We’ve re-launched!
“Creativity is the Cure ™”
Ted Talker Anne Thistleton headlines virtual event around the power of creativity in decision-making
We’re extremely excited to announce that at Create Health we have re-launched under the banner “Creativity is the Cure ™”. Committed to injecting a dose of creativity into healthcare communications, we kicked off the re-launch with a virtual event headlined by renowned TedX talker, ex-global marketer and Mind Science practitioner, Anne Thistleton.
This re-launch comes 12 months after our management buy-out led by Ed Hudson, managing director, and Phil Blackmore, creative director. It’s been an exciting year as we also secured an investment of £500,000 from Creative Growth Finance from Creative England in October 2020.
“We firmly believe that Creativity is the Cure™ for the future of healthcare communications – it’s behind everything we do at Create Health, and we’re really excited to share this more widely. Brilliant ideas aren’t just good for business, they make a positive difference to healthcare professionals and their patients. We need to appeal to the subconscious mind, not the rational one, if we truly want to change behaviour, and our creative campaigns have shown this time and again,” comments our creative director, Phil Blackmore.
Underlining the proposition, ex-The Coca-Cola Company marketer and Mind Science expert, Anne Thistleton, took the role of Keynote Speaker at our virtual re-launch event, sharing her wealth of insights around Mind Science and how to unlock behaviour change by appealing to the subconscious mind. A massive thank you to those who attended the event as well as those who took part in the panel discussion around the challenges of reaching the audience and the power of creativity: Anne Thistleton, Karen Hand, global marketing director of ConvaTec; Craig Wightman, chief design officer of Kinneir Dufort, and Andy Milsom, CEO, Kanjo App.
Now 14-strong, we welcomed a raft of new hires last year including Polly Buckland, strategy director, and its first in-house animator, Matt Sugrim. Carrie Fick joined us as marketing manager last month too. We’re thrilled to unveil our new branding and a refreshed website as part of the re-launch.
Ed Hudson, our managing director, added: “Marketing theory is based on the assumption that minds – especially scientific ones – think rationally and make decisions along rational lines. But that’s not true – as is underscored by Mind Science experts like Anne. We’ve seen countless times that it’s the truly creative campaigns rather than the rational ones that have the biggest impacts on brand and buying behaviour in healthcare. Decision-making is led by the sub-conscious mind, and that’s why our most creative brands, grounded in insights, are the most powerful ones.”
Vision 2030 has opened up tremendous opportunities for KSA organisations to take their place on the world stage over the last five years.
But, when first impressions are so important, how do you project a brand that connects with a culturally diverse, global audience? How do you convey your unique heritage in a contemporary way? And how can you remain distinctive across a fast-changing digital landscape?
Digging deeper than surface aesthetics
Success relies on connecting your brand to the needs, aspirations and psychological motivations of your audiences. The words and images you use must resonate in their minds. They must feel that you share your purpose with theirs.
But words can be empty if they are not delivered by someone they trust, so the tone and personality you use to tell your brand’s story is important. It must be clear and authentic, spoken with heart and passion.
Above all, you want your brand to be distinctive. It should set you apart from others who tell the same story. It must lead with conviction and clarity. Only then will your brand create advocates in all who work for and do business with you.
Thinking ‘digital first’
There was a time when brands were created and then translated into digital applications as an afterthought. Today, in a world where the primary touch points will almost certainly be online, a ‘digital first’ approach to your brand is essential.
Of course, this raises important considerations for your logo. It should remain crisp and distinctive when rendered on the smallest of screens.And it’s worth considering how your brand narrative and tone will remain authentic in videos and infographics. How will it sound through digital assistants? How will it connect through augmented reality and artificial intelligence? What will the experience be online, in apps, and at virtual trade events and meetings?
Once you have explored the brand digitally, you can confidently translate it into what your audience experiences in the real world.
Connecting authentically
Creating brand authenticity requires a balancing act:
1. Be distinctive in your organisation’s purpose and personality
2. Be true to your rich and distinct heritage
3. Integrate into the global business community.
Visually, your brand will bridge the gap between the incredibly unique and individual cultures of the MENA region, which celebrate delicacy, nuance and complexity, and global brand dynamics which favour bold simplicity.
It is advisable to include semiotic audience research – the study of shapes, colours and images – as part of the development process, as these can take on different cultural meanings across diverse audiences. Reaching an understanding of these differences can help avoid any unintended miscommunication through the visuals you apply to your brand image.
Tone of voice should be driven by similar considerations. To connect pan-culturally, it is best to speak with clarity, whilst retaining your distinctive personality. At all times you will want to appear confident, but approachable.
Creating strategically
We have talked about connecting your brand to the needs and motivations of your audience. To achieve this, your process will need to be grounded in thorough audience research. Not only will this drive the best creative outcomes, it will also help your team to make decisions based on an objective view, rather than personal likes and dislikes.
Equally though, brands that successfully achieve resonance are a true reflection of their organisation and people. Your will ideally represent who you are now, and who you want to be. No matter how appealing your brand, if your people aren’t ambassadors, holding its values and purpose in their hearts, it will be unauthentic.
Involving everyone in your organisation – at every level – in the discovery and development process will create engagement and a passionate shared ownership of the brand you create together. The objective should be to make sure that everyone is able to both understand, and be a living embodiment of your beliefs, aspirations, purpose, ambition and approach.
For your audience, this means that the promise your brand makes through its marketing is realised when they do business with you in person.
Planning for success
We have merely scratched the surface here. At P+S, we use a whole host of further considerations, applications and insights to develop brands for our international clients.
From tone of voice (how you speak to the world) and SEO (how you increase your voice’s reach) to the materials and platforms you choose to convey it all. Getting the right brand message, to the correct audience, at the optimal time, is the key to developing a brand that not only attracts but thrives long-term.
In short, creating and communicating a successful global brand requires strategy, creativity and technology. If you can harness all three, the world is yours.
If you’d like to tell us more about what you’d like to achieve from your brand, and explore what we can offer you in terms of developing and promoting it, please get in touch today via [email protected].
Over the last year, we’ve learnt the hard way that businesses who can react, pivot and adapt are far more likely to survive than those who rigidly remain on a single-track traditional strategy. In the current climate, this means that significantly more pressure now lies on business teams who are responsible for effective use of budget and creativity. There is a need for them to pull off greater impact for less budget, or an entirely new commercial direction with a leaner team.
It is a huge challenge and now more than ever, we’re seeing the true value of experience coming into play. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’, it’s been bandied around the business world since the 1970s and has numerous different interpretations. But what it essentially comes down to is the importance of choosing the safe pair of hands when bad things happen, the value of going with the established choice that’s less likely to fail because it’s been around for longer and has been thoroughly tested.
The original saying obviously referred to software (and is since horribly outdated) but it does still ring true today for people in the creative industry. Quite simply, in these difficult social and economic circumstances, now is the time to be working with seasoned experts, those with many years of creative and commercial experience to draw upon to solve the challenges faced by businesses.
So here are our three core reasons for choosing experience right now to move your business forward:
1. Speaking the same language
Senior creatives have been around the block enough times to speak the same language as any client. They can demonstrate empathy for how work needs to be sold in, the challenges they might face and can help manage stakeholders. That’s not to say, of course, that more junior members of team don’t bring huge benefits to the table – knowledge, enthusiasm, a valuable different perspective that comes with youth, to name just a few. But when times are tough, you just can’t underestimate the power of being able to draw on previous experiences and turn that understanding into action.
2. Fewer and faster
Experience means there’s no need to layer teams when working on a project, which is vital when dealing with reduced budgets or rapidly changing projects or timescales. Teams can be kept really lean with senior team members doing the work rather than overseeing it. This delivers cost and time efficiencies to clients that they will really appreciate. In most creative agencies, the senior members of the team tend to be light touch with clients – there if you need them, but not directly involved on a day-to-day basis. At Sparro House, ours are hands on – no bloated hierarchy, just experience put to good use.
3. Flexible innovative thinking
Experienced industry veterans can and should, at the right time, challenge the thinking of clients and inspire them to take a different direction if it’s the right thing for the business. Don’t make the mistake of confusing experience with outdated thinking or a safe pair of hands with a boring or traditional approach. The right seasoned veteran can uniquely combine agile out-of-the-box thinking with the confidence to act that only comes with years of experience. Now is the time for innovation to flourish as businesses try a new direction but any risks can be tempered by placing creative responsibility into the hands of those who’ve been there and done that.
Dr Matthew Freeman, Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, has founded Immersive Promotion Design Ltd., a new marketing consultancy for the world of Extended Reality. It supports Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) businesses to better communicate with their audiences about the magic of immersive content.
The company builds on sector-development research funded by StoryFutures Academy and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, and brings together expertise from the BBC VR Hub, Limina Immersive, StoryCentral, Raucous, Bath Spa University and beyond. Last year the team partnered with The National Gallery, Anagram and Studio McGuire to build research-led and audience-tested promotional campaigns for live VR and AR experiences. This led to the creation of new promotional strategies, prototypes, industry bibles and teaching resources for how immersive experiences can be better marketed to today’s audiences.
Talking about Immersive Promotion Design’s success so far, Matthew said: “Many people have recognised the enormous potential of immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality to transform the creative industries as we know them. Up until now, however, the immersive sector has struggled to reach bigger, more mainstream audiences – the kinds of people used to streaming Netflix but not yet interested in VR headsets.
“The challenge is obvious: How do you communicate the magic of being in a VR experience via social media, posters and trailers? Immersive Promotion Design Ltd. provides a step towards establishing a new promotional language for VR and AR, opening the door to a bigger, more diverse immersive audience. We are very excited to see where this journey takes us.”
Visit www.immersivepromotion.com to find out more.
“For an industry that supposedly gets positioning, we generally do a pathetic job at doing it for ourselves.” Those are the straight-talking words of David C. Baker who joined us for a fascinating session earlier this month discussing how creative and digital businesses can nail their positioning statement to get the right clients.
Described by the New York Times as “the expert’s expert”, David C. Baker is an author, speaker and adviser to entrepreneurial creatives worldwide. He has written five books, advised more than 900 firms and keynoted at conferences in over 30 countries.
Here’s a summary of David’s brilliant talk with essential tips on how to come up with a positioning statement that works for your creative or digital brand.
Why bother with positioning?
The Wikipedia definition of positioning is: “the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors and different from the concept of brand awareness”.
Your positioning is vital if you want to win the right clients and for David C. Baker that’s all about coming up with a positioning statement that’s deeply focused on what you do and exactly who you do it for.
You need to go into a positioning exercise with the right attitude, David said. If it’s just about keeping busy, that’s a very bad reason, he warned.
Thinking about your positioning in terms of meeting the growth goals of your company is potentially a good reason but only if the goals are properly measured and sustainable.
A great reason for strong positioning is if it gives you the ability to deliver more effective work as a “deep specialist” and to charge a premium price.
But for David, the main reason he likes his agency clients to have a strong positioning statement is that he can’t write a marketing plan without one.
Types of positioning: Horizontal and vertical
David says there are two types of positioning to consider.
Horizontal positioning is offering a specialist service such as annual reports or targeting a specific demographic such as older people.
The benefits of this approach are that you get lots of variety and the opportunity to work with larger clients.
You also don’t have to worry so much about client conflicts and your business will have a greater immunity to economic downturns than if you were focused on a vertical sector.
The second option is vertical positioning which is targeting a particular industry sector such as financial services, tourism and hospitality.
The advantages of this approach are that it’s easier to find clients and they will often take you with them if they move jobs.
It’s also easier for your reputation to spread as communities tend to organise around verticals, with conferences, trades and awards etc, and the money you can make tends to be higher because verticals place a premium on deep expertise.
Testing your positioning statement
Once you’ve decided on your positioning statement, you should test it by answering some key questions.
David grouped them as “quick tests” and “better tests”.
The quick tests
Is it the typical “more better” nonsense?
By this David means you don’t need to use superlatives in your positioning. Being “more better” than someone else is not a strategy. “Just state clearly what it is you do”, David said.
Could a prospect self-select themselves into or out of the running?
Prospects should be able to read your positioning statement and know straight away whether or not your business is right for them. This means you won’t waste your time on pitching unsuitable clients.
Do you have an unfair advantage in maintaining the claims you are making?
Do you have some things that other people don’t have? Perhaps it’s unique research insights or you’ve delivered the service many times before.
Are the claims readily verifiable to an outsider before they hire you?
David said: “There are a lot of things that your clients love about you, but they can’t really test the veracity of those claims until they become a client. So it’s good, for example, that you’re responsive or that you listen carefully. But how can they verify that because there’s nobody out there saying ‘you know what, we tried to listen to our clients, and it just slowed things down, so we don’t do that anymore’.
“There are a lot of things that are true that are not a part of the positioning discussion, they are just there. You want to distinguish between why clients come to you, and why clients stay with you. They stay with you because of some of these other things, but that’s not why they come to you in the first place.”
Would you let a client of yours get away with a lack of precision in your claims?
You probably have some clients who want to make claims about their product or service that you don’t think are courageous or strong enough. But if you’re really honest, are you doing the same? You should be “bold and unique” with your positioning, David said.
The better tests
How many competitors are there who occupy the same expert positioning as you?
David said that the number of competitors in your geographic client area should be between 10 and 200. If it’s fewer than 10, your positioning is probably not viable unless you’re starting something very new and you’re the first, or one of the first, to market. If you have more than 200 competitors, David advised that you should work on narrowing your positioning down.
How many client prospects are there that you could address?
David said that number should be between 2,000 and 10,000. Many will probably not hire you, but could they hire you if they wanted because your positioning fits their needs?
10 immediate, unrehearsed “aha” moments between peers
David gave the analogy of sitting on a train and striking up a conversation with a fellow passenger who he discovers works in marketing like he does. “I know a fair bit about marketing but I still expect to have 10 “aha” moments from the other person because they are positioned in a different space than I am. I want to have 10 of those “aha” moments in a 10 or 15 minute conversation.”
Your positioning needs to be such that you surprise others in your sector. If not, David said, then you’re probably not positioned well enough because you haven’t focused in an area and dived in deep enough.
Do you never run out of topics to write about?
When writing blog posts, do you sometimes think “I don’t know what to write about that is interesting or hasn’t been written about by lots of other people already?”. If the answer is yes, that’s a sign that your positioning probably isn’t right. “The deeper and tighter your positioning, the more things you can write about that are interesting to a smaller segment of the population,” David said. “Positioning is an exercise in exclusion, not inclusion.”
How to write a positioning statement
David shared some key tips for writing a positioning statement.
You do [this] for [these]
Your positioning statement needs to answer two questions: What do you do? Who do you do it for?
Keep it snappy
Your positioning statement should be no more than 12 words. Don’t use a lot of adjectives or adverbs and avoid superlative statements. ”Be brutally objective and rational in your statement. Let other parts of your website provide the ‘we’re the best’ and ‘we’re amazing’ messages.”
Scare yourself a little
Smart positioning decisions are made when people look at everything they do and decide honestly what should be included. That might mean leaving something out because there are too many competitors or it’s not your best work. That’s a painful decision to make”, David said, but scaring yourself a bit is no bad thing.
Socialise but don’t democratise
When coming up with your positioning statement, it is important you bring everyone along by involving your team, listening to feedback and answering questions well, but you (the managing director/chief executive/president etc) have got to make the final decision.
If all else fails, reluctantly build a sub-brand
If you settle on a positioning statement but you realise you only have very limited examples of how you fit and you’re nervous about jumping in with both feet, David said you can create a sub-brand. This is useful for a generalist business that is doing lots of things for lots of people but wants the advantage of a tight positioning.
Let us know how you get on with writing your positioning statement by tweeting us at @Bristol_CI.
Join the next Bristol Creative Industries event on 2 March: Clubhouse as a media platform.
The new year has continued on a high with Mr B & Friends appointed as the primary brand and marketing agency following a pitch.
Regina is part of the Sofidel Group, one of the leading global manufacturers of tissue paper for hygienic and domestic use. Regina is its most recognised range of products, with Blitz household towels, Seriously Soft and Seriously Strong toilet tissue and XXL kitchen roll among its core brands. The agency will lead the brand, creative and campaigns for Regina as it seeks to grow its share of the UK market.
Simon Barbato, CEO of Mr B & Friends, says, “We’re delighted to be chosen as Regina’s lead brand agency in the UK. The appointment marks a strong start to the year for us and we’re pleased to add Regina to our growing portfolio of FMCG clients.”
Mr B & Friends previously worked with Regina UK on a standalone project for pet cleaning towels, before being invited to pitch for the primary range at the end of 2020. The agency will be providing expertise in strategy, communications and campaign planning, as well as developing creative and digital campaigns and delivery.
Graeme Bralsford, Marketing and Sales Director at Sofidel UK said, “Having previously worked with the Mr B & Friends team, we felt they understood our brand and values. We love their clarity of thinking and creative excellence. We’re excited to see what we’ll achieve together.”
Executive Creative Director at Mr B & Friends, Steve Richardson, says, “We love FMCG work. Sofidel have some much-loved household brands and to renew acquaintances with the client team has provided brilliant chemistry and spark to our work. Looking forward to 2021 and beyond.”
Work has begun work on the account with virtual introductions to the Regina team and agency partners as well as developing campaigns for the coming year.
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.
Bristol-based technology business, Sparkol, has made a strong start to the new year with a new brand created by Mr B & Friends.
Sparkol provides its customers with innovative software and video tools that help create inspiring presentations and storytelling, together with studio services that turn the mundane into the magical.
Mr B & Friends were appointed to deliver a new brand positioning and identity to increase its marketing effectiveness, whilst retaining the well-established product brands as part of its portfolio. The agency delivered this project through its Beta brand acceleration programme, which resulted in a complete rebrand in less than eight weeks.
The strategy centres on the new Organising Thought: Turn up the WOW! This idea conveys the product capability, creativity and audience reaction of this fast-growing SaaS and services business.
Senior Designer Nathan Crosby commented: “Our creative vision was to capture the spirit of the Sparkol company and the capability of its products. Expressive imagery alongside a bold type and colour system to make a real impact. The new logo design captures the reaction to Sparkol’s products in a clever graphical way.”
Sparkol products are already used in over 160 countries by educators, promoters and communications professionals. The brand refinement further strengthens Sparkol’s position as it targets wider adoption.
Zoe Taylor, Sparkol Owner and CEO, says, “Mr B & Friends helped us to get to the crux of what makes Sparkol special and translated that into a brilliant brand idea, visual identity and tone of voice that really stands out. We exist to help our users achieve surprise, delight and wonder, and the new brand really brings that to life.”
The agency has delivered the new brand strategy, identity, guidelines and key assets during lockdown working virtually with the client. The project was managed by Brand Producer Matt Joy and strategy by Planning Director Adam Partridge.
Simon Barbato, CEO at Mr B & Friends says, “We love the Sparkol story. It’s a story of hard work, innovative thinking and great entrepreneurship. What Sparkol has achieved globally from a modest Bristol base is incredible and we are proud to be able to deliver this platform for their ongoing growth and success.”
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.
POPcomms recently completed work on developing an entirely new interactive sales tool for Bacardi Martini to be used by the reps across the UK when meeting with customers.
The challenge
Bacardi own 62 spirit brands and is the world’s largest privately-owned spirits company.
Sales reps for Bacardi will regularly meet with a diverse customer base from bars, pubs and clubs to restaurants and hotels and within those establishments, they may be meeting with bartenders, managers and business owners, all with different requirements and understanding of Bacardi and its brands.
Meetings might involve introducing the customer to a new brand they haven’t stocked, giving advice on how to upsell premium brands through to in-venue activations, sponsorship, branding and best practices as well as the latest market research and data.
For each Bacardi brand they have a wealth of valuable content from tasting notes, heritage, brand videos and guidelines, associated cocktails, social media assets, as well as business case information.
In the short time a rep has with a customer they often struggle to have more meaningful conversations around any challenges Bacardi can help them with and introducing them to new brands, activations and market research that they can profit from.
Finding the right content at the right time depending on a customer’s needs and the conversation was very difficult.
How we helped
- Our objective was to help those sales reps have more productive and profitable conversations with customers no matter their role or business.
- We wanted to help Bacardi’s customers get more out of those meetings by arming the reps with a more customer-focused narrative and giving them a tool with instant access to relevant and timely supporting content.
The result
From our workshops with Bacardi and their sales reps we mapped out a customer narrative and created an interactive sales tool that let reps personalise the conversation no matter who they were talking to.
The tool gave them access to valuable content, important to the customer, within a couple of taps.
This meant reps could quickly access what mattered to the customer such as market research, best selling cocktails, up-selling best practice, latest brand activations etc. within seconds saving precious time meaning more time for the customer.
Sales reps now have exactly what they need, precisely when they need it.
