works perfectly on any device or screen size, what are you actually adding to your customer’s journey or experience by offering them an app? I strongly believe that every app, and brand, has to work hard to earn a place on a user’s phone/tablet/watch/fridge.
An app can be a great core way to connect with your customers and can provide a brand with really fantastic data insights, especially when used in conjunction with other channels such as email, SMS, and social. This, in turn, is great for driving measurable and attributable ROI.
However, you should only commit your time and resources to developing an app if you’re offering something to me as a user that makes my life easier – a cool or slick customer experience that is elevating what I could get from your website – or you’ve already proven to me that your brand is one I trust and has become one of the main places I will always look for that service or product.
That’s it. Follow those rules and, for a brand, there is loads to be gained.
Take fast-food ordering, for example. If a customer orders in person or over the phone then you get the money but no personal insights. If they order on your app then you get usable first-party, transactional data plus behavioral data. So it’s super tempting to dive into developing an app.
For the user, the experience of using the app to complete a transaction has to have tangible benefits; quick access to their favorites, contact-free payment, order history, Apple or Google Pay, or loyalty rewards.
It’s got to be really great because you’re asking the user to accept less choice and, instead, come straight to you. Conversely, if I Google something, I have an immediate set of results from multiple brands and I can compare and find the offering that matches my full set of criteria.
It’s those tangible benefits that are key. If all an app is doing is taking a mobile website and putting it on your home screen, that’s not a worthwhile investment.
Think of a retailer that sells one thing, such as electronics. What benefit is it to have that app on my home screen?
How about a 10% discount if I download it? If you’re offering that alone, it’s a one-hit-wonder in the making. It’s not the intangible benefit that persuades me to download the app. There’s no point in offering unrelated discounts or perks and not actually looking at customer behaviors. That could be done with emails or flyers. If it’s a bribe, it’s snackable value and not meaningful in the long term.
Your app must be easier to open than the website. Offer your user a slick experience and ensure they get more out of it than they are putting in. Value can be added in the form of easy access to customer service through video calls or chat; push notifications that provide useful info, not just more marketing messages; or being able to use your camera to scan products or your biometrics to log in, for example.
First, ask yourself, is the website utterly amazing? Apps aren’t there to make up for shortcomings with your website. Ensure it’s nice to use, that it’s easy to find everything you want and that users feel serviced. Are you adding to brand equity every time someone’s in your world?
Next, ask how an app is going to elevate that. What’s better for the user about using your app? Through consistently good brand experience – in-store, on social media, CRM – prove to your users that they are valuable and that they will get out more than they put in.
If you’ve done your app well, it becomes that key touchpoint of the relationship between you and your users. An app has to build upon the amazing service you already provide and be used more than once. An app for app’s sake will only frustrate.
By Rob Pellow, Innovation Director. Originally featured by The Drum, June 2021.
What’s the one thing Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant have in common?
In short, they’re all female.
At first, this may seem a harmless coincidence, but if we scratch the surface, the domination of the female voice in AI is far more problematic than it may appear.
Today, almost 3 billion people are currently using voice automated software to assist with daily tasks such as setting alarms, checking the weather, or even texting a friend. And the number of people opting to use voice assistants is not expected to decrease.
Yes, we all know this form of AI is beneficial for our ever-evolving digital world, but are these voice assistants causing more harm than we realise?
A greater number of consumers are starting to question the gender bias in voice automation, as they are starting to understand that opting for a female voice can reaffirm the social ideals that women are obedient, should do as they’re told, and most importantly, are here to serve the needs of others.
And because of these observations, many AI creators are now facing criticism for opting for female voices.
With all this in mind, we were intrigued as to why so many companies opt for female voices. Throughout this article, we uncover why there is such a strong gender bias in AI and map out the key steps we can take toward changing this bias.
The lack of male data is the most common reason most programmers opt for female voice when creating voice automated AI, and this is a problem that has been building for some time.
To create voice automation, you need to have a rich set of voice recordings within your text-to-speech system, and most text-to-speech systems have been trained using female recordings. Therefore, it’s much easier and cheaper to create female voice assistants.
So, why do we have so many recordings of female voices available to use?
Up until 1878 telephone operators used to be a solely male-dominated workforce, but they were often heavily criticised for being rude, abrupt, and unhelpful. In response to this Alexander Graham Bell suggested hiring a woman to see if her voice was better received.
Emma Nutt made history and became the first woman to be a telephone operator. Customers responded so well to her voice that she sparked an industry-wide overhaul, and by the end of the 1880s telephone operators were exclusively female.
It’s because of this industry-changing decision we now have hundreds of years of tried-and-tested female audio recordings available to us to create new forms of voice automated AI.
And this leads us on nicely to our next point…
This is probably the most contentious reason why AI programmers opt for female voices – we prefer the sound of female voices.
Many studies have suggested that our preference for the female voice begins when we are in the womb, as these sounds would soothe us even as a fetus.
Another reason why some researchers argue this preference exists is that women tend to articulate vowel sounds more clearly, making female voices easier to hear and understand than male voices.
An example of this can be seen as far back as World War II. Female voice recordings were used in aeroplane cockpits as they were easier to hear over the male pilots.
Up until now, this idea that female voices offer more clarity than a male voices remained unchallenged. Today, many researchers heavily dispute this claim and have found that the many studies that claim female voices are easier to hear when using small speakers or over background noise are simply not true.
There’s even more evidence to show that many people criticise women for their vocal ticks. For example, if you type into Google search “women’s voices are” the top suggested search will finish this sentence with the word “annoying” …
Clearly, AI programmers currently face a difficult challenge when asked to create male voice automation, and Google is a prime example.
Google Assistant was first launched in 2016, and many people were wondering why this AI product was not assigned a gendered name. The reason behind this choice was because Google wanted to launch its new voice assistant with both a male and female voice.
Unfortunately, Google’s text-to-speech system is what ended Google’s desire to launch a virtual assistant with a male and female voice.
Google’s initial text-to-speech system worked by joining segments of audio together from recordings, by using a speech recognition algorithm. It would add markers in different places in sentences to teach the system where certain sounds would begin and end.
As the text-to-speech system was trained using female data, Google Assistant performed better with female voices.
The global engineering manager for text-to-speech at Google, Brant Ward, explained why it was so hard to create a male voice for Google Assistant.
He said that the markers used in their text-to-speech system were not placed accurately for male voice recordings, this meant that it was more challenging to create a male voice assistant of the same quality as the female counterpart.
As it would have taken over a year to create a male voice for Google Assistant, the team at Google decided to run its Google Assistant with only a female voice.
As you can now see, the gender bias in voice automation has become an unshakeable paradigm because of a lack of data and societal acceptance over the preference of the female voice.
When a whole industry is stuck in its ways, even the notion of creating male voice automation can feel like an uphill battle.
It’s time we changed our approach to male voice automation, and there are some simple things we can do as an industry to eliminate the gender bias in voice automation and throughout the AI industry.
1. Inclusivity Is Key
Perhaps it’s obvious to say, but this is an issue that needs to be highlighted. Full stop.
Currently, “women make up an estimated 26% of workers in data and AI roles globally, which drops to only 22% in the UK”. And this percentage drops even further when you look at the number of people in AI who are transgender or non-binary…
It’s disappointing stats like these that show we need to do much more to encourage people of all genders to pursue a career in AI. We want our AI development teams to be more diverse, and this won’t happen if we don’t act.
Once we have a more diverse workforce, we will be able to pinpoint and resolve complex gender issues before and during the production stages of new AI products. Now, in order to attract more diversity, we need to start looking at ways to encourage all genders to follow a career path in AI in higher education.
This can be easily achieved by creating a strong educational foundation, with multiple learning channels available to all students, no matter their gender orientation.
We also need to encourage people of all genders to take an active role in the development of AI course materials. When students see they are being represented in courses they are studying, they are more likely to continue in further education.
2. Develop New Machine Learning Technology
Machine learning technology has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and there are now new text-to-speech systems available that create naturalistic male and female voices for AI.
After Google struggled to create a male voice for its virtual assistant, the tech giant joined forces with AI specialists DeepMind to develop a more advanced text-to-speech algorithm that significantly reduced the volume of recordings needed to simulate human voices.
Now known as WaveNet, this algorithm allowed Google to create a more naturalistic voice for all genders, which were then added to Google Assistant in 2017.
Today, America’s version of Google Assistant comes programmed with 11 different voices, and new users are assigned one of two basic voices – one male and one female – at random.
3. Industry-Wide AI Standards Need to Be Made
The domination of AI is not expected to slow down any time soon. In fact, the global market value of AI is expected to reach $267 billion by 2027!
When you think about how AI is becoming an integral part of our society in one way or another, it is shocking to think that there are still no standards in place concerning the humanization of AI.
To this day, most tech companies develop virtual automated systems with a female voice, and this can still enforce the stereotype that women are “assistants”. In order to combat this, we need to have AI standards in place to ensure our products are far more inclusive.
To create these industry-wide standards we must include people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities in the decision-making stages.
With a more diverse group of individuals, we can work together to define what “female,” “male,” “gender-neutral” and “non-binary” human voices sound like and when it’s appropriate to use such voices.
These industry standards should also include a basic set of protocols. Companies would then need to adhere to these rules when creating text-to-speech algorithms to ensure AI products are unbiased and sensitive to potentially harmful gender stereotypes.
It looks like voice assistants will be a part of our lives for the foreseeable future, and because of this, we need to address the gender bias surrounding this type of AI technology now.
Just by opening a discussion about gender representation in voice automation, we can actively begin to create a future of AI that’s more inclusive for all.
Cytel, the world’s largest provider of statistical software and advanced analytics for clinical trial design, has appointed AgencyUK to lead the strategy and roll-out of Solara, the next generation in statistical and predictive trial design and selection software. This trial strategy platform combines massive cloud computing with Cytel algorithms to dramatically expand available design options for confident selection of the optimal design. Unifying statistical design and clinical strategy to improve clinical development productivity, Solara helps teams control uncertainty by simulating millions of design options in minutes; minimizes costs by ensuring teams find opportunities to shorten trial duration; accelerates speed to market (10-20% faster) and benefits the patients sooner.
The technology is such an advancement for the sector, that the Cytel board are investing heavily in its rollout, which includes a significant marketing effort led by Rebecca Grimm (Vice President, Marketing), Cytel and the team at AgencyUK.
“Solara is a real first for our industry, and we’re already active with live customers and their case studies which are starting to emerge. We appointed AgencyUK based on their sector experience, proven test and learn methodology as well as their passionately creative team. In partnership with AgencyUK, we’re looking forward to seeing the rollout expand globally over the coming months” says Rebecca Grimm, VP Marketing, Cytel.
“Our team has been working with pharma, biotech and clinical research organisations since 2008, and it’s always exciting to be at the forefront of new technology that can change how an industry operates forever. We’ve been developing the Solara brand and proposition alongside the go-to-market strategy. Digital media plays a vital role in its successful adoption by big pharma teams and biotech leaders alike, and we’re looking forward to its global roll-out over the coming months” says Sammy Mansourpour, Managing Director, AgencyUK.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Healthtech sector has continued to rapidly grow. Sector providers and developers can now capitalise off this tech infrastructure acceleration and bolster the operational inefficiencies previously driving up costs, creating exponential improvement in digital healthcare.
Technology can optimise processes, deliver apps, products and services to combat other pre-existing health factors linked to the pre-Covid health crisis such as the aging population, chronic diseases (e.g. obesity) and the ever-growing drug development costs. This has been recognised by regulators and legislators who have responded to the growing health crisis by lifting regulatory red tape.
This huge shift across digital healthcare, and the society as a whole, has created huge opportunities for start-ups, unicorns, decacorns, hectocorns as well as more established firms to create solutions for both B2B and B2C end users across the healthtech sector; including patients, professionals, hospitals and biopharma.
In 2020, the UK attracted record levels of investment maintaining its leadership in European digital healthtech research. In terms of global growth, digital health is set to double in the next five years, reaching $350 BN. All of the demand, investment and adoption are driving both B2B and B2C to grow quickly however B2B is scaling faster as B2B takes the longest to unlock.
Healthtech – a thriving sector
Throughout the pandemic, professionals and patients have become accustomed to new digital healthcare systems, platforms and processes. In the UK, online medical appointments soared from 2% in early March to 80% in April. Furthermore, 9 out of 10 GP prescriptions are dispensed electronically. This together with App-based Covid reporting and check-in systems are good examples of how things pivoted online driving the digital user experience.
Going forward, innovation will continue to flourish at the consumer interface level, linking to a variety of sub-sectors including digital therapeutics, femtech, remote care, remote appointments and monitoring services.
Check out our article on the top five healthtech companies to watch here. Or you may be interested in our Five Organic Marketing Activities to Kickstart Your Startup.
We were catapulted online for business and personal last year. It was our only way of connecting and communicating with one another, and users turned to social media to replace day-to-day interactions. The number of users and the time they spend online has increased during the pandemic, with some studies reporting a jump of almost 10% from April 2019 to April 2020.
Social media was still very relevant in people’s lives in the modern age pre-pandemic, but the platforms then took on a wholly different purpose, and the way they’re being used is changing.
Social media platforms’ shifting role in the community
Tom Keiser, Hootsuite’s CEO, says that the role of social media has changed fundamentally during the pandemic.
It’s now the primary way that people interact with their loved ones and the wider community, including businesses and meetings.
It’s developed to be more than just a fun way to share photos and status updates; especially as we didn’t have much to take photos of. Because of this, users don’t just want to pull the spotlight onto themselves (and those who do are often pilloried online). People are seemingly wanting to replace that lost aspect of “social” in social media, by generating meaningful dialogue.
Brands can’t lead the conversation
Brands must be careful interacting with customers when trying to generate a real, meaningful conversation online. Being too direct, pushy, and blatantly obvious selling does not go down well at all. Brands that are used to being in control and leading the conversation need to change how they communicate. Rather than being the driver, they need to be the passenger helping and influencing the driver to its decisions.
Any brand that wants to make social media work for them needs to adapt to this new way of interacting online.
Keiser puts this into perspective with an analogy from physical retail: “When you walk into a store, the sales assistant doesn’t come up and tell you about all the products they’d like to sell you. They ask what you’re looking for, and that’s how brands have to think on social media.”
Brands shouldn’t be looking at what they have and figuring out how to sell it; they should be looking at what people want, and how they can provide it.
Brands need to learn to listen
Make social media work for you! You will come to realise that the beauty of social media is your customers will tell you what they want – you must be listening to them. Brands need to be looking at the way their audience interacts with each other, and this will help gauge what people on a wide scale want from you. This is because few people will try and have a conversation directly with a brand.
Firstly, understand what it is your audience is talking about. Let’s look at an example: Clarins, a beauty and cosmetics brand. They saw that as the pandemic set in, their audience shifted away from makeup (as no one was going out) and into skin and self-care. Their audience wasn’t discussing their newest products for a night out; instead, they were sharing tips for keeping well during another month inside. Their marketing team identified the change in their audiences’ discussions and needs so they began to create social media content around self-care and self-love.
It’s also important to look at how your audience talks to each other. Especially through memes and satire posts, if you keep an eye on these and play it right, it can gain traction. Yorkshire Tea is a great example of this, with social media content that’s playful yet safe. There were memes circulating about the ‘perfect shade of tea’ which was starting natural discussions, they jumped on board of this at the perfect time for their audience. It might sound effortless, but you can bet they thoroughly looked at how their audience spoke to each other before settling on a tone of voice.
How to reach out to your audience
It might sound strange but you, as a brand, aren’t just here to sell – you’re here to participate in a dialogue and contribute something useful to it. If it ever sounds like you’re pushing a product, all your hard work will be undone, so don’t just post links to your sales pages! A brand that’s listening to its audience knows what it can offer them, and now it’s time to reach out!
So, what can you offer your audience? A how-to guide on making the perfect brew? A new competition to ‘win your pet as a hat’? Just something to make them smile? Position your brand to be relevant and a part of the conversation within your audience. This is essential for engaging new customers and retaining existing ones as part of the digital customer lifecycle.
Investing in your social media platform strategy
A social media platform strategy is vital for a brand, it enables them to be successful online. A brand that can pivot quickly and follow the conversation will excel as this is a hugely important sector for marketing. All too often this is left to relatively junior staff; Keiser talks about how his daughter has been made the ‘social media manager’ for the last 3 restaurants she’s worked at simply because she’s the youngest member of staff. Brands should take social media seriously – teams should have senior marketing staff onboard not only for their experience and insight but because of the large impact it has on a business.
Social media needs to be done properly, it is the ultimate tool for reaching and engaging your customers. So, remember listen, don’t lead! Take the time to understand what you can do to help your audience – this is the foundation of a successful social media strategy.
If your brand could use a little social media power, contact us today to see how we can help you.
Bristol based digital marketing agency, DNRG, previously Digital NRG, has had an exciting brand update. The graphic ‘D’ brings together 8 triangles that represent the company’s eight solutions. When reorganised together, the triangles form the split hexagon – denoting the top to lower marketing funnel. Combining DNRG’s solutions, through the consumer journey when all used together, creates a robust, smarter digital marketing strategy.
With its Head Office in Bristol, DNRG encompasses 53 team members with some of the most powerful brains in the business. DNRG’s rebrand has been driven by the desire to always be leaders in digital marketing and offer a strategy-led approach, rather than off-the-shelf solutions. The company’s business model is built on tailor made integrated digital solutions for any sized business, creating a competitive digital presence for SMBs to support lead generation and local sales to complex National brand led campaigns or Nationwide ecommerce solutions.
As Google Premier Partners, Facebook Business Partners and Microsoft Advertising Elite Partners, DNRG is always implementing the latest advancements in automation, AI and reporting with the support of their partners. DNRG has developed solutions accessible for businesses who do not have the budget for in-house experts or depth of knowledge within a marketing department. With a 96% retention rate in the last 5 years DNRG is clearly getting something right for their clients.
Along with the rebrand DNRG has responded to the digital evolution following the challenging period that the pandemic has presented by adding to their client product portfolio. To support its Website, SEO, Paid Media and Social propositions DNRG will be launching Smarter Performance, Rapid Talk, LinkedIn Accelerator, NRG Connect and a CRO proposition in July 2021.
With a strong focus on their team’s learning and development, DNRG has also set up an in-house academy which devotes 10% of hours a month for each employee to grow their knowledgebase and skills, so that they’re always ahead of the curve. Employing several apprentices, members of their team have made it from ‘The Apprentice’ to director within that five-year period. This all filters through to an enriched client experience.
Neil Rogers, DNRG’s CEO said: “Our rebrand is representative of our continuous growth in services, clients and team members. We offer our clients strategy-led solutions that are driven by their business goals and objectives. DNRG has developed award-winning campaigns that utilise technology, automation and highly skilled digital professionals to increase the return on our clients’ investments. It is our DNRG team players’ incredible support and adaptation to their clients’ goals alongside the delivery of effective digital strategies that has made DNRG the successful agency that it is today.
We truly have become the outsourced marketing department for 1000’s of UK based businesses and we know how to match the right digital solutions to their incredibly varied briefs and objectives. For the agency it is about building partnerships whilst delivering proven value results led by data driven decisions.”
DNRG is proving to be one step ahead of the game with the implementation of new techniques and operational processes in this rapidly changing industry. It is difficult for any business to stay abreast of digital updates, consumer demands and the online experience digital users expect, but DNRG offer extremely competitive solutions to ensure their clients can adapt to these requirements.
Cookie acceptance pop ups might be driving us around the bend, but since the requirement to ask permission was introduced a couple of years ago, businesses and marketers have built their marketing strategies and systems around them.
Now things are all about to change again. It might have been predictable, but with Google telling us that 48% of consumers actually stop a purchase if they don’t trust the company to collect and manage data on them, it’s no surprise that Google are following the likes of Apple and Mozilla, and have announced that they were stopping third-party tracking in 2023.
This leaves businesses having to reset their marketing strategies, relying solely on any first-party data they hold, with many businesses, particularly in e-commerce, having to go back to more traditional marketing and brand building, but in a more digital world than before.
Any that fail to do so will find themselves simply giving their marketing keys to the tech providers with no real insight on their client base.
The option of doing nothing is a dangerous one, yet whilst Pimento research tells us that most marketing professionals intend to ‘do something about it’, 19 out of 20 acknowledge that they won’t be prepared for the great switch off.
Marketing will no longer be about stalking people across the web. We now have the opportunity where digital marketing can mature to become a real weapon to help brand building in a more meaningful way.
So, what’s the action plan? And what should all businesses, large or small, be lining up to do right now?
Action 1.
Do the gap analysis now. Work out what you currently use and need to achieve marketing penetration, and what will you have post the demise of third-party cookies. That’s the gap that needs filling.
Action 2.
Focus on the business infrastructure and get back to basics.
If you need support in doing the analysis, and in building the strategy going forward, make the move now to find it. Closer to the time, resources will be limited and remedial time scales will be longer.
Action 3.
Cement the data you have and get your consent strategy robust for the future, building the new approach around it. Undertake a cookie audit now.
Action 4.
Take a relook at customer experience and contextual for scale, so that you stay completely in touch with your customers’ buying triggers in the post cookie era.
This isn’t just a marketing challenge. It impacts the whole business spectrum, from SMEs to multinational corporates. Mid and large corporates will use their in-house resources to reposition, but small businesses will struggle in the absence of teams they can fall back on, and budget.
Pimento is well placed to be the surrogate team to look to though. With over 200 independent marketing agencies, covering most marketing disciplines, bespoke solutions are close at hand irrespective of size and sector.
This is not an issue for selective blindness. Businesses who fail to act will see their markets slowly dwindle away.
We all know how important it is to encourage equality through our culture in the workplace. But it’s no secret that women are underrepresented in senior leadership positions.
It’s everyone’s shared responsibility to become not only advocates, but champions of women from diverse backgrounds within their organisations – and in their lives at large. And in the creative sector, if we want to truly do our part to help women stake their claim, it means businesses taking ownership of their own equality scores in a number of ways – not least, by appointing women to the senior leadership positions we need them to be in.
At Proctor + Stevenson, we’re one of the UK’s longest-established independent marketing agencies. Despite this, we’ve never been conformists, and we’re a good step ahead of your traditional London-based agency in more ways than one.
Our Founder and Chairman, Roger Proctor, has always been an outspoken industry figure. He’s championed diverse young creative talent from the South West of England and Wales – an often neglected region for the arts – throughout his career.
Back in 1979, he laid in our bold and independent foundations in Bristol. And the rest is history. We’ve been challenging inequities and hiring diverse talent ever since – such as through hosting the South West Design + Digital Student Awards (which saw a particularly high volume of entries from young female designers this year).
In short, the talent is there. So what changes are being made?
At the start of 2021, Roger and the senior team restructured Proctor + Stevenson by splitting the larger brand into three companies: P+S Creative, P+S Technology and P+S Strategy, all overseen by the P+S Group (you can read more about these changes here). And this change marked a new milestone for the P+S team.
Our restructuring was the perfect opportunity to progress our own equality targets across the team at Proctors. It was at this point in our journey that we ensured the P+S Group met a target of 50/50 male-to-female directorship.
So, without further ado, meet our board…
· Joy Locke is our Company Secretary. She applies her 20+ years’ experience with us to take lead of everything operations, finance, accounts, and administration. She ensures that we were keeping on track with budgets.
· Ailsa Billington is one of our Directors. She leads our client services operations and takes charge of directing major global campaigns for our multinational portfolio of clients. She directs over all teams in the P+S Group to make sure that we deliver the best campaigns to transform our clients’ businesses for the better.
· Nikki Hunt is our Financial Director. CIMA-qualified, Nikki brings a wealth of experience in management accountancy, HR, payroll, and health and safety to our business, keeping us running efficiently and safely.
· Roger Proctor is our Chairman. He founded P+S in 1979 and has continued to lead its transformation ever since. Under his leadership, the business has grown from 2 people to more than 70, plus a network of freelance talent, and has won a global portfolio of clients such as Panasonic, National Grid, Saudi Arabian Airlines, and much more. He is passionate about the power of creativity to make positive change and is also heavily involved in strengthening the links between the creative industries and education.
· Mark Jamieson is another of our Directors. He helped establish our presence in the Middle East and is an expert in developing, building, and maintaining positive client relationships in across all sectors.
· Steve King is the final member of our current team of Directors. He leads our large-scale digital projects on everything concept creation, development, and project delivery. He’s worked on many innovative and world-first technology projects.
At Proctors, we’ve always taken equality and diversity extremely seriously. Because when we celebrate and empower women in business, it benefits everyone.
We strive to nurture careers amongst our female talent, building them up into more senior roles within our business. And we want to continue to progress further. We’re currently building a broader, transparent picture of our teams, our diversity, and our biases to discover how we can do better.
There’s lots more to be done to help narrow the gap between women in leadership across the UK. It’s a fact that only 5.6% of women in the UK run their own business and women only account for 33.8% of positions as directors on business boards in the UK, with only 16% of creative directors reported to be female.
We’ve just launched the first instalment of our Women in Business interview series. In it, our own Marketing Manager, Becca Peppiatt, sits down with Peaches Golding OBE CsJT, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol. This interview, like the rest of the series, delivers insight into the female perspective of working in business, so aspiring young women can see themselves represented in leadership roles. Stay tuned for more instalments of the series, coming soon.
We can all do our part to progress the important conversations which need to be had about an industry that is in many ways stuck in the past, ignoring some of its blatant inconsistencies. There’s lots more to be done and we intend to continue to work hard to narrow some of the gaps that exist. We need to think intersectionally about how we hire, and how we can create healthy, fair environments for women to succeed in.
For more information about Proctor + Stevenson, or to discuss our services or teams in more detail, please email us.
Leading Bristol–based digital marketing agency, DNRG, is working with AI search company Yext to provide businesses with modern solutions to boost their discoverability in search and stay ahead of the competition.
The UX focused platform, NRG Connect, is easy to do business with, offering a central cloud-based system to manage and update business listings. Google, Facebook, Yell, Apple Maps and Waze are a few of the 100+ apps, search engines, maps and directories customers can access. This generates opportunities for businesses of all sizes to be digitally competitive and present their company to potential customers searching for their services.
DNRG is supporting their existing customers, as well as independent businesses, with a solution that saves time, increases efficiency, and allows for excellent reporting and measurement. NRG Connect forms as part of a larger digital marketing strategy for businesses. The platform interlinks with other digital solutions such as user experience–led web design, SEO–focused content, Conversion Rate Optimisation and more, to offer a complete digital package.
Marketing agencies can partner with DNRG to receive access to a white-labelled platform, where they can offer the solution as their own to their clients. DNRG provides comprehensive training and support to the agencies and their end-users, ensuring they are fully equipped to make the most out of the platform.
In an age where digital reputation is more important than ever for businesses, DNRG customers will have access to view and respond to all their customer reviews, as well as edit company details all in one central location. This saves hours of trolling through different sites adding listings, responding to reviews, and making updates.
We’ve spoken to Joe Reid, Account Services Director at DNRG, “We’re delighted to announce our collaboration with Yext, which presents us with a unique opportunity to work with like-minded marketing agencies and offer an additional solution to our direct customers.
“In 2021, we all search online for products and services, so making sure that our customers can be found, wherever they are searched for is essential to us. This product forms as part of a much wider digital marketing solution, to allow businesses of all shapes and sizes to be competitive.
“It’s so important for all businesses to have the ability to be digitally competitive. At DNRG we specialise in offering solutions to SMBs who may not have unlimited budgets or the option for in-house digital marketing expertise. We believe in allowing smaller businesses to compete with the bigger companies and build them a digital presence in order for them to do that.”
“For SMBs, a solid strategy for managing and optimizing listings is vitally important — it can mean the difference between appearing on the search results page and not showing up at all, between winning over a customer and losing them to a competitor,” said Luis Baptista-Coelho, Executive Vice President, Global Partner at Yext. “We’re excited to team up with DNRG so that even more SMBs can tap into Yext’s modern, AI-powered platform — the same technology that the biggest brands in the world trust — to keep their information up-to-date across platforms, improve their discoverability, and win more business.”
I joined Armadillo in November of 2020, very much in the thick of pandemic stress and lockdowns. It was a strange experience starting a new job at such a time. Despite the fact it was an experience I shared with so many others, it felt incredibly lonely and daunting at times. New job nerves are bad enough without not being able to meet your colleagues or head into the office!
Remote onboarding is never going to be easy, but I was lucky enough to work for a company that worked hard to make it as positive an experience as possible. I cannot stress enough how difficult it feels to build relationships and connections with people you’ve never met in person. And yet I’ve absolutely loved my first six months at Armadillo because they did everything they could to make it work.
Here are five things you can do to make onboarding remotely a positive experience:
We’ve all experienced Zoom fatigue, and I completely understand that feeling, but it’s so important to ensure you have cameras on policy during work meetings. Being able to put faces to names was massive for me as a new starter. Video was pretty much the only contact I had with my new colleagues and so it was so important for human connection’s sake that I was able to see faces.
When I started at Armadillo, I had a lot of video meetings with various people across the business. It helped me understand each different aspect of the business better and how it worked as a whole. It was also a wonderful opportunity to meet everyone and introduce myself to the team.
In the office, it’s common to tap someone on the shoulder and ask a quick question or pick their brains at the coffee machine. It’s difficult and nerve-wracking to be new to the business and not be able to ask those questions or get that quick clarification. So, encourage questions! And if that means hopping on a quick call then go for it.
Informal time to build relationships with colleagues is just as important as formal meeting time. As a business, try to help facilitate this. At Armadillo, we have virtual fitness club on Thursdays. I was nervous and reluctant to get involved at first since I didn’t know anyone particularly well, but had such a lovely time when I joined in.
It was a great opportunity to meet people within the business that I wouldn’t get a chance to interact with on the day-to-day, and a unique activity to enjoy while stuck at home.
Armadillo offers staff individual business coaching with the fantastic confidence coach Jo Emerson. This has been an absolutely brilliant resource and I wish I’d taken it up even sooner. Jo not only helps with personal challenges but really supports you in working on your approach to the workplace.
Initially, I didn’t want to book my sessions, telling myself I would do so when I’d settled in, but Jo has been paramount to that process and has helped me take initiative to embrace opportunities to engage with others in the business.
Though working from home can be lonely at times, especially when you’re starting a new job, remember that you aren’t alone. It’s worth looking into if there are any other new starters within the business, or if there is anyone who joined the team fairly recently.
Jo encouraged me to reach out to a member of the client services team and we had a regular weekly catch up together. Yes, we talked about work, but we also got to know each other on a more personal level. When we were allowed, we met up for a coffee and took a walk. I built a friendship with a colleague who understood the strange experience of joining remotely.
I was lucky enough to start at Armadillo during a brief break in lockdown, meaning I was able to spend some of my first days with Armadillo Innovation Director, Rob Pellow. We met in a coworking space, and he ran me through what I needed to know. That initial meeting eased me into the job role and allowed me to properly meet a member of the Armadillo team. It made all the difference to the onboarding process.
It might not always be possible given restrictions and lockdowns, but if you can, it’s definitely worth meeting at least one other person face to face during your first week or so at the business.
First published on Digital Donut June 2021.
By Rachel Pyke.
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