We are pleased to announce the acquisition of Microserve, a Bristol-based Drupal development company specializing in cutting-edge website design-and-build projects, UX, strategy and website support and maintenance.
The acquisition of Microserve further bolsters Investis Digital’s ability to deliver on the company’s proprietary Connected Content™ approach, which relies on building and running intelligent websites and digital experiences that are rapidly deployed and strategically measured, all of which is underpinned by its secure Connect.ID technology.
Don Scales, Global CEO of Investis Digital, said, “As we continue to see an unprecedented rate of engagement online, embracing a digital-first world is paramount to driving business performance. This acquisition reflects our commitment to our clients to deliver against our 24/7 service model and to help them communicate the messages that matter most”.
Microserve is composed of 24 employees and has developed an exceptional reputation for developing robust digital solutions. Its team of accredited Drupal developers is one of the biggest in the U.K.
“We are so pleased to be joining the Investis Digital family, especially during a great period of growth”, said Dan McNamara, Managing Director, Microserve. “The opportunity to work alongside great talent, access a wider client base and use our technical skills to accelerate the Investis Digital vision makes this partnership the right choice. We’re also looking forward to offering our existing clients a greater breadth of services and strengthening our key relationships”
Like Investis Digital, Microserve has a strong client base, ranging from global blue-chip companies to charities, NGOs, local government and more. This portfolio of clients will add to Investis Digital’s own roster of ambitious clients, including ASOS, Anglo American, Rolls-Royce, Ocado, Heineken, Vodafone and more.
Following the transaction, the Microserve team will serve as an additional footprint in the U.K. and will continue to be based in Bristol. Dan McNamara, current Managing Director of Microserve, will take on a Business Director role leading the integration of Microserve into the Investis Digital business. He will be reporting into Adrian Goodliffe, Senior Managing Director, Europe.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Softech firm Amdaris have won the Great British Entrepreneur Award just 6-months after securing a £6m investment from BGF.
The Bristol company has offices in the UK, Dubai, Moldova and Romania, providing software development teams in high profile industries from Oil and Gas to finance and logistics.
In 2017 the board appointed AgencyUK to help develop a brand and marketing strategy fit for global expansion. Scale has been rapid, with new offices in Dubai and Romania in 2019.
AgencyUK have continued to support Amdaris with their external advertising, internal communications and PR strategy. This award win follows a string of new customer appointments.
One of the tools we used during discovery were sacrificial concepts. They enhanced discussion with participants, and provided a foundation for the upcoming design sprints.
Here, we’ll explore what sacrificial concepts are, and why they are useful.
Sacrificial concepts are a tool originally developed by the design firm IDEO. They are used in early research as a stimulus for discussion, and are different from presenting prototypes later in the design process for the purposes of testing or validation.
Sacrificial concepts are:
Sacrificial concepts can be a powerful tool to enhance discovery. For the health and wellness project, they gave us a deeper understanding of people’s attitudes and needs, which enhanced the research insight, design principles, and set of personas from discovery.
We entered the design sprints with a better idea of how much information different people wanted and why, what type and depth of information they wanted, and how they might want to engage with the service.
Mace & Menter are specialists in service design, user research, discovery and prototyping for public services, health and the third sector.
To find out more, contact us on 020 7193 8952 or email [email protected].
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Georgia Christley has joined the Carnsight Communications team as Account Manager and will work alongside business owner Jessica Morgan and Account Executive Leigh-Ann Hewer; who became a permanent member of the team in March following a three-month internship with Carnsight.
Georgia’s appointment marks the expansion of the permanent team at Carnsight Communications and promises an exciting future for the small business.
Jessica Morgan, Business Owner, commented, “Georgia has natural ability to build strong professional relationships with clients and colleagues alike. She is a positive and driven individual and I am thrilled to welcome her to the business.”
Georgia added, “Having worked within Office Management roles for over 10 years, I felt ready for a new and exciting change in my career. I have always had a passion for writing and media and feel very fortunate to have crossed paths and worked closely with the team at Carnsight Communications on a professional level.
From my initial meeting with Jess and Leigh-Ann, I instantly bonded with them. I just knew I wanted to work with this fabulous team! The company ethos is something that I longed for in an Employer, the flexibility and support from the team is second to none.
I am so excited to be a part of this modern, fresh and innovative company and to learn and develop in PR alongside a great team of professionals who immediately made me feel like part of the team.”
Carnsight is built upon 17 years’ of industry experience in London and now Bath.
Jo Johnson and Steve Stanley appointed following investment
Access Creative College, an independent college for the creative industries, which launched a new state-of-the-art campus in Bristol in 2019, has made two senior appointments. The move signals its continued commitment to education and learning within the creative industries in the city.
The announcement follows a significant year for Armstrong Learning group*, the owners of the College, during which it secured investment from Apiary Capital, announced its new Bristol facilities and welcomed the National College for the Creative Industries (NCCI) to its portfolio.
Jo Johnson has been appointed by Access Creative College as Chair. The former Minister of State for Universities brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in education, technology and the creative sectors. Jo will provide leadership and guidance to the College, helping the team to navigate the educational environment in which it operates during a period of growth.
Steve Stanley has been appointed as Director of Evaluation and Impact. He has worked in education for 33 years. Around half of which, was as an inspector at Ofsted and the Adult Learning Inspectorate. As a former inspector, he brings an aptitude for assessing the impact of the curriculum on learning. As an educator, he has expertise in how education can make a positive difference to the futures of young people and adults.
Jason Beaumont, Chief Executive at Access Creative College, comments,
“Welcoming Jo and Steve to the team is big news for us. They will help us to have a voice on a national scale and deliver education and learning that students want and industry desires.
“The creative industries will be a very different place post Covid and we are aware of the challenges ahead. But, with the creative industries sector having grown at a rate more than twice that of the total UK economy over the last decade, we are confident that it will bounce back.
“By adapting to change, bringing in the right expertise and listening to the needs of our students and the wider industry, we’ll be in the best position to provide meaningful education for the new creative economy and continue our track record of high student achievement and progression.
“There are exciting times to come. As we approach our 30th academic year, we are focused on growth at our existing sites and in new cities. We are adapting our curriculum to support the increasingly digital market and we are extending our commitment to support BAME learners, staff and minority communities within the College network.
“Our passion to help young people from a diversity of backgrounds prosper in the creative industries remains constant, and at the heart of what we do.”
*The Armstrong Learning Group owns Access Creative College and Coaching Connexions and delivers creative industry apprenticeships under licence to NCCI Ltd. as part of a partnership with South Essex College and DfE.
Our industry has just experienced its worst quarter ever. With almost 64% of panel members registering a decrease in marketing spend and two-thirds forecasting a pessimistic financial outlook, July’s IPA Bellwether Report has given us the hard data to prove what we have previously surmised.
Agencies need to respond fast or risk being side-lined. Three areas where I think we can make an immediate impact are: measurability, speaking the CFO’s language and the contribution we can make to our clients’ bottom line.
Clients are faced with a bewildering range and volume of different agencies and Covid-19 has given brands a good excuse to prune – as Ramon Laguarta, PepsiCo’s CEO, also says: “Sometimes a crisis helps [a company] to be more selective and to be more impactful, to generate internal momentum against simplification and focus against fewer and bigger. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
There’s also a growing threat to agencies of clients bringing elements in-house – both as a potential cost-saving exercise and as a response to ‘always on’ marketing communications. As Laguarta acknowledges: “[through in-housing] we can actually get the same or more value for less money, which is obviously a terrific outcome for the company.”
However, brands disrupted by Covid-19 need transformative ideas more than ever. Agencies are in a unique position. DDB founder Bill Bernbach sums it up well, gendered pronouns aside; “We think we will never know as much about a product as a client. After all, he sleeps and breathes his product…By the same token, we firmly believe that he can’t know as much about advertising. Because we live and breathe that all day long.”
Historically, our industry has not been brilliant at drawing a line between what we do and things the brand’s CFO would recognise and value. We now need to get better at developing this dialogue. In tough times this is harder, but even more important.
As agency people, we need to ask ourselves if we really understand the goals and objectives of the finance people amongst our clients. Have we got under the skin of their targets? These will be different to those of the CMO.
We need to establish what our common ground is and communicate our value in their language. Marketing done well can make a significant difference to a business’ bottom line. You only need to look to companies like Coca Cola to see how the intangible value of its brand value underpins the net worth of the company.
How much of the marketing jargon that we use in our industry day-to-day resonates with the CFO, and, in turn, how much financial shorthand do we understand? If having direct access to them is proving difficult, let’s look to our own resources. Are we making good use of our own finance people, for instance? They have all been schooled in same language – use proxies where it’s helpful to do so.
Equipping everyone with a basic grounding in the business side of the industry we’re involved in is important – a course like the IPA’s Commercial Certificate can really help with the fundamentals.
Demonstrating measurement and effectiveness is nothing new. However, given that client budgets won’t be getting back to pre-Covid levels any time soon, marketing departments and their agencies will be under more pressure than usual to deliver tangible results. That means even greater scrutiny for every pound spent.
We are up for that challenge at Armadillo. Our focus has always been on cost-effectiveness – it’s baked into our DNA . We are lean and results-driven and have consistently delivered good value for clients which has led to long-term relationships with clients such as McDonald’s and Disney. Despite working with a major client in the severely-impacted eating out sector, we’ve seen them double down on CRM activity. For example, while other channels have been cut hard, our budgets have grown. That’s mainly thanks to proving strong ROIs on a continuous basis pre-crisis.
We believe the goal should be to have an end-to-end relationship with customer – tracking all the way through from first point of interaction through to purchase, to help influence the decision-buying journey.
Now is the time for agencies to create clearly defined market positions in line with commercials. We need to fulfil our role of trusted advisors, drawing on and demonstrating specialist expertise, experience and performance. We need to stay focused and be even more open to collaboration.
Whilst this is not a time to be naive, we must also try to balance our pragmatism with optimism. The world is not coming to an end just yet. Take our worst hit client in the travel sector. We prioritised pivoting to meet a dramatically different set of challenges – by thinking like stakeholders in their recovery rather than hard-done by suppliers, we’ve seen projects start to flow again far sooner than we might have expected.
Agencies must keep scanning the horizon for opportunities and be prepared to move the business in new directions to stay in the game. We’ve long positioned ourselves as nimble and responsive – those that can now display those attributes will prove invaluable.
This has not been an easy time, but we need to avoid giving in to nostalgic defeatism. A crisis like this could kill agencies off, but equally, if we could get more on the front foot, learn from past successes and fuse those learnings with the good things we’re doing now, this could also be the start of our renaissance.
This article was written by Chris Thurling for the IPA on 17 August 2020.
In the early days of lockdown Bristol Media set up “Pay it Forward”, a collection of offers of free help from our community for those in the region’s creative industries reeling from the economic impact of Covid-19.
With lockdown easing and the focus moving from survival to revival, “Pay it Forward” is now winding down. However, before it closes Bristol Media would like to say a huge thank you to all those businesses that volunteered to help others; those that gave their time and expertise to listen and advise. We had volunteers providing mentoring and business support, HR and legal support, business development and marketing advice to financial tools, all free.
What do you do when most activities stop? The answers are not simple and have involved conversations and many actions to reduce overheads and claim government support, for those eligible. We contacted some of the people involved in the initiative to find out how it went from their side of things:
Simon Barbato, CEO at Mr B & Friends had a huge response from his LinkedIn post, “I was expecting maybe two or three people would respond to my offer of help around positioning and marketing, but I was overwhelmed when I received 19 requests for appointments. I decided to meet with them all, and the conversations ranged from a friendly peer to peer chat to some real advice sought on positioning businesses to survive the crisis. One thing I was particularly pleased with was making introductions from one person to the next and business opportunities maturing from that. I also really got something from each discussion and felt it was a fantastic use of my time”.
Jack Thompson, who specialises in helping agencies with business development, volunteered for Pay it Forward. “In the early stages it was all about coping with the immediate effects of lockdown in relation to business development. There was a broad range of impacts from ‘I’ve lost everything’, through to, ‘we’re doing OK’. I advised talking to current and recent clients, reviewing pipelines and reforecasting for the year, and then looking at what people could do to start some new conversations too.”
“All businesses will have gone through the initial shocks, and they will know where they stand with regard to all the moving parts of their business, so most are now planning for ‘what next?’. Of course easier for some, more than others, depending on how hard they have been hit, but there is definitely a sense that we’re over the worst, so it’s time to think about growth again.
Sandeep Roy, director of Innovate2grow.com, a strategic digital advisory firm reported that “For most companies, lockdown caused a switch to a shorter-term focus; preserve cash and ‘keep the lights on’. Strategic visions went on hold. There was an accelerated focus on digital innovations and a move to virtual models in order to reach, acquire and serve customers online.
As the lock-down relaxes, employers are concerned about liability if employees fall ill after returning to work, and are exploring having teams in low physical contact scenarios. Covid-19 has definitely triggered a rethinking on the future of business and the workplace.”
“I have worked with clients on repositioning their services,” said Susie McFarland, business strategist and mentor, “a lot of businesses have had to move quickly with refocused service offerings, revised financial plans and restructured operating models. I’ve been so impressed by their resolve and determination, not losing sight of why they started in the first place, but keeping true to their core and working from there. No mean feat in challenging times.”
Amy Wilkinson, Disruptive Thinking, another Pay it Forward company said, ”The conversations started as a discussion on how to pivot your sales and marketing strategy in the context of coronavirus, and we ended up discussing topics such as how to build your sales pipeline, how to implement a business development strategy, and how to get started and winning your first clients. We ended up having really honest, open discussions about how we’re all doing at the moment. Everyone was very upfront about what challenges they are experiencing during COVID – it was refreshing.”
James Lucas, Creative Plantation commented on Pay it Forward, “I was blown away with the openness and willingness to chat. I contacted a few on the list around mentoring and coaching for input on my new business proposition. The feedback and inspiration I got back from the discussions was great and gave me hope that after lockdown, the enthusiasm and interest to continue to connect with peers will continue. Thanks to Bristol Media and everyone I spoke to!”
Thank you once again for all the free support via Pay it Forward; in tough times it’s good to know the community support is here. Bristol Media is continuing with our mission to keep the creative community connected. We are offering a series of new events to help businesses move forward. These are in the new online format, book direct via our Events page. We are also supporting networking and business development with online Virtual Lunches, if you wish to join in please contact a[email protected]. We do hope you will join us in the coming months.
Are you a whip-smart, data-driven, digital creative? Do you know your way around Google Ads, love diving into the data, and can’t wait to assess conversion rates? Do you know your metadata from your HTML, your Business Manager from your Ad Manager, your PPC from your boosted post? Are you comfortable managing clients, acting as the face of the company and managing a team?
We are a guerrilla communications business focused on delivering reach for our clients and on our projects, working across tech, lifestyle, and environmental sectors.
We deliver PR, social media, SEO, branding and creative comms to a wealth of clients from start-ups, scale-ups, established businesses and beyond. Each member of our team has skills across these areas but brings a unique specialism to each project. We’re a tight-knit team of passionate, outgoing creatives who love to collaborate just as much as we like to take ownership of each project.
Driving up DA scores rapidly, launching brands digitally to critical acclaim, running ad campaigns which deliver above and beyond – and have trackable conversion… this is our norm, and we want you to lead on this as we continue to grow.
We’d like you to drive our digital activities both on specific projects, retainers, and for the OggaDoon brand itself, product/report launches, deep dives, analysis with recommendations, creative campaigns, and strategic insight. There is also the exciting element of working with online influencers and the digital world to create reach for our clients and their business, alongside inputting on press, social media, and other strategic brand activities.
Ideally, you have 5+ years experience of delivering impactful digital campaigns, with evidence and results to prove it. You are also adept at handling multiple projects at any one time, and like being part of a small team where your work and impact counts. You’ll be confident and comfortable leading teams and projects, getting the best out of people, identifying areas of opportunity internally and externally, and have experience working with a senior team to drive business growth.
For OggaDoon’s business development, you’ll be expected to deliver on personal KPIs for client retention and new business acquisition, transforming OggaDoon’s inbound. Building our reputation for digital marketing will be key, from delivering great work to speaking at events, delivering workshops and demonstrating the impact we’re bringing.
You’ll have responsibility from day 1: not just delivering projects on time, within budget, and achieving client goals, but also managing client relationships and invoicing.
Training is a key part of our OggaDoon culture. Some will be on the job training (OJT), some will be training we’ll pay for, and you’ll be expected to further your own career through your passions by attending meetups, doing online training, and more.
You can advance with this role: there is no glass ceiling and no restrictions. You’ll be a critical member of the team and it’s up to you to create an impactful force, both internally and for our clients, by bringing your expertise.
Our ideal Digital Marketing Manager will have:
We offer more than just an opportunity to stand out in a role that allows you to take control, in a team that lives and breathes marketing, tech and creativity.
We have a ton of benefits:
To apply, please send us a short slideshow that will bring you to life. This must include:
Our closing date is 30th June 2020.
Please send your application to [email protected]
Note: This is not a new graduate role nor would it suit anyone with less than 2-3 years experience. You do not currently need to be in a management/senior role to apply.
The West of England Combined Authority Mayor Tim Bowles has been asked by Government to set up a Regional Recovery Taskforce to identify the challenges and opportunities affecting Economic Regional recovery and renewal from Covid19. The aim of the Task Force is to identify the adverse economic impacts of the pandemic and drive renewal of the region’s recovery that is clear and inclusive.
Under this Task Force are a number of Sector Specific Groups. We’re delighted that Bristol Creative Industries Chair, Chris Thurling, will be joining the Creative Industries and Digital Technologies Group to represent the views of the region’s creative sector.
This provides an opportunity for the views of our members, past and present, to be heard regionally and nationally. It’s also for those views to influence the plans for the SW’s creative sector to recover from COVID19. It’s vital that we gather as many views as possible ahead of the kick-off meeting on Friday 5th June so Chris can share a representative viewpoint.
Please complete this short survey by 5pm on Thursday 4th June at the very latest.
Together we’re greater than the sum of our parts.
McCann Worldgroup, part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) Acquires Synergy Creative
Strengthens Employee Communications & Engagement Capability
McCann Worldgroup has acquired Synergy Creative, one of Europe’s leading employee engagement agencies, in a move which broadens its employee engagement and organisational culture capabilities.
Renowned for industry-leading employee communications and engagement, Synergy was founded in 2006 by Gemma McGrattan, Giles Hicks and Nicky Clark and was recently named ‘The UK’s Best Agency’ by the Institute of Internal Communications and ‘Marketing Agency of the Year’ by The Drum. Synergy’s 40-strong team will continue to operate out of Bristol and London under the name ‘McCann Synergy’.
Commenting on the news, Mark Lund, UK, CEO McCann Worldgroup said, “As we continue to go deeper and further in supporting clients to deliver best-in-class brand and customer experiences, we recognise the crucial role organisational culture and the employee experience plays in enabling it. Synergy was the clear partner for us to boost our offering to clients. Not only are they market leaders in the employee engagement sector, they’re a strategic and creative group with a deep passion for what they do, and we’re looking forward to growing together even further.”
Gemma McGrattan, Founding Director of Synergy Creative, added: “Straight away we knew McCann was a great fit for us. We’re aligned in both being ideas-first, creative, strategic and entrepreneurial businesses, sharing similar values. As experts in an industry that continues to grow globally at a rapid pace, the opportunity to partner with McCann and share their global footprint, is the perfect springboard to take us to the next level.”
Photo caption: L-R Giles Hicks (Synergy), Nicky Clark (Synergy), Andy Jones (McCann), Gemma McGrattan (Synergy), Dean Lovett (McCann)
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