In the past 3 years, eCommerce businesses have experienced the impact of a number of global crises.
Right now, we’re still living through the aftermath of a global pandemic, rising inflation, and the war in Ukraine. And these global events have shaken even the most successful eCommerce brands.
Over the past 6 months, retail brands have started losing some confidence in marketing spend amid worries of a bleak future. However, knee-jerk reactions can do more damage than you think.
There are opportunities for those brands willing to invest. And to help you through these turbulent times, we have released a new guide – Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce.
You can download it free here. Or scroll down to find out more about everything included in the guide before you make up your mind.
In our latest guide, we take a closer look at the global crises impacting eCommerce brands, how brands can react and excel in these uncertain times, as well as the top 5 trends defining the eCommerce landscape in 2022.
It covers…
Digital advertising revenue reached $189 billion in 2021, jumping 35% – the highest increase since 2006.
But as we’re sure you’re aware, the picture is not rosy for many retail brands. Inflation, war, pandemics, and supply chain shortages have all created a difficult terrain for brands to flourish.
Consumers have responded to these crises by cutting back on their spending. The less people are willing to spend, the less people will be actively clicking on your ads.
The future eCommerce landscape looks tough. But there are still opportunities out there if you focus on the marketing trends that are emerging. It’s these trends that will help you succeed in 2022 and beyond.
You can get a free copy of the guide here. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a message.
First up ADLIB. Our very own Steve Kay has been promoted to MD of ADLIB 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
12 months ago, we set out to achieve a lot in preparation for this move. The result of which has seen us deliver our best ever financial year, the development of the ADLIB x enable group proposition, organically growing a group headcount of 55 talented and lovely people, all which comes without any need to scale and sell and best of all we’ve built an infinite business model that opens career opportunities without ceilings and a stakeholder profit model for all to enjoy.
Steve’s been with ADLIB for 9 years and instrumental to our growth and success from the day he joined. Alongside Steve is an incredible management team that have stepped up to support him in realising our future ambitions.
Next up is enable. It’s taken time to pull together the perfect leadership team that balances energy, opportunity and structure, but we now have it, and it’s been well worth the wait.
Tim Macmillan, enable’s Founder, brings his unstoppable energy and the ability to create opportunity, Oliver Howson has been promoted to be our new MD. Ollie flips seamlessly between the vision and driving the team’s success, whilst Shannon Matthews rejoins the business to bring the structure that underpins everything. enable is bursting with energy and opportunity, the team is growing fast, B Corp is underway, we’re excited for how the next 12 months will unfold.
As for Nick, he’s here to help our new MDs and leaders, to be the best the business has ever had (his words).
Viva ADLIB & enable.
To support the expansion of our Bristol team and better serve our growing list of clients, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve opened an office right by Bristol Temple Meads station.
Eight of the 21-strong team will now be based in the new office, with Operations Director Mike Sharp heading up the Bristol space.
He says of the opening: “Our mission is to be the happiest paid media agency in the UK. We believe that happy people do great work. It’s brilliant to open the Bristol office because we know that our people want to be back in a shared environment, both for their own mental health, and their ability to work closer as a team to deliver for our increasing client-base in the Bristol area.”
We are actively recruiting to fill roles across the business as we respond to increased demand. Having recently been recognised as the Best Small PPC Agency in Europe and praised for our ‘team-centric’ approach, if you’re passionate about paid media, we’d love to hear from you.
For more information on the roles available – based in Bristol, Exeter, or remotely – visit www.launchonline.co.uk/careers/
Leading independent brand and creative agency Mr B & Friends is celebrating its 16th birthday with a significant senior appointment as it embarks on an ambitious five-year growth plan.
Ellie Wilson will join the business as Managing Partner, bringing her expertise in managing high performance agency teams and building long term client relationships to Mr B & Friends.
Wilson is moving from Taxi Studios, where she worked for eight years, most recently holding the role of Operations Director. At Mr B & Friends she will join the senior leadership team and will be working with Client Services, Operations and Finance to ensure the business is in optimum shape as it eyes expansion.
Wilson’s appointment is crucial as the agency seeks to expand its presence at home and abroad to accelerate the growth of the business. Over the last 18 months, Mr B & Friends has seen a rapid increase in activity across existing client business, while securing a number of new clients including OVO, Britvic, Marsh and BMT. Increasingly working with more international clients, such as InterContinental Hotels Group and Sofidel, has ignited the agency’s ambitions to further its reach in a number of key cities.
With a host of clients already based in London, a new office there is a natural progression. This will be followed by a base in West Coast US close to the HQ of its sister company Noble, while a further presence in SE Asia is planned for 2025 to complete the trio.
Back in the South West, Mr B & Friends is due to move into a new HQ at Whitefriars in Bristol in July, offering more space for its growing Bristol team. The agency team across all departments will be offered the chance of secondments and relocation to the new locations as they are established.
The plans coincide with the agency celebrating 16 years in business. Still focused on delivering brand expertise, Mr B & Friends has attracted an enviable client roster of consumer and B2B brands seeking brand strategy, identity, communications, internal communications and creative services across some high growth vertical markets. The growth plans will see head count within the business more than double to 70 employees by 2026.
Founder and CEO Simon Barbato says, “This has to be the most exciting phase in Mr B & Friends history. We have engineered our business to deliver superb brand consultancy with creativity for ambitious clients while delivering a sustainable business model to encourage future growth. I am delighted that Ellie is joining us and will help spearhead the expansion of the business. She brings a huge amount of talent and experience in all levels of agency management, which will enable me to focus on our growth plans. The future is something we’re all excited about.”
Managing Partner Ellie Wilson added, “I’m thrilled to be joining Mr B & Friends at such a pivotal point. My conversations so far have confirmed that we’ve got an outstanding team and firm foundations in place to take on the expansion. I’m looking forward to playing my part and ensuring we all enjoy the journey.”
Employee engagement is an efficient business strategy. Happy, engaged, and resilient staff is the ultimate goal, but it’s easier said than done.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to employee engagement. It’s a mix of rewards, recognition, wellbeing, and community-building. Yuup provides a bespoke solution to each of these concerns surrounding employee engagement:
Employees are the heart of your business and the reason you exist. They’re also a significant investment, so it makes sense to invest in them as well.
Yuup offers a solution for employee engagement that goes beyond traditional perks such as free lunches or flexible working hours.
Based on research into what employees want from their employers, Yuup provides businesses with an innovative way to engage their teams by giving them recognition and rewarding them with things to do that are enriching and personal whilst stimulating the local economy and supporting small businesses.
Yuup is an online marketplace that offers a range of experiences that are perfect for businesses both big and small.
From team-building days to performance rewards and from staff wellbeing experiences to ways to celebrate big wins. It’s a way for businesses to engage their staff in ways they may not have been able to before.
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
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.
At Varn we have had so many questions and queries related to the importance of using video as a marketing tool from our clients, we thought it would be useful to share some of the latest thinking on why video is so vital in 2022 and the powerful role video can play to optimise your SEO efforts.
We have brought in the experts from Bristol-based video agency Life Media UK to explain why video is such a key player in your marketing mix (and not just for SEO either!)…
At Life Media UK, we understand that with a strong video strategy and a high level of execution, video can achieve incredible results. The potential for video to connect you with your ideal client becomes even more powerful when you optimise it with the SEO tactics that Varn will explain to you shortly… but first…
Here’s why video is your best bet when it comes to marketing in 2022.
Fortunately for us and our clients, video shows no sign of slowing down; the average consumer now watches 19 hours of online video per week, with YouTube reaching more viewers than any TV channel on the planet. All of these video-hungry eyeballs gives you, as a business, the perfect opportunity to reach people exactly where their focus is.
While we’d all love to give each of our potential customers a face-to-face sales pitch, it’s not always possible; but video can be the next best thing. Communicating with every single one of your prospective buyers on-demand, answering their questions, delivering compelling social proof and engaging product demos can only be done through the power of a great video.
88% of people would like to see more videos from brands in 2022. Simply put, you should be marketing with video because that’s exactly how your customers want (and expect) to be marketed to.
The real value of video comes from its ability to drive sales like nothing else. We’ll let Varn explain the SEO value in a second, but in addition to turbo-charging your organic traffic, video can also boost sales from your paid campaigns by as much as 100%!
Once you’ve got users to your site, embedded video content can also increase sales by up to 144%, making conversions easier and campaigns more impactful.
Social media was built for video, and it’s now the most popular form of content by a country mile. Engagement with videos on Facebook is almost double that of text or image-based posts, and 1 in 4 Instagram users have made a purchase after seeing an Instagram story.
It’s not just your website and social media that feel the benefit of video marketing – 71% of sales professionals confirm that video emails outperforms text-based emails, as video gets your message across in a quick, succinct and engaging way.
We know how important return on investment is. With 87% of marketers who use video seeing a positive ROI, video is becoming one of the most reliable forms of marketing around, as well as the most impactful.
We know that 75% of searchers don’t scroll past page 1 of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) so making sure you are up there in the rankings, on page 1 is really important. Without a doubt, creating video for your website can dramatically improve your ranking results on Google and positively affect your SEO efforts. We know that the search engines love video and that’s because people searching love video and are increasingly consuming more and more video.
Creating video is a fantastic tool to target keywords in the search engines. With an engaging video it is likely that people will spend more time on your website and this can increase something we call ‘dwell time’. According to Search Engine Journal dwell time is defined as
We know that increased dwell time will mean the Google bots will identify your video as valuable content and this means better rankings for your website.
There is some interesting data on the value of video from Wordstream and here are a few stand out stats for us:
Launching in May 2022, YOU. is a unique community leadership programme designed to support young changemakers and business leaders in the creative industries through peer-to-peer coaching.
YOU / Culture & Creativity is one of two industry specific cohorts launching on 5th May. The programme runs over 8 weeks with all participants learning coaching skills together, combined with real-world leadership experience by coaching and being coached to support each other’s individual challenges.
The commitment is only 2 hours per week to attend online group coach training sessions with an additional 1 hour for peer to peer mentoring sessions arranged at your convenience.
Peer to peer mentoring ‘pairs’ (one business leader matched with one young changemaker) will provide a positive space for mutual learning to practise and refine coaching skills and support each other’s individual challenges and opportunities.
The programme is being delivered by Tomorrow and North Somerset Enterprise Agency, with all places fully funded through the UK Community Renewal Fund.
CHANGEMAKERS. Young people (18-35yrs) who are looking to make a change. Maybe explore a business idea, learn skills to develop a creative project in their community and currently living in communities in the North Somerset region.
ORGANISATIONS. Employees who are purpose-led leaders, managers or supervisors who are looking to improve their leadership skills with the tools to adopt a coaching approach in their work.
We are looking for 15 creative leaders who are looking to make a positive impact in their organisation or team culture; and 15 creative young changemakers who are exploring future creative careers.
In a rapidly changing world, entrepreneurs, changemakers and leaders of the future will need to be able to coach. Coaching skills form a valuable part of any leader’s repertoires of management tools, aiding effective working relationships with diverse teams and individuals. A coaching approach can enhance performance, improve working relationships and develop communications skills for the benefit of any future leader.
So, if you are an individual who is looking to break into the creative industries; or you are a business within this sector, looking to make a positive change, this programme is designed for you.
For full details, to contact us or apply now via www.youbethechange.co.uk
PR expert Jessica Morgan has been a Bristol Creative Industries member since 2016 when she founded Carnsight Communications. She speaks to Dan Martin about her business journey, the importance of flexible working, how BCI has benefitted the business and her tips for getting your story in the press.
“Around 20 years ago, I started working in advertising in London. After a few agency mergers, I ended up working at Proximity which is an amazing agency. However, I had come from a small, incredibly creative ad shop, and now I was at a big agency. I was at a transition point in my career and the PR consultancy that used to work for Craig Jones, the niche boutique agency I was at, approached me and asked if I was interested in doing some PR instead.
“I was told about 50% of the job would be similar to advertising because it’s still about building relationships, communicating and getting messages out there, and 50% would be totally different. My CEO at the time said it would be another string to my bow and so I made the leap.
“I joined an agency called Pumpkin, a specialist in agency PR, in 2009. I was there until 2015 when prompted by my daughter being about to go to school, my husband and I thought that after 15 fantastic years in London, we wanted something different. We didn’t necessarily want our children to grow up in London and we’re both from villages. Cornwall, where I’m from, was calling me, and my husband’s from Kent. We compromised with the Bristol area. I studied at the University of Bristol and I absolutely loved it. It was great to move back.
“In 2016, I started working for myself. I was on maternity leave and had my first client who I worked with during evenings and weekends. Early on a brand specialist suggested I think about a brand name rather just going under my own name. I settled on Carnsight Communications. ‘Carnsight’ was the name of the house in Cornwall where I grew up.”
“One of the biggest challenges was that it was just me. I knew early on that I wanted to work with other people but when cashflow is tight at the start, you can’t employ a second person. I had to find ways to work with others, be that client meetings, co-working or networking, so I had people around me to bounce ideas off.
“Another challenge was doing everything myself. I did get an accountant to help set up the business, but everything else was me. That was something I had to learn to balance well. How much time do I spend pitching to journalists or updating my website?
“In terms of finding clients, I’ve been lucky with my network. I had my contacts from London and and I knew some people in the west. However, I still needed to know more people and networks like Bristol Creative Industries have been very useful. Someone suggested early on that I join Bristol Media [the former name for Bristol Creative Industries]. It wasn’t expensive to set up my profile. I very quickly had people reaching out to me after seeing my profile and four became clients. It was really helpful.”
“It started with me thinking that I wanted to create a business I’d really like to work for. Ever since I’ve had children, I’ve worked four days a week. It’s really important to work hard, but I feel my team is probably more productive because we do fewer hours. My ambition is for everyone in my team to work three or four days a week or whatever suits them and the business. If they work four days, they are paid for full time work.
“The nine to five, Monday to Friday is a construct. It’s something that has evolved. If we were going to start again, would we still work it like that? Or would we be flexible and fit in more outside passions and time off? I feel I can offer people something that’s more suited to the work/life blend. I don’t talk about work/life balance. We don’t just work and then stop and do home life. During the day, we do things like take a personal call or go to a doctor’s appointment.
“This approach has enabled me to work with a variety of people. For example, I’ve worked with an amazing consultant who could only give two days a week for a certain amount of time and that was absolutely fine. I’ve also worked with MA students who need to do a certain amount of work and a certain amount of study. That has worked really well too.
“My approach has opened up the talent pool to more people and set the tone for the business.”
“Relationships in PR work best when there’s mutual respect between the client and the agency. I’ve said ‘no’ to people because I felt they were not the right type of client for us. I strongly believe that if they don’t buy into us and our approach from the start, they’re probably not going to be satisfied at the end.
“This needs to be a sustainable business that people are delighted with the service from and that people enjoy working for. Lots of places don’t get that balance right, so I wanted to create it.”
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“Posting wherever your target audience or peers can read your commentary is really valuable. Also, the content doesn’t just sit there; BCI actively uses it by posting it on Twitter and LinkedIn and sending it out via newsletters. It’s a great way to get your message shared.
“I’ve also attended Bristol Creative Industries events, such as the member lunches, and met really interesting people. It’s nice to feel connected to other local creative businesses, especially during recent times when we haven’t been able to meet face-to face. It’s a good way to keep tapped into what’s going on. It’s a great community.”
“You need to think about why you’re doing it. Why are you doing PR and what do you want to say? I think people often start with the fact they want to communicate without stripping it back and thinking about what they actually want to say.
“We start off new clients with a ‘three lens messaging session’. We get all the key messages written down and ensure that we know exactly what we’re saying, it’s clear and there’s a story behind what the client wants to say.
“Make sure you’re already in the process of communicating that story through any channel available whether that’s free social media or other content.
“Before doing PR, get yourself ready. For example, are you happy with the copy on your website? You need to be ready to face the outside world and take enquiries before you send your first press release.
“It doesn’t start with a press release, it starts with talking about yourself and your story and what’s different about you.”
“We always assess if a story is newsworthy. For example, a new website isn’t very interesting or particularly newsworthy, but the fact that you’re rebranding and relaunching could be more interesting. I often see stories I think are lazy and are what the agency desperately wants to say rather than something that’s interesting for the outside world and what journalists want to write about.
“I still hear all the time about the scattergun approach where people send press releases to everyone on a massive media list. All that does is give PR a bad reputation and make journalists cross. You need to research which journalists could be interested in your message, whether they are still at the publication and if they are the right person to contact.
“I also think people often don’t treat each PR push as an opportunity to communicate broadly. They might have a story that’s great for local media but that’s all they do. However, people are often doing brilliant things that could be of interest to the national media. You need to think wider. It’s very easy to get into the habit of just communicating with the same group of people every time.”
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