As part of their ‘better business’ product launches, Six has released a CX Mapping product to help businesses focus on the people who matter most: their customers.
The product
Working together with Six, businesses are guided through the process of insight gathering (both internal and external), CX mapping distillation and visualisation, and playback workshops with key stakeholders to explore the map and to determine quick-wins to longer-term priorities. Businesses are given the chance to see what their customers see – the good and not-so-good – and supported by Six to turn this human-based insight into real-world action. This programme can be completed in as little as 6 weeks.
Why invest in CX?
The line between B2B and B2C customer experience (CX) is blurring. B2B customers are now looking for more than just a good product or service – they want to buy into businesses. And they expect consistent, personalised, and human experiences when they interact with organisations.
Getting CX right is about building insight across the customer lifecycle and creating the right business ecosystem to deliver against customers’ evolving needs. Once it is known what customers feel about a business and why, changes can be identified that will seriously improve their view of a business. And where customer satisfaction leads, business growth nearly always follows.
Better business
CX Mapping is the first in a series of offerings that Six are launching. Each one will answer a specific industry need to help brands and businesses connect with their customers on a more human level. After all, whether businesses are talking to an individual or communicating with an organisation, they have one thing in common: people sit at the heart. And this is just one of many ways Six is inspiring brands and businesses to be more human.
A strategic creative partner
Over the past 28 years, Six has partnered with local and global organisations to help grow and deliver value for their clients. And they’ve been doing it in three ways:
It’s this strategic, creative capability, coupled with their CX experience with the likes of bp, Lloyds Bank and St Modwen, which makes Six the go-to agency for customer and user-focused expertise.
Ready to start your CX Mapping project? Or want to find out how Six can partner with your business? Get in touch with [email protected]
Would you love to work on exciting projects for amazing nonprofit organisations? Such as running paid search and social to raise millions for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Ukraine appeal and supporting organisations such as Mind and Samaritans to reach people in need. We only work with socially responsible organisations doing good in the world.
If you’re keen to launch a career in digital marketing, you enjoy writing great copy and have good attention to detail, you should apply to our Digital Marketing Academy Day! You don’t have to have any previous digital marketing experience but you must be excited and eager to learn!
The Academy is a 12-month paid programme where you’ll learn new skills while working alongside mentors, leading to a full-time role.
The first step – apply to join our Digital Marketing Academy Day on Tuesday 24th May, hosted at our central Bristol office on Colston Street. Find out more and apply.
This is a great time to join Torchbox – we’re 100% employee owned and business is booming.
With 81% of people in the UK today saying that creating a well and healthy world is the biggest challenge of the 21st century and 52% of people in the UK saying that they have felt more unwell since the beginning of the pandemic, the immense scale of the task ahead is very clear.
To further explore this growing challenge, last week (April 28th), McCann Bristol and McCann Synergy hosted the second Talks on Toast event of the year, Truth About Wellness.
Hosted by Kathryn Ellis, Managing Partner, Strategy at McCann Bristol alongside Rodney Collins, Director at McCann Worldgroup Truth Central and Chloe Foy, Behavioural Strategist and ACC Coach at McCann Synergy, the event uncovered research based on 10 years of trended global data about the shape, role and meaning of wellness in consumer lives across 26 global markets – uncovering insights around mental, physical, emotional, financial wellness and much more.
Focusing on wellness both today and tomorrow, the research timeline demonstrated huge shifts in consumer behaviour from before the pandemic through to now. A large emphasis was placed on how far wellness has come in the last decade and the importance that is now placed on this for both customers and workforces.
With 74% of people saying they’re definition of wellness has evolved in the past year, what does it mean to be ‘well’ in today’s world? The insights uncovered suggest wellness remains multi-dimensional, however the definition of wellness we are familiar with needs to expand. Rodney talked through the eight dimensions of wellness including; emotional, financial, spiritual and social, with the focus drawing more now on how a sense of lack in one area can negatively impact another.
Rodney commented: “We’re really noticing that in the past 10 years what has shifted is that each of these dimensions appeared to exist in a silo, there was no mention about how ones mental health could impact ones physical health, how the bacteria in our stomachs affect how happy we are, how loneliness increases our chances of developing heart problems, or how the hitting costs of urban ride sharing is increasing environmental pollutants, which in turn are driving higher rates of Asthma. So the wellness conversation today has really become expansive, interconnected and networked.”
The discussion continued by identifying the erosion of this siloed approach, delving into the evolution of the wellness conversation and addressing five key additional shifts brands and businesses should foster and strive for to ensure a positive wellness evolution in the workspace.
Talks on Toast is a quarterly event hosted by McCann Bristol, delivering insight and global research at a local level based on key global topics.
It is easier and more pleasurable to say yes than no, especially when a client’s asking. But if your agency has developed a yes culture, where a handful of big accounts get what they want without question, and for free, it will hit your profits harder than you think.
Of course, say yes to that fantastic new project that will be formally costed and quoted, but not to all those requests that start with “can you just?”
This piece explores the common reasons agencies say yes to client favours, ad hoc requests, and extra work, and how you can break the pattern.
Reason one: The client really appreciates it
Of course, this is the primary motivation to say yes. You think that your client is eternally grateful for all those late-night calls and emails, all those little extras. I hate to break it to you, but they may not even have noticed. And if it’s been going on a while, it’s probably now expected rather than appreciated.
If you want an appreciative client, then produce great work. It will be more impactful, and it is the best base for a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship. And once you stop saying yes, you’ll have more time to produce this knock-out work.
Reason two: We want to grow the account
You hope your willingness to say yes will mean your client gives you more work. But if this work is dependent on you saying yes to extras, this client is likely to be less profitable than others – you’ll deliver this work at the expense of more profitable work or new projects.
It’s essential that you frequently assess your profitability rate by client, otherwise, you won’t be aware which clients are profitable. One client may be 15% less profitable than others, but without this knowledge and with your yes culture! These accounts are likely to grow. And when they do, it’s going to seriously hinder overall agency profits.
It’s black and white, it’s just maths, but it’s hard to see this when you’re staring down the barrel of a big client and the prospect of more work. Keep reminding yourself of these facts!
Reason three: They’re a new account and we want to impress
It’s common to think that the best way to please a new client is to say yes to everything. But your new client isn’t going to love you for doing this; what this does is set the benchmark for how much work you’ll deliver for X amount of cash. So, when you eventually charge what you need to charge to make a profit, they’re not going to like it. It even could cause friction.
If you want to treat a new client, make sure they know you’re treating them and by how much. Let them know you’ve done X for free. Then there is no issue when you eventually charge what you should have been charging from day one.
Reason four: We have a culture of saying yes
We’re no longer in the territory of a yes culture creeping it – it’s here, it’s lived, it’s baked into your agency DNA.
It is so easy for this well-intended culture to creep in. New starters and junior account managers want to keep clients happy. If seasoned pros don’t like saying no to big clients, then nor will someone who is straight out of uni – especially if they perceive their role’s major KPI to be keeping clients happy and growing accounts. There is an enormous temptation to push these client favours through. And the favours won’t just stop when the employee progresses through the ranks, they become an expected part of the client relationship. That culture is then fed back down the chain and it’s a difficult cycle to break.
It’s important to teach everyone at every level to be commercially focused and to understand that the client isn’t always right. Allow junior team members to ask more senior team members when they’re in doubt and arm everyone with data such as ironclad scoping documents and rigorous timesheet data. Teach your team that it’s appropriate to push back and educate them on the best way to do it (with support and factual data.)
In summary
If you fear your agency is in danger of adopting a damaging yes culture, then hopefully, this article has encouraged you to reflect on why and how you might rein this in.
But, saying yes too much is only one factor contributing to agency over-servicing. If you are concerned your agency has a wider over-servicing problem, then you might find our article 5 Reasons Agencies Over-service and how to avoid it helpful. We take a rounded view of other top contributors to agency over-servicing.
Integrated marketing communications agency, McCann Bristol – part of McCann Central – has been awarded CPD Gold by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) for its outstanding professional development opportunities over the last 12 months.
The IPA CPD Gold scheme recognises and rewards agencies who demonstrate a genuine culture of learning, bettering the professionalism, development and reputation of the industry enhancing clients’ brands and agencies’ worth as a result.
Dean Lovett, CEO at McCann Central said: “This is a huge accolade for us. Building a strong learning culture that supports real business objectives, as well as supporting the professional and personal development of our employees is a priority for us.
“Thanks to our people, we have overcome the challenges of the last two years and the business is in a very strong position. Through this continued focus on our people, and their place within our business, we’ve been able to further improve the CPD opportunities available to them – such as our annual Day for Meaning where employees come together to create plans to improve conscious inclusion across our offices and enhance company culture.”
McCann Central is one of just 35 agencies UK-wide to receive the CPD Gold accreditation. Those applying for the award must demonstrate that CPD lies at the heart of their business, building a strong learning culture, in support of real business objectives and the development of employees professionally and personally.
Dean added: “This is also an award for all employees. Their commitment to learning as well as personal and professional development through a very challenging period, is really impressive.”
McCann Bristol provides integrated communications and award-winning creative across a range of best-in-class services including: strategy, research and planning, design and creative, broadcast, digital, PR and social, internal comms and employee engagement, activation and media buying.
What do I know about pitching?
I’m a Business Development Consultant with 16 years experience working in-house and as an independent consultant with digital, technology, and creative agencies, always with a focus on new business.
I dread to think how many pitches I have been involved in directly, but it’s in the 100s easily, so hopefully I know a thing or two about them.
In fact hopefully I know at least 10 things about them, as this is what I’m meant to be writing about.
I’m sure you will have ideas of your own too, so please do let me know if you think I’ve left anything out and then maybe we crowdsource this as a resource to share with members ongoing… something we can open source on the BCI website for any agency to read and take value from… this is not the Jack Thompson show 🙂
Why the pitch process is broken
For me it stems from one simple truth; that agencies pitch all the time and therefore become (relatively) good at it, whereas client side marketers may only have to hold a pitch once every few years, and therefore simply through lack of experience often make mistakes and run an inefficient process for both themselves and the agencies they invite to pitch.
I’m not ‘blaming’ clients though, there is plenty of bad practice on both sides.
And so this article isn’t just about making it better for agencies – both sides win, which is an important thing to consider when it comes to improving the buying and selling of anything.
Time is a precious commodity, and broken though it may be it is the currency by which most agencies measure their value. This whole post is about agencies in particular being more efficient with the pitch process, hopefully winning more, spending less time on irrelevant opportunities, and therefore improving their overall profitability as a result too
I’m sure there are £m’s to be saved across the industry if the pitch process was improved even by only a few %.
Horror stories
Always good to share some pitch horror stories to set the scene, and so a couple of mine which always spring to mind…
The worst one for me was a multi-year 7 figure pitch with a large telecoms company for their eCRM account including the design, build and sending for all their emails across B2B and B2C, a biggie.
We had the B2B account already, and were invited to pitch for the B2C account too, so with the inside track we threw the kitchen sink at it.
This included most of our senior management team and board, loads of the wider team (planning, creative, technical, client services), late evenings, long weekends, multiple rounds of meetings and documents, etc. etc.
We smashed it and won the account, happy days… loads of high fives and I’m sure popping of corks…
Two weeks later we got a call from the client saying their procurement team had been in touch on the back of a request to add us to their supplier list, and there was a clause in their contract with a much larger global agency group that they could not give their B2B CRM account to anyone outside that group.
So we lost the pitch.
Lesson learned?
Always check what the status of the incumbent is. No point entering a fixed race.
My other favourite face palm moment (professionally) was being invited to pitch for a global architectural consultancy’s web design and build project. It sounded like a great project in which we had bags of relevant experience, but this would be have been a big project for us too.
After an initial call with their Marketing Director I rocked up to their fancy flagship London office only to be effectively turned away at reception because I’d gone alone… they took it as an affront that a lowly BD Manager was their only visitor that day, and not the agency’s entire senior management team.
Again a simple mistake which would have been avoided with the right conversation and questions up front.
So here are my tips to help you avoid some of these kinds of situations yourself…
1. Qualification is a 2 way street
Some self-selection is inevitable in the pitch process, i.e. clients will only approach potential agencies based on some agreed criteria for what they are looking for (experience, location, size, etc.) – so clients do come pre-qualified to a degree – but even if this is the case all your initial calls and meetings need to be focussed on ensuring there is a ‘good match’ for both sides.
Both sides need to be asking lots of questions in the early stages of a pitch, rather than just jumping to ‘selling’ and ‘solutions’.
You should ideally have defined your ‘qualification criteria’ for an ideal client, so this is your chance to ask the questions you need to decide if you’re even going to entertain the idea of a pitch. Saying no to irrelevant opportunities early will save you lots of time and energy.
This is not about being a robot and always asking the exact same questions every time you speak to a prospect, but it’s good to have some standard questions to cover off in the early stages so that you can be consistent with the types of pitches you commit to.
I have seen some agencies with a whole scoring matrix, voting systems for SMT, etc. when they get invited to pitch, only going for those which score over a certain %.
Good idea for some, but probably OTT for most, so start with something simple and build from there.
2. You can’t build a relationship through a portal
Both parties need to provide a suitable forum for the Q&A from the outset. For some clients this is often the 1st ‘mistake’ in that the Q&A process is handled at arms length via online forms/procurement portals, or simply via email, with no chance for the agency and client to have an actual conversation.
A good chance to walk away in my experience. Any pitch done at arms length is a massive red flag as far as I’m concerned, although I appreciate there are certain industries and clients where they are a necessary evil.
If you have the ‘inside track’ and know it’s purely a formality then of course it’s probably worth the pain.
But in my experience without the chance to qualify it’s hardly worth starting, more often than not you’ll simply be ‘making up the numbers’ so someone on the client side can show they have ‘gone to the market’, when in fact they had their preferred agency lined up from the start.
3. 3’s company, 5’s a crowd
The polyamorous amongst you may disagree, but the facts speak for themselves.
Only pitch when there are 5 agencies or less involved please, don’t just make up the numbers.
You can do things to increase your odds, and hopefully some of my advise here will help with that, but if you’re consistently pitching against 4 or more other agencies well guess what, you’re only going to win ⅕ or worse of your pitches, and they’re not good odds.
4. Trust in each other
B2B purchasing, which is what all your clients are doing, is heavily reliant on trust.
Clients don’t start working with an agency on impulse, they don’t walk past your office one day and think oh, I need to work with this agency!
So trust and emotions play a huge part – if nothing else the client doesn’t want to choose the ‘wrong partner’ and potentially waste time, energy, and budget, not to mention their reputation, on failed campaigns.
So human relationships are massively important.
Although the initial Q&A is partly to simply ‘fact find’ and assess the suitability, it is also a chance to start building some rapport and work out ‘do we want to work with these people?’.
People being the operative word.
Take them out for lunch, have a beer, play a game of Monopoly with them, visit their factory, buy their products, whatever works for you and makes sense for the given client, but the idea is that the bigger the contract, the more weight I’d put on the ‘getting to know them’ bit.
This needs to involve speaking to the right people at the right time. Yes initially you might be speaking to a more junior member of staff who’s been asked to kick off the process, and they may well be very important for your ongoing relationship, so you don’t want to patronise them by saying ‘can I speak to your boss?’, but you also need to make sure you’ve got access to all the decision makers, to understand them and what makes them tick.
If you don’t get on when everyone’s trying to be nice to each other during the pitch, just think how bad it’ll get when the proverbial hits the fan.
5. Crap in, crap out
The creatives and planners are going to love me for including this one.
Take the time to write a good brief – this is an art – it all starts with a good brief.
Client briefs can often lack the kind of details that agencies need to do their best work, let alone to understand what actual problem they are being asked to solve.
For me, rather than being a chance to moan, it presents an interesting opportunity to flex your strategic muscles with the client early on, for example by suggesting a workshop to fill any gaps for your internal brief.
This isn’t about saying ‘your brief is rubbish’, this is about ‘we have a process and have a few additional questions we need to ask before we brief the team’.
More collaboration = better outcome for all.
6. Protect the crown jewels
If you’re being asked to do all the work in the pitch, please don’t.
Clients’ decisions should be made on relationships and trust – trust in the portfolio, trust via other client references, trust in a solid team and processes, etc. etc.
Pitch work often never sees the light of day anyway – what a massive waste of everyone’s time!
If a client is asking for thinking and creative then either turn it down, or find a more interesting way to show what you can offer… as per the previous point I would always recommend a workshop for a couple of hours as more valuable for both parties than a few days of speculative strategic or creative thinking based on a surface level understanding of the client’s business.
It’s far less of an investment for the agency, and you get to know each other a bit more too.
7. Avoid the ‘aha’ moment
Regardless of what you end up proposing, and how, if the client isn’t involved somehow in your process they have no ownership of the end result, and you are putting a lot of weight on your ability to ‘sell in’ your proposal.
No doubt there are some great agency salespeople who can sell in a great idea and wow a client, but if one of your competitors has had time with the client co-creating their idea, and are also great at selling it in, guess who wins?
If you can build in any kind of co-creation to the process your clients will have far more buy-in to the end result and feel somewhat committed to and excited by the ideas you present.
In worst case scenarios if you don’t do this you end up completely missing the mark, or using a colour which the client can’t actually see, which may or may not have happened to me once.
8. Don’t burn your bridges
I have so many examples of pitch wins which have come back from apparently ‘lost’ situations.
This could be during the actual pitch process where by being a bit tenacious and offering different terms, or heading off any misunderstood objections, that you can sometimes rescue a ‘no’.
But ultimately you are going to lose more than you win, so please don’t burn your bridges.
Client roles change like the wind, and as much as clients you work with can be a rich vein of new business when they move around, so can clients you pitched to but didn’t win.
Always stay in touch, treat them as ‘leads’, and one day they may realise the error of their ways and hire you for their next big project.
9. Copy and paste
This is a classic tactic which can hopefully help you get some value from all those ideas on the cutting room floor.
Big pitches can be a real drain on resources, but can generate so many amazing ideas.
Don’t waste the chance for those ideas to be used elsewhere… if there was one client experiencing whatever strategic challenge they wanted you to solve, there will be others.
And it doesn’t have to be just their direct competitors (who you may have got to know a bit via your research for the pitch); you can think laterally here about where your ideas might also work… similar audiences, similar business models, etc. etc.
If you package up your insights in an interesting way it could be a good piece of content to help attract the next client looking for someone to solve those problems for them too.
10. Don’t use an intermediary
This may be a controversial one…
In my 16 years of agency new business not one client win has come through an intermediary, and I’ve worked with them all.
Of course I’m sure for some agencies they work really well, there’s always going to be the anecdotal examples of the big client which an agency met through an agency dating service.
But I can only speak from experience, and from what I have seen the numbers just don’t stack up.
Create conversations yourself, manage the sales process yourself, and don’t rely on 3rd parties to bring you work.
11. Hire me
How could I not add this cheeky extra tip in 😉
If you think your sales or pitch process could do with some TLC hopefully I’ve demonstrated I can help, and I’d be very happy to offer any BCI members a 1hr chat to go into more detail on their own agency.
I’m not a lead generator, I don’t make client introductions, but what I can do is make you more effective in your sales process from end to end.
You can read more about me and get in touch via my website here www.growwithginkgo.co.uk
Contribute
So do you have any other ideas? Any glaring omissions?
As I said in the intro this should just be the start of the conversation… so please do get in touch with me and share your own tips, and we can start building a resource for all BCI members to benefit from…
BD Meetup
Finally if you are a BD person, or are at least directly involved in the BD function of your agency, you’d be very welcome to join our monthly BD Meetup which you can read more about here:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bristol-business-development-meetup-tickets-275778750667
JonesMillbank, Bristol-based video production company, went stateside with their content last week, featuring on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Last month they captured the session performances of three tracks – CRAWL!, CAR CRASH and THE NEW SENSATION – at The Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow.
The subsequent edit of CRAWL! was picked up by The Late Show ahead of IDLES’ appearance at Coachella, part of their US-wide tour, with notice and the recording delivered to CBS the day of the broadcast.
“Our portfolio of work across music has developed somewhat alongside the commanding ascent of IDLES” said Rob French, Senior Creative at JonesMillbank.
“We have collaborated with them for a few years now and have established a relationship built on trust and integrity – key when an artist has a distinctive ownership of their brand.”
“The band brought such a beautiful energy to these sessions, bearing in mind it was mid-tour and in the middle of three sold out shows at The Barrowland Ballroom. We could barely communicate or see the stage, the light and sound was so intense but it was such a privilege to capture such raw energy so intimately.”
You can watch the feature and the session at https://jonesmillbank.com/work/idles/barrowland-sessions, with the releases of CAR CRASH and THE NEW SENSATION coming in the following weeks.
***
JonesMillbank are a passionate full-service video production company
They work exclusively in-house with a talented team of multi-disciplined creatives, all the while telling authentic stories long before it was cool for a range of clients such as University of Bristol, Battersea, The Royal Mint, IDLES and randstad.
jonesmillbank.com
01173706372
[email protected]
Confidence among agency owners about the future of their businesses has reached the highest level since 2017.
That’s the finding of The Wow Company’s 2022 BenchPress reports, the largest survey of independent agency owners in the UK.
Since 2012, the study has tracked how confident agency owners feel about the year ahead by giving a rating out of 100. Above 50, owners feel confident and below 50, they expect this year to be worse than last year. Confidence has now reached an average rating of 74.
“2021 was the year that agencies bounced back,” writes The Wow Company co-founder Peter Czapp in the report.
After the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the confidence was driven by an increase in turnover with 84% of £1m+ agencies growing fee income in 2021, up from 49% in 2020.
More than half of agency owners increased their earnings when compared to last year and at 53%, the percentage of agency owners earning more than £100,000 per year is at the highest level ever.
The report looked at client work and how agencies charge clients. It found that agencies that work with international clients grow quicker, are more profitable, and their owners earn more.
The findings also showed that winning deals worth in excess of £50,000 is more likely to see agencies performing in the top 25% by earnings and profitability, and agencies that had between 41-60% of fee income on retainer saw the biggest growth in their fee income last year.
The BenchPress report also examined how agencies deal with sustainability and the social and environmental impact that they have.
It found that larger agencies were more likely to invest in impact with 77% of £1m+ businesses spending some profit on positive environmental or social impact compared to 62% of agencies under £1m.
An overall 24% of agencies invest 1-5% of net profit on social and environmental impact, 9% spend 6-10% and a significant 2% dedicate more than 10%.
When it comes to specific initiatives, 71% of large agencies make charitable donations, 48% give time for free to work for charities, 41% are taking active steps to be net zero and 28% plant trees to offset the carbon they produce.
For smaller agencies, the figures are 52%, 47%, 24% and 17%.
Such actions have a direct result on business performance. Those agencies that participate in social and environmental impact initiatives grew quicker, made more profit and earned more last year than those that didn’t, the study revealed.
[Read advice on business as a force for good and how to become a B Corp here]
Despite the positives, the report highlighted several stumbling blocks for agencies including recruitment.
[Sign up for an online event on how to attract and retain the best talent for your business]
Peter Czapp said:
“Recruitment is as hard as it’s ever been and is now the number one challenge facing £1m+ agencies. As you’ll see from our recruitment and retention benchmarks released later this year, not enough is being done to tackle this challenge.
“67% of agencies don’t have a conscious strategy to deliver a great candidate experience, and 81% don’t measure team engagement often enough. That’s a lot of agencies with room to improve.
“Meanwhile, smaller agency owners are struggling to spend enough time working ON their business, rather than in it. The demands of dealing with a pandemic meant they needed to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Many are now struggling to step out of the day-to-day.”
The full BenchPress reports are jam-packed with lots more data plus advice on overcoming the key challenges and how to boost your agency. Download the reports here.
We’re delighted to announce that Armadillo CEO, James Ray, has been appointed one of the three agency heads boosting the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) leadership team and will be joined by OMD’s chief operating officer, Christian Byron and Republic of Media’s head of client services, Gill Jarvie.
James’ role will be as City Head for Bristol, Cardiff and the South West. He’ll serve as a figurehead and champion for the Industry in the region. He’ll engage with, and represent, the outstanding talent in the community, and provide a voice for IPA members in the areas.
Paul Bainsfair, director general, IPA comments “I’m delighted to welcome Christian, Gill and James into their new positions. I know they will provide valuable guidance and expertise to our wider agency community as we continue to recover from the pandemic.
James says: “It’s a great privilege to have been appointed as your new City Head for Bristol, Cardiff and the South West, not least as I have some big shoes to fill. I wanted to start by thanking Mike Leeson for his superb stewardship over the last few years, and I hope I can step up to his high standard.
I’m really excited to be taking on the role. With the uncertainty and disruption of the last few years driving a shift towards a more hybrid and even more accessible mix of benefits and support, there’s never been a better time to be an IPA member – especially for those of us outside of the capital”.
Armadillo joined the IPA in March 2020. We were incredibly pleased to join an organisation that, with over 266 agency members, who are responsible for over 85% of all UK advertising spend, supports and celebrates the best in the industry. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with them over the past two years and are incredibly excited to continue to develop this relationship further as the advertising industry continues to innovate and grow.
Mr B & Friends has welcomed Charlotte Hoare to the team as an Account Director to bring her client services expertise to some of its newest accounts.
Having spent over a decade in London consultancies, from BBH to VMLY&R to Isobel, Charlotte brings a wealth of experience to the agency. She’s led campaigns across a range of sectors for clients such as Virgin Media, Silent Pool Gin, MS Society and Petplan, and has honed her skills in seamlessly bringing client’s visions to life. Among the notable projects Charlotte’s worked on is RSPB’s ‘Give nature a home’ five-year strategic campaign to shift the charity from solely focused on birds to a wider approach to whole nature preservation. She was part of the team for the Savills ‘With us it’s personal’ advertising campaign, designed to reposition the estate agency with a warmer approach increasing appeal to a wider audience and BrewDog’s ‘Rate Beer’ OOH activity across central and wider London.
Mr B & Friends stood out to Charlotte because of its no jargon, no bluff, no added nonsense approach. She says that she got a sense that while an efficient outfit, there was a great sense of culture at the agency and the focus on relationships appealed to her.
Charlotte says, “I came across Mr B & Friends and felt the values reflected mine, and the agency just seemed to be a great fit generally. I’m really enjoying getting stuck in.”
Based in Totnes and working predominantly remotely, Charlotte enjoys throwing ceramics and spending lots of time outdoors when she’s not at her desk. On top of effortlessly juggling multiple projects at work, Charlotte is also organising her spring wedding and daughter’s first birthday celebrations.
Simon Barbato, CEO of Mr B & Friends, says “We’re delighted to welcome Charlotte to our growing team. We’ve had a really positive start to the new year, and I have no doubt that Charlotte will help to contribute to that momentum.”
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