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We don’t need to repeat what you’ve already heard – 2020 was pretty unforgiving. This post, however, is not about the last year, it’s about looking forward to the upcoming year and beginning to predict what tools we might need to include in our arsenal for the coming year.

We’ve gathered insight from our clients, and the Financial Services industry as a whole, and have pulled together key activities that every business in the Financial Services industry should do now, to take their marketing to the next level in 2021.

Have a plan that changes

One thing that will remain certain, especially for the early part of this year, is uncertainty. The most effective marketing plans will be built to be fluid,  flexible and adaptable – that way change can be easily navigated.

When Covid struck and the country came to a stand-still, there was a wide-spread feeling of uncertainty both around people’s personal finances as well as the wider economy. For Financial Services companies, this presented an opportunity to step in and provide assurances and insight.

Starling Bank ran a content series offering money management and financial advice to those who had been furloughed. Moneyhub Enterprise, on other hand, made their unique insights available in the form of a spending tracker – monitoring the habits and trends of users and allowing businesses to see where and how people are spending (or not spending) and plan around this.

More broadly, when it comes to making these plans, don’t put all your eggs in one basket – as we’ve seen, anything could change. In terms of execution, consumers need brands they can trust more than ever. A number of 2020’s challenges are likely to remain well into next year and beyond, so smart FS brands will continue to step in and help the consumer navigate through this difficult time.

Focus on ROI

A lot of brands will be working with smaller budgets going into 2021, so keeping a close eye on the bottom line and ensuring shrinking budgets are being put to best use will be more imperative than ever.  Any good marketeer will always be focussed on the performance – now is absolutely the right time to report back on 2020’s performance in detail ahead of next year. Marketing budgets are essential for business success, although can often be the first for the chop. Taking the time now to look back on this year will help bolster the likelihood of a stronger budget as we go into 2021.

For smaller brands, no matter which channels of distribution make up your marketing mix, ensure you are able to track each pound back to the source. This may mean spending more time in your website analytics or planning campaigns differently, to ensure that each member of the team is working towards a common ROI based objective.

More broadly, a lot of brands (particularly in the FS space) will work across different platforms and systems and these may not talk to each other. This year is a good opportunity to revisit this. Create a plan, along with other stakeholders, your marketing team, agency or partners and decide which goals are most  important to you and begin to get those systems in place to allow for accurate tracking.

Say Thank You

One positive outcome of 2020 was the increased sense of community and camaraderie, and this has been reflected in the business world too.

Organisations who have taken care of their staff and their customers have been rewarded and those who have not have had their cards marked. More broadly, research from summer this year shows that Financial Services brands are the least trusted brands by customers – although there are exceptions. FS businesses that take a personal approach can create a brilliant relationship with customers.

This year, take the time to say thank you to staff, clients, partners and customers that have stuck with you over the pandemic. It will go a long way!

Switch up your content 

There is a huge opportunity for brands in so-called ‘low interest’ categories to rise above the noise by pushing boundaries and going against the grain. This is particularly true when people are looking for something to make them feel good.

Brands in sectors like insurance, energy, banking, medical, law and so on are bound unnecessarily by un-written, and frankly antiquated, rules of branding and marketing. Each with a similar look, similar fonts, similar messaging and similar marketing tactics.

However, when a brave marketing manager bends these rules and gets it right, the result is often break-away growth. We’re already seeing a rising trend in comical or satirical ads, in place of emotional or aspirational ones, Tesco’s ‘No naughty list’ for instance.

And we’ve all seen it happen on the big stage in markets like insurance,  with ‘Compare the Meerkat’ all those years ago, or more recently in the energy sector, with Good Energy.

It comes down to idea generation and creativity and the possibilities for creativity right now, particularly in the FS space, are quite literally endless. So, be brave, do something different and push the boundaries in 2021.

Look for growth in growing areas 

We’re all very aware of how quickly the media landscape is changing. New mediums online and offline are worth investigating, so use 2021 as a chance to consider what ‘new’ things you’re going to do. Key media channels have seen real growth this year, January affords some time to stop and reflect on what has worked, and to weave these into your plans for 2021.

Let’s take podcasts as an example, there are currently more than 850,000 active podcasts available to listen to, and 12% of adults in the UK listen to podcasts every week.  You just have to look at the success of Churchill Insurance’s ‘Little Chapters of Chill’ campaign which harnessed the power of podcasts to promote mindfulness for families struggling during lockdown.

Podcasts work in the same way as any form of online media, you either create, grow and own the channel as many brands are, or you buy media to reach users that might buy from you.

Podcasts as a form of consumption are growing faster than any other. On top of this, the targeting is becoming more advanced and the audience is far less distracted than other online channels.  Hence why 2020 saw the launch of dedicated podcasts from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan and others.

Plus, the old can still be new – Newsletters have seen something of a resurgence in 2020, offering a welcome return to a direct relationship between publisher and reader. A great example of this is Morning Brew. 

Creative approaches to video-led marketing, podcasts and newsletters are three of many interesting and accelerating means of distribution, to unearth new customers and more effectively engage your current customer base in 2021.

There we have it, five crucial considerations for anybody at the heart of a Financial Services marketing world, for a time that will hopefully be a fantastic and prosperous year for us all.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with a range of Financial Services Businesses, in the South West and afar. If you are planning now, for 2021 or you are looking to supercharge your marketing, we’d love to help.

Get in touch.

What do a Bristol-based integrated marketing agency and a team of world-leading wet blasting experts have in common?

No, this isn’t the start of the world’s worst joke. It was, however, a topic of discussion at Proctors HQ recently, as we talked about a series of surprising discoveries during Vapormatt and Proctors’ first year of working together.

But what similarities could there possibly be between a business who engineers and manufactures technology for some of the world’s most high-tech sectors; motor racing, aerospace, additive manufacturing/3D printing, medical implants and surgical tools; and a business whose bread and butter is creating marketing campaigns with a gut-punching impact?

40 years of expertise

Vapormatt and Proctors’ working relationship started in 2020, otherwise known as The Year We All Want to Forget (But Can’t). Rather than this challenging 12 months compounding the pressure placed on our first projects together, it instead highlighted a number of the incredible qualities shared by both businesses.

From our ethos, to our team spirit, to our niche specialisms – there’s a lot to be said for what we share. And one of the most apparent surface-level similarities between our businesses is our age.

Both Vapormatt and Proctors have more than four decades of expertise, cementing both companies among the longest established within their respective fields.

Stewart and Terry Ashworth founded Vapormatt in 1978, growing quickly after a move from Guernsey to Taunton. Before long, Vapormatt had outgrown their new facility and discovered their niche: they wanted to build their own machinery, to their own high standards, so it matched the teams’ exceptional skill and proficiency.

This shift marked the true birth of Vapormatt’s wet-blasting business as it looks today. Vapormatt is a true pioneer of wet-blasting technology, offering world-leading tech complemented by unrivalled capability.

Similarly, Proctors has spent the last four decades refining its knowledge, practice and gaining unrivalled experience in the marketing sector. From the heart of Bristol, our 70-plus team is made up of award-winning creative, strategy and technology professionals – all of whom are experts in their own specialisms.

Measured and controlled success

For those not in the business of marketing and advertising, it can seem as though concepts are produced at random. A unicorn promoting an energy company? Meerkats pushing insurance products? There is, in fact, method among the madness. Every marketing decision has been researched and calculated in order to create the desired impact on its audience.

At P+S, we like to think we take things even further. We take a learn > build > measure approach to marketing strategy – meaning our work doesn’t stop when the campaign has launched. Instead, we continue to refine our marketing efforts on an ongoing basis.

And Vapormatt are much the same with their approach to engineering the right technology for each of their customers. Their design philosophy is ‘if you can measure it, you can control it’. And as a result of this focus, Vapormatt are leading the way when it comes to repeatable and reliable processing.

If you don’t already know, at its most basic level, wet blasting is a precision-driven process which uses water and slurry to refine an object’s surface with microscopic accuracy. It leaves nothing to chance. And the reason for Vapormatt’s esteemed reputation is largely due to their measured approach and exceptional attention to detail, powered by their understanding of every clients’ business.

Vapormatt’s patented technology and Proctors’ meticulous marketing strategy have a similar foundation: eliminating error and achieving the best results for our customers.

Our relationships set us apart

Any business worth its salt knows it’s not just a single product or function which is responsible for success. And both Vapormatt and Proctors value their customer relationships above everything else.

Vapormatt may be a world-leading technology business, but it’s their aftermarket service which offers the most value to their customers.

Because Vapormatt’s technology is highly specialised, much of their machinery is custom built – meaning it can take more than just ‘plug and play’ approach to use it. But Vapormatt’s promise is that they will work with every single client, offering hands-on guidance and remote assistance, individual expertise and teams of professionals to support every project. In fact, once the team have committed to a project, they don’t just find their clients the right tech and leave them to it: they stand by their side at every step of their production journey until they’re satisfied.

It’s a similar relationship to the one Proctors has with its clients. We don’t just push out marketing campaigns for our clients and leave. In fact, we view every job as an opportunity: to build deeper relationships between our clients and their customers, to open up new channels of brand-customer communication, or to simply assess what we can change to make our communications even more powerful.

And testament to the strength of our relationships? We’ve been working with many of our clients for decades, as we continue to bring them new ideas, fresh proposals, and identify innovative, relevant opportunities for their businesses.

For both Proctors and Vapormatt, our success lies in not just serving our clients: but in helping them realise new potential beyond what they ever thought they could be capable of.

‍Never afraid to be bold

‍When it comes to surface treatment and finishing, dry blasting is still the world’s dominant technology. Even companies who do offer more advanced, precision-driven wet-blasting processes will still offer dry blasting as a service in order to try and secure a larger market share – to capture those customers who may be resistant to trying something new.

However, Vapormatt focus solely on wet blasting – for today and for the future. And rather than seeing this as a limitation, the team knows it pays dividends. As a result of focusing purely on wet-blasting technology, Vapormatt are world leaders in their field. They’re the go-to name for wet-blasting machinery across the globe. And as a result, the team have complete confidence in both their ability and their technologies, so they can guarantee the quality of their machines’ output for every single project.

And at Proctors, we’ve never been afraid to be bold either. Whether through larger-than-life messaging or extraordinary creative, our mission is to make our clients stand out from the crowd, whatever it takes.

From implementing brave B2B messaging, to innovating with Augmented Reality, digitalised direct mail and interactive online content. Whether the brief is to create a simple email or to discover the most effective way to market a new product, we dedicate ourselves to finding more exciting ways of engaging our clients’ customers and showing off their products and services.

Building the world of tomorrow, today

As it happens, this particular integrated marketing agency and Vapormatt’s world-leading high-tech wet blasting business have more in common than you might think.

No matter how niche, technical or specialised your business is, you deserve to get more from your marketing. So if you have an ambitious marketing plan, big dreams for your next product launch, or just need a bit of a boost when it comes to a creative social strategy, talk to Proctors. We’ll be more than happy to put our heads together with yours and see where the year takes us.

Noisy Little Monkey has won a HubSpot Impact Award for the design and build of a new website for global communications agency, Indicia Worldwide.

Awarding exceptional client work

The international HubSpot Impact Awards recognise HubSpot partners for client work which goes above and beyond – hundreds of HubSpot agencies apply for one of these awards every year and Noisy Little Monkey are over the moon to be awarded for their web design project and CMS migration with Indicia Worldwide.

The judges feedback said, “The results are fantastic. It’s clear from Indicia Worldwide’s video testimonial that you were a true HubSpot partner to their business. Indicia had already purchased HubSpot, but worried they wouldn’t get the right value out of it. They brought in experts to fill their gaps, and were shown the power of HubSpot’s platform. This is a perfect example of how HubSpot partners bring value to their clients.”

Getting more value from HubSpot

Helping clients get the most from HubSpot is Noisy Little Monkey’s mission. So when Indicia Worldwide approached the team for help migrating their CMS from WordPress to HubSpot, Noisy Little Monkey jumped at the chance to reimagine the site and focus it on the inbound buyer journey.

This approach generated brilliant results for the client; in a six month YoY comparison, Indicia Worldwide saw a 200% increase in organic traffic and a 1250% increase in new leads through their site.

You can read the full case study and view the testimonial here.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, or considering HubSpot, and would like the support of an award-winning agency to help you unlock more from the platform, get in touch with the team today.

 

 

Several times a year, Google makes significant and broad changes to their search algorithms and systems. These ‘core updates’ are designed to ensure Google is delivering on their mission to present relevant and useful content to searches. Whilst the latest instalment has gone under the radar, the updates are a pretty big deal, with many websites having lost rankings, engagement and revenue as a result. So, what are the latest changes and how will they affect how we produce content?

At YS, we’ve pulled together a checklist of questions to ask yourself in the new year, focused on Google’s key factors needed to create killer content in 2021.

The quality check

The expertise check

The presentation check

The comparison check

For those of us generating content everyday, it can be easy to forget that it’s purpose is to serve the genuine interests of visitors to the site, rather than attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines. Carefully formed content provides value to your audience by solving their problems and in doing so, it positions you as the Go-To for your particular area of expertise.

By asking yourself the questions above and by asking others who you trust, to give an honest assessment of each piece that you produce, the quality of your content will be improved remarkably. If you’ve noticed some of your pages drop in search ranking, consider looking closely at these questions to understand why and how you can improve.

At YS, our goal is to maximise the value of your content to engage and re-engage your audience,  bring new customers to your business and help get your message out there.

Whether you’re looking to build and maintain a blog for your brand, drive traffic through ranking across core terms or get the message out through press, social and distributed marketing YOURS . SINCERELY can help.

 

If we learned anything from 2020, it’s that the world is changing faster than expected and that new trends are shaping our realities.

For businesses, this means increased pressure to adapt and remain relevant to their customers.

Here are three top social media trends we’re expecting to flourish in 2021.

Memetic media will continue to boom

Memetic Media, or memes, act on 4 levels:

  1. See (publish, share, or repost engaging posts that will be seen by a large number of users).
  2. Think (users associate the brand with a positive feeling that memes have instilled in them, such as fun, nostalgia, feel good, etc.).
  3. Do (purchase).
  4. Care (users continue to engage with the brand by repurchasing it, or/and becoming brand ambassadors).

In 2020 users engaged with memes as a form of escapism. From August 2019 to July 2020, the mention of memes increased by 26% (Talkwater).

Although they are most popular among younger audiences, brands like Pryvate, a secure communications app, demonstrate memes can be very successful among all age groups when used in the right manner.

Memes work better on social media than branded content, because people want to be entertained on social media.

That’s why a dog meme will always be more engaging than a corporate post, as long as the meme is, in some way, relevant for the brand. Plus, memes are usually memorable, and they tend to create brand associations.

Behind the Scenes: bring back the human touch

In the context of Covid-19’s work from home and partial or full lockdowns, many of us have missed connecting with real people in their natural environments.

The chance to get to know someone beyond their corporate title is something that social media users showed increased interest in during 2020.

Behind the scenes content humanises brands, giving them a face, a smile, and a personal story.

Symantec, a security products enterprise, or Crowdstrike, an internet company, capitalise on this approach to generate more engagements for their posts. This translates into increased brand awareness and more opportunities for finding leads, converting them into sales from social media.

User-generated content takes the floor in 2021

Users are creating and uploading pics and videos on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat daily. In fact, Snapchat has included e-commerce brand integration since June, allowing brands such as Nike, Jordan, Gucci, and most recently Levi’s, to showcase their products.

Like this, snappers can use these cool brands to style up their avatars, and then post photos or videos of them wearing branded items.

User-generated content can be highly effective for brands. Look at Ocean Spray, where a user recorded himself enjoying the drink while skating and listening to the Fleetwood Mac song, ‘Dreams’.

The video went viral, the song (popular in the seventies) came back into the charts and the person taking the video created a trend, as many other users began replicating the clip.

Want to find out more top trends for 2021? Our new Digital Trends report features another seven social media trends for this year. Download our full report today.

In this socially driven age of the mega-celebrity, the rise of influencer marketing shows no sign of slowing any time soon. But what does it take to make it work in the B2B world? In our experience, one rugby legend, one uber-tough brand and one committed team should just about do it…

The premise of influencer marketing is pretty simple. Choose someone with clout in your target market – someone trusted, admired or looked-up to – and associate them with your brand, product or service. Awareness goes through the roof, positive perception is sent soaring, and you achieve cut through that’s otherwise hard to find.

Although not a new strategy, influencer marketing is growing and has been proven to be effective: a survey by Mediakixs revealed that 80% of practitioners have found influencer marketing to be an effective tool. And it’s a real money-spinner – according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2020 Benchmark report, Influencer marketing is estimated to be worth $9.7 billion, with the market growing by 50% each year since 2016.

The same report reported that brands are recognising this growth, with 66% of respondents saying they will increase their Influencer marketing budgets next year. Although most commonly used for B2C markets, we’ve all clicked on a social post or read an article simply because we recognise the face in the thumbnail, so why shouldn’t it work in a B2B environment too?

TOUGHBOOK meets tough guy

We had the opportunity to put this theory to the test last year. Our clients at Panasonic TOUGHBOOK (the world leader in rugged computing) wanted some means of elevating their brand beyond its already-lofty position, and we believed an influencer strategy could be the way to go.

As we were approaching a B2B market, it was clear from the start that this wasn’t a campaign to be built around the audience reach an influencer has. What was more important was finding somebody who was a perfect fit for the TOUGHBOOK brand, and someone we could build a credible, engaging story around.

We needed someone who matched the ruggedness and strength of the TOUGHBOOK devices, someone who could match the brand status of TOUGHBOOK as world leader in rugged IT, but also someone that could offer more than just audience reach. Luckily, we were able to secure the services of global rugby icon, former Wales and British and Lions captain and absolute giant of a man, Sam Warburton.

A different approach to new territory

We used the formidable (but endlessly friendly) presence of Sam to create a multi-channel campaign, incorporating the more traditional B2B marketing channels, such as LinkedIn and display ads, but also exploring newer territory, such as YouTube ads. Using a combination of campaign keywords and razor-sharp targeting, we ensured that our ads would capture the attention of a new audience for TOUGHBOOK, as well as engaging with the more typical audiences in a different way.

Despite a month or two of delay due to the pandemic and national lockdown, we figured out a way to finally come together for some socially-distanced filming days. This allowed us to capture some amazing footage of Sam doing his thing on the rugby pitch, but also displaying his well-honed studio skills, discussing leadership and parallels between sport and business leadership with Panasonic TOUGHBOOK MD, Kevin Jones.

In five short weeks, following the film shoots, we were ready to go live with a whole range of assets; a mini-series on Leadership, seven videos for YouTube pre-roll ads, a campaign specific landing page, blog content, downloadable digital guide, a selection of display and LinkedIn ads, and social material for Sam to share on his Instagram and Twitter feeds.

A winning result

As with most things Sam Warburton touches, the end results have been pretty impressive. We set ourselves a simple goal of raising awareness of the TOUGHBOOK brand, which we achieved very quickly. The landing page is the fourth-best performing landing page Panasonic have ever created, with over 18,000 visits in the seven weeks that the campaign has been live. Over the first three weeks, we were even outperforming the main TOUGHBOOK site in terms of website sessions.

This was an experimental campaign, with the simple goal of gaining increased brand exposure in a niche market, made possible by the courage of a client who was willing to push boundaries and try something different. And from such a positive start, we’re looking forward to more of the same in 2021, building on the high levels of awareness we’ve established and turning that into a raft of bottom-line boosting sales leads.

Let’s just hope Sam keeps his boots clean for us…

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your business reach its potential, get in touch with us today at [email protected].

It’s almost five years since Carnsight Communications opened its doors, over ten years since I switched to PR and almost twenty years since I started in marketing. It’s a time for reflections, so here’s one of mine. Looking back, working in marketing was a fantastic grounding for great PR. It continues to be as the two roles move ever closer.

The difference between PR and marketing

One of the things we regularly get asked is ‘what is the difference between PR and marketing?’ In simple terms, PR is about earned media – earning your place in publications. Whereas marketing is generally about paid-for placement – such as adverts, sponsored pieces or what we used to call advertorials.

But the lines are continuing to blur. It’s no secret that the media sector has struggled this year, with publications closing their doors and a number of job losses. There are far fewer staff roles (permanent positions) and many more freelancers. We try and do our part as a PR agency by subscribing to many of the publications we pitch to. We’ve also given support by donating and contributing this year, as well as working with journalists as freelance consultants.

Supporting publications as businesses

We pride ourselves on pitching in quality editorial content and products to relevant titles. But we also know that alone is not enough to keep publications up and running. So, we also encourage clients to get involved by subscribing, considering sponsored opportunities if the opportunity is right, and getting involved with events and awards.

We also work closely with marketing and media teams to see if they’re planning to run ads and where they might be placing them. This is particularly pertinent for local press and smaller publications where editorial and commercial are more closely aligned. We wouldn’t ever expect editorial placement purely because of advertising, but it’s important to understand how it all fits together. And that’s not to mention the rise in influencers which takes this to a different place again.

Starting out in marketing gave me a great grounding for understanding commercials. Managing budgets and managing spend comes in a lot earlier – especially if you’re in client services. In my experience, commerciality isn’t a big part of PR training, but I think it should be – especially now.

Understanding messaging

Understanding messaging and brand and campaign propositions has also been key. Advertising campaigns start with a brief and key message: a line or two that everything can be boiled down to. What’s the essence of the product or service? That is something that’s at the very heart of PR, which is why we often start with a Three Lens Messaging Session in our client work.

A journalist once asked me to give my pitch to him in 10 seconds during a phone call. Scary, but actually a really excellent idea. If you can’t get across what you’re trying to say in that time, how can you expect it to be an idea they can buy into? We spend a long time crafting press releases and accompanying emails to make sure the essence can be communicated quickly and simply. We use that approach over the phone or in person, too (or we used to!)

PR working hand-in-hand with marketing

Working closely with marketing agencies such as Sharp Thinking Marketing and Rapport Digital makes for a really effective, joined up process. For example, PR and marketing often work to different timelines, and while messages could be led by advertising, they’re likely to be interrogated more in the PR process.

So, being able to understand marketing’s role and approach and ensure it fits alongside ours makes for the most successful campaigns. We can also share resources, such as information on the target audience, tone of voice and good, high res photography.

Building relationships

PR is very much about relationships. Relationships with your team, your clients, journalists and influencers. It’s about building trust, being respectful, delivering and helping each other out. The power of building relationships was definitely something I first learnt in the world of advertising. It’s relationships and connections which make for the best results.

Understanding creative agencies

We work with a range of creative and strategic marketing agencies, helping to promote their work and profile their key people. I still have a very special place in my heart for the advertising world. And having worked with the sector press for over 10 years, it’s a landscape I know very well.

Advertising is something I’ve loved since I was little – I actually used to fast forward programmes on my VCR to get to the adverts! I remember the great campaigns from Levi’s, Guinness and even the Green Cross Code (!) word-for-word to this day. I hope I’ve passed that on to the wider team. As we’ve seen this year, good advertising can be pivotal to creating movements and changing lives.

So, starting in marketing and advertising has been invaluable for me, and continues to be as we move into a brand new year. I can echo everyone’s thoughts in saying I’m hoping for much better things for us all in 2021.

AMBITIOUS has recently delivered a national campaign for PillTime, working with Dr Hilary –  securing 11 TV and radio interviews, with the total reach of the campaign over five million.

About the campaign

PillTime is an NHS certified online pharmacy and their mission is to make life more manageable for people who take multiple prescriptions every day.

They do this by providing pills in a pouch with the time of day stamped on the packet. This prevents people from taking the wrong medication and most importantly not taking too much.

The aims of the campaign were to raise awareness of the added pressures on non-professional carers as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and inform the public about the tools offered by PillTime to make caring for loved ones easier.

Our activity started by commissioning a piece of research amongst unpaid or non-professional carers to see how they were feeling – and if they felt they were getting enough support. We set about creating a news story to primarily secure broadcast coverage because we wanted to get people talking about unpaid carers on International Carers Rights Day – a key awareness day we had identified as an platform to secure media coverage, an opportunity for newsjacking and a PR platform to use these findings to create newsworthy earned media content.

PillTime already had a working relationship with the nation’s favourite GP – ITV’s Dr Hilary Jones – and AMBITIOUS were able to offer interview time with him to radio and TV stations. With his medical background, Dr Hilary was able to articulate the stressors on unpaid carers and highlight how people who are worried about a loved one taking the right medication might be able to get some peace of mind.

AMBITIOUS launched the campaign on International Carers Rights Day to further highlight the worry, stress and anxiety carers in the UK are facing. PillTime also wanted to show support of the awareness day in a meaningful and genuine way and offer people who are worried about taking the right prescriptions a solution.

Campaign results with national reach

AMBITIOUS introduced PillTime to a range of regional and national media platforms and were able to secure some fantastic interviews with Dr Hilary talking about the research on a day of significance for the brand.

Quality earned media coverage was achieved across 11 TV and radio interviews, with the total reach of the campaign over 5 million. The flagship coverage on International Carers Rights Day was ITV Borders who used the interview in their early evening bulletin which reaches close to 100,000 viewers per week.

Paul Stonuary, Head of Marketing, PillTime, added:  “AMBITIOUS are not only a team of great minds and fantastically creative thinkers, they are also an endearing group of people to work with. They took the time to really understand my business and what I hoped to achieve. The results were far beyond what I might have expected.”

For more information about this campaign or our PR, content, social media or digital marketing services, please contact AMBITIOUS via our website or at [email protected].

Bath-based digital media buying agency, SearchStar, and London-based multilingual digital marketing agency, Adapt Worldwide, have announced that they will now operate as one company, retaining the Adapt name while launching a new-look brand and proposition for 2021.

Both agencies had previously been acquired by international localisation company, Welocalize, with SearchStar the most recent acquisition in 2018.

Together, SearchStar and Adapt become a global Digital Performance Marketing Agency, with an expanded list of services focusing on delivering growth for ambitious clients domestically and internationally. Adapt’s service offering now includes: Paid Search, SEO, Programmatic, Paid Social, Content Marketing, Conversion Optimisation and Web Analytics.

Importantly for Bath and the wider area, the new launch of one of the South West’s largest agencies brings with it new and exciting employment opportunities in the digital sector. With growth ambitions of its own, Adapt will continue to hire aggressively at all levels a it seeks to expand its teams across its entire service offering.

Speaking of the merging of both agencies Managing Director, Jon Greenhalgh, said:

“The integration of SearchStar under the Adapt Worldwide name, and launch of a new agency brand is a huge milestone in an incredibly positive period of alignment within the wider digital marketing operation of our parent company, Welocalize.

“It’s the culmination of two years of progress – the coming together of two highly talented teams of digital marketers into an agency capable of delivering ‘growth without boundaries’, domestically and internationally.

“And it’s not only the growth this move will be able to deliver for our clients that excites me – it also creates fantastic opportunities for the team. An opportunity to truly broaden their horizons and take further steps in their careers.

“Importantly, retaining our identity as a distinct digital brand means we have been able to preserve the agility of operating as an independent. And one able to take full advantage of the truly multi-market nature of Welocalize to assemble teams specifically aligned with each client’s needs globally.

“It is with that support that we find ourselves in a unique position to meet the expectations of today’s most ambitious brands, whatever they want to achieve – be it to launch internationally, bolster growth in existing markets, or identify opportunities for global expansion.”

The launch of the new Adapt brand and integration of SearchStar is effective from 13th January 2021.

Welcome to the third and final blog in our series on Augmented Reality (AR).

In case you missed it, our first segment introduced AR technology and its impact on markets across the globe, while our second blog explored AR’s potential when it comes to marketing, today. Today’s final instalment delves deeper into the practical use-cases for AR today, along with some of the loftier examples of where its tech could take us.

Do you remember the introduction of the world’s first touchscreen phones?

If you had one, you were of course, lucky enough to be able to afford an extortionately expensive high-end smartphone. You were also probably unlucky enough to be pestered by people who wanted to ‘have a go’ for themselves.

Arthur C. Clarke said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And touchscreens certainly had enough magic to magnetise the masses. Now, AR is taking a similar step from the realm of the mystic, into reality. And the timing couldn’t be better.

From the everyday, to the extraordinary: there are opportunities for the world’s biggest brands, most digital-savvy marketers and forward-thinking businesses.

From ‘business-as-usual’ collateral to ‘anything but ordinary’

In the age of the smartphone, you could be forgiven for thinking business cards have largely become redundant. But if the line ‘Are you on LinkedIn?’ doesn’t set you on fire, an AR business card could be a stronger opener when encountering potential business contacts in the wild.

Upon scanning your business card, the recipient could be greeted by a showreel video of your products, a short introduction to your business, a tour of your office locations or even live and up-to-date special offers – in fact, there’s limitless potential.

And best of all, creating an AR business card could be a lot simpler than you think. Prototypes already exist which simply work by the recipient scanning a QR code on the card with the camera on their smartphone – no special apps or software necessary! 

It goes without saying: this tech doesn’t need to be contained to your business card. Product catalogues, service leaflets and even your quarterly reports can all be brought to life with some clever AR, making your brand not only more appealing – but more engaging, too.

Slow fashion with a quick impact

For those of us who treat clothes shopping like a competitive sport, aiming for a new P.B. each time we hit the rails, life could become simpler with the introduction of augmented reality.

One option, which many of us will already be aware of, is ‘virtual try on’ – both online, with the assistance of your laptop or smartphone camera, and in-store through specially-AR-activated mirrors.

L’Oreal was one of the first businesses to introduce AR ‘smart’ mirrors at beauty counters, offering consumers the option to try on cosmetics with ease – and my guess is this will only become more prevalent after the hands-OFF-your-face impact of the pandemic.

The gameification of the home (and office) makeover

Virtual try-ons aren’t just for people, either.

If you’ve visited the Ikea website recently (who hasn’t during lockdown?) you can now ‘try on’ furniture, wallpaper, tiles and more to visualise products in your home. And the same principles can be applied to commercial premises, too.

So if you’re selling high-end office furnishings, commercial signage, or even an air conditioning unit, you can easily make your products more impactful by introducing them directly into your customers’ lives – even if it’s virtually.

Location-based experiences

This doesn’t need to be just about chasing Pokemon. You can create a treasure hunt for adults which introduces a new level of interactivity between your brand and your customers anywhere you have a physical presence.

For example, if you’re attending an expo, you can place AR locators around your exhibition stand to deliver information about your individual products and services. You’ll stand out from the other exhibitors at the event, and be able to engage your visitors more effectively, keeping them attentive for longer so your employees can follow up the conversation too. And, again, it’s a great conversation starter.

If your business has a retail presence, you can replicate this experience in your showrooms – or even choose to implement an AR window display which could be used to great effect on social media, too.

A bespoke combination for a bewitching impression

So imagine this. You hear the clunk of your letterbox and head to collect the post. There’s a small, shallow cardboard box with a bold message printed on top.

GRAB YOUR PHONE AND GET READY.

You open the box, and a leaflet drops out: SCAN ME. Opening your phone’s camera app, and capturing the QR code, you’re taken straight to a video, introducing a teaser on an Amazing New Productᵗᵐ.

Upon further inspection, the leaflet introduces you to the brand behind the ANPᵗᵐ – you even watch a video about the team and see they’re local. In fact, their interactive office location map shows they’re just a mile away, where you can pop into their showroom for even more information.

It might sound otherworldly. But at Proctors, we’re making virtual, reality today. We can help you to create an irresistible campaign, whether it’s wowing shareholders with your next quarterly report or enticing new customers with clever interactive artwork in a viral social campaign.

Talk to us, and let’s discuss your possibilities at [email protected].