When it comes to digital agencies, a high percentage of inbound leads come from prospects who are seeking a new partner after their current agency has let them down. As such, most of these ‘new’ clients are frustrated, let down and/or have had a poor experience with another agency that has underperformed and underdelivered.
The trouble with this is that as an agency owner, it can be easy to forget that your competitors do retain a ton of clients who are happy and content with their service, and as the competition, you only see and hear of the negative experiences.
And if you (and every other agency out there) only witness the bad experiences and negative sentiment, and you base your sales pitch off this, then you’re saying the exact same thing as everyone else…
So, in order to be successful in the pitch room, you need to be realistic about what clients *actually* want to be hearing from your sales pitch.
As a digital agency coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of digital marketing agencies and have witnessed thousands of pitches over the years, and when it comes to the pitch room, it seems most agencies seem to be saying the same thing.
Thanks to comments made by their competitions’ former clients, agency owners can have a warped and distorted view of what the market needs, wants and cares about when it comes to choosing a new agency partner.
If the only inbound leads we receive are from the 1% of our competitor’s clients who are dissatisfied, disgruntled and traumatised by their past agency experience — our view on the world might be a little warped and we can be tempted to think that we should differentiate our agency based on this anecdotal insight.
In reality, it’s likely the other 99% of our competitors’ clients, and any prospective clients for that matter, aren’t tainted by a negative agency experience and couldn’t care less whether you’re a “trusted advisor” or “an award-winning agency” — they just want someone who knows their product and their industry and can help them grow their business.
With this in mind, you can appreciate that building your pitch around the negativity you hear about other agencies, isn’t going to appeal to the masses, and certainly won’t make you stand out from the crowd — despite your best intentions.
Bombarding your prospects with all the same ‘differentiators’ as your competitors like “we believe in partners, not clients” or “we’re platform agnostic” will get you lost in the wash, and any clients you do land, are more likely to be the notorious red-flag, difficult-to-please ones.
So, how can you beat this?
In order to be more successful in the pitch room and win more clients, start by changing your perception of what a prospective client actually wants from an agency. By doing this, you’ll be able to offer up genuine, impactful reasons for a client to work with you, rather than the same old reasons they hear from every other agency in the pitch.
To do this, start by concentrating on specialising. Niche down your offering and tightly define your market positioning and target audience. By doing this first, you’ll understand who you are really talking to, what their broader pain points are, and how you can connect with them by detailing genuine, meaningful differences between you and your competitor.
Then, build on this foundation and follow Doug Hall’s advice to redesign your sales pitch.
Hall advises agencies to ensure their pitch does three things: 1) Demonstrates an overt business benefit to the client, 2) Includes dramatic differentiators between the competition and 3) Includes proof that they’re qualified and experienced enough to deliver on the promise. Hall’s research of over 8000 propositions discovered that the high performing agencies who pitched with this approach had an average win rate of around 53%.
*I recently put together an article detailing Doug Hall’s three-step method to improving your sales pitch and winning more clients. READ: Increase Your Win Rate By Up To 40% With Doug Hall’s Advice
At Digital Agency Coach, my team and I have helped hundreds of digital agencies achieve stratospheric growth within their business by changing the manner in which they source and convert their inbound leads.
As agency owners, anecdotal feedback from your competitors’ disgruntled clients will distort your view on what your clients actually want and need from you. Instead of pitching the genuine uniquity and benefit of what you have to offer, you align yourself with everyone else in the pitch room and try to sell exactly the same thing as all the others.
Now I’ve shared the secret, it’s time for you to avoid this common pitfall, change your view on your client’s pain points and start to grow your agency — one successful pitch at a time.
If you need support or guidance growing your agency and would like personalised, 1:1 help achieving your goals, please Get In Touch — my team of dedicated coaches and consultants would be delighted to help.
One recent study* found that companies who oriented their services and operations around customers, employees, and partners experienced 6.5 times the profit growth compared to those that didn’t.
Despite this evidence for the power of customer centricity, we know that far too many companies are under-investing in customer experience.
That’s because being customer-centric is easy to say, but hard to put into practice, and even harder to know if you’re on the right track!
As a User-Centred Design company, we’re on a mission to help organisations thrive through employing better customer-centric practices.
That’s why we’re inviting companies that run scaled services for customers to join a study that we’re conducting in collaboration with Google, into how companies orient around their customers.
In exchange for contributing to the study, they will receive a benchmark of their customer-centricity score against the rest of the market, plus some unique insights into how to put together a programme of low-cost improvements, free of charge. All we ask is that companies commit to completing a survey by mid-November.
The deadline is the end October, so sign up to become a contributor here https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
We’d love YOU to be part of the study because companies that deploy good user experiences that meet human needs know that improvements in loyalty, revenue and market share follow.
We work every day with organisations to execute programmes that embed User-Centred design into their operations. This takes time and care, but the results are not only impactful in the short term, but set organisations up for sustainable success, and an ability to ride-out storms that may occur in the future.
We’re working with Google to solve this. Through this unique study and campaign that we’ve devised, we’re looking to support organisations in investing in the initiatives that will help them become more customer-centric – and thrive.
By participating in this study as a contributor, you will be joining Europe’s top 200 brands including Farfetch, Europcar, Toolstation, giffgaff and Burberry.
Please sign up here, and we look forward to working with you
https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
*https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/interactive/business-of-experience
Gather Round’s second co-working space is now open at 15-16 Brunswick Square, St Pauls.
Purposefully designed for creatives by creatives, the new space supports up to 90 creative professionals; inspiring creative thinkers and doers to connect, collaborate and thrive.
Gather Round is a growing family of soulful, creative workspaces, designed to foster a positive community of like-minded creative people through an open and supportive culture. Gather Round’s flagship workspace, at the Cigar Factory, Southville, opened its doors in 2018 and has since become a hub for creative minds.
The newly renovated grade II listed building in Brunswick Square, St Pauls, looks to build upon their success and expand the creative network across Bristol. The new site will house freelancers, self-employed and micro-businesses, from the surrounding areas of St Pauls, Montpelier, Easton, St. George, Kingsdown, and beyond.
Nestled in the heart of the vibrant St Pauls, the neighbourhood is renowned for its heritage and cultural significance, as well as thriving community spirit. Founders Ben Steers and Jason Smith hope to mirror this ethos within Gather Round’s doors.
“Good culture comes from great people. We’re conscious about the kind of people and businesses that share our spaces; we look for ambitious individuals and companies that share our values of creativity, community, culture, character, kindness and integrity. – Jason Smith, Co-Founder of Gather Round.
The Georgian terrace has been carefully considered to work for the diverse needs of the creative community. It boasts flexible areas with fixed and casual desks, a private 5-6 person studio, meeting rooms, hang-out areas, communal kitchen tables and quiet areas for thinking. It also has a dedicated public event space with room for 50-60 person events.
Membership options are flexible and transparent, with no hidden extras or nasty surprises. Whilst none of the memberships have lengthy tie ins, signing up to a co-working space can feel daunting. This is why – for a limited time only, they’re offering the chance to check out the new space for yourself with a free day pass. Click here to get your free pass.
Andy Nairn, who has been named the UK’s number one brand strategist for the past three years, joined us for a fascinating and entertaining event to share insights from his new book, Go Luck Yourself: 40 ways to stack the odds in your brand’s favour.
In the book, Andy explains how the history of marketing and advertising is full of brands that stumbled across great ideas by accident or turned misfortunes into huge successes. During the event, the co-founder of advertising agency Lucky Generals highlighted some examples and outlined the lessons for creative companies. Dan Martin summarises his insights.
Opening his talk, Andy Nairn explained that we have a strange relationship with luck in the UK. “Other parts of the world find it completely natural to talk about luck and it’s a perfectly acceptable part of business conversation,” he said, “In the West, we’re a bit snooty about the whole thing. We think of it as a bit primitive and not to be trifled with.”
The negativity around luck was cemented in Victorian times, Andy said. The Industrial Revolution and the Protestant work ethic created the belief that if you were rich, you were successful because you had worked really hard for your money and God had smiled upon you, but if you were poor, it meant you hadn’t tried hard enough, you were work-shy and you should try harder.
That attitude around only hard work can generate good results still prevails, shown by the blurring of work and personal lives during the pandemic, Andy said.
“We can all think of situations where working an extra hour hasn’t given us a creative breakthrough and it can actually sometimes make it worse. Working hard means we’re stuck in the middle of it and what we really need is to get some fresh air and space around us.
“The book says yes, hard work is a good thing but you also need a bit of luck. The more you think about luck and the more you’re conscious of it, the more you can do to increase the chance of it coming your way. If you just deny that luck exists, it’s very hard for you to do that.”
There are 40 tips in Andy’s book that fit under the following four themes:
You might not realise it but you are highly likely to have assets in your business that you are not taking full advantage of. Andy used three non-business examples to illustrate his point:
Many businesses are guilty of not appreciating what they’ve got, Andy said. Brand history, heritage and provenance are often neglected by brands but talking about the history of your business, where it’s from and why it’s called what it is could be a valuable benefit to your marketing and other business activities.
Other examples include the data your business holds and the window display in your business’ offices.
And what about your logo? Could that be used in a different way?
Andy’s business, Lucky Generals, was asked to come up with an advertising campaign for Amazon that worked in multiple countries. The answer turned out to be a simple but very powerful one that was inspired by the company’s existing smile-shaped logo. As the Lucky Generals website says: “We hit upon the simple idea of heroing Amazon’s iconic packages and the epic journeys they make, to put a smile on the faces of people around the world.”
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To illustrate this point, Andy highlighted a 10-year study into the nature of luck by Professor Richard Wiseman. As part of it, he gave a group of people a newspaper and asked them to count the number of photographs. The unlucky people took around two minutes whereas the lucky people took just three seconds. The reason was that on the second page of the newspaper was the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.”
The study concluded that lucky people are good at constantly looking for opportunities beyond what they’re working on or the thing they’ve been told to do.
This can also be illustrated by the world of science, Andy said. Several important discoveries have been made accidentally and of the most famous is Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin after spotting some mould that had accidentally developed on a plate.
Diversity of teams is important here too. It’s easy to recruit people who are the same as you but that can mean you’ll just come up with the same ideas. However, if you take on people from different cultures, backgrounds and experiences, “it gives you a much better chance of striking it lucky” and spotting opportunities you might never have discovered.
There are many examples of businesses converting a bad experience into a good one. One brilliant one is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an early character created by Walt Disney in 1927. It was popular but a contract dispute with his producer led to Disney quitting work on the cartoons. On the train home from a meeting, he came up with a new idea. It developed into Mickey Mouse, the most successful cartoon character of all time.
“We’ve all experienced our ideas being pulled, budgets being cut, timings being changed and clients changing their minds, but what we have to do is go again and come up with something that is even better, like Walt Disney did,” Andy said.
“The best companies don’t just deal with a bit of bad luck, it’s almost like they go running towards the bad luck. There’s a good energy that comes out of that.”
Steve Jobs was known for killing off his own products (the iMac killed the Macintosh and the iPhone killed the iPod) because, as Andy said, “his attitude was, if I don’t kill them off, someone else will.”
There are also some brands that take on taboos and talk about them directly. Bodyform and periods is an example.
Others take what could be seen as an annoying product flaw and turn it into a positive. Think of Guinness and “good things come to those who wait”.
When working with a big brand, Andy said he goes to the “darkest corners of social media” to find the negative conversation about that brand. “The jokes and nasty comments often have a truth and by acknowledging them, you can own the joke, turn it on its head and turn against those people.”
Andy’s last point is about deliberately building luck into your processes. He illustrated it with examples from music.
What similar techniques can you build into your business processes so you constantly generate ideas?
Be lucky!
The next Bristol Creative Industries online keynote is with Anne Thistleton, marketing veteran and former strategy lead for The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa. She will share easy and practical lessons from mind science to make sure your audience really hears you. BCI members get £15 off tickets. Book your place here for the event on 21 October.
Aardman Animations is the latest brand to join the speaker line up at the Digital Gaggle conference, taking place at Bristol’s Watershed Cinema on Thursday 28th October.
Gavin Strange, Director & Designer at Aardman Animations, will kickstart the conference with his session titled ‘Trying To Get Ahead Before We Get A Headstone’.
In this GIF-filled talk, Gavin will share his tips for finding the time, inspiration and energy for creativity. He’ll also move around quite vigorously and gesticulate wildly the whole time. It’ll be loud, silly and hopefully energising.
Gavin joins an already stellar lineup with speakers from brands including LinkedIn and Caring in Bristol on the bill for the digital marketing event.
This is the 12th Digital Gaggle conference, organised by digital marketing agency Noisy Little Monkey and supported by t&s creative communications, Somerset Design, and Launch Online.
The purpose of the event is to provide professional marketers with the skills and inspiration they need to improve their digital marketing strategy; fueling them with the knowledge and creative fire to make sure that their online activity has an impact on the bottom line of their business.
Sessions at the next event will cover a variety of topics, including: content strategy, SEO, crisis comms, conversion rate optimisation and creativity. The content of the talks at Digital Gaggle are best suited for marketers working in B2B, Professional Services or eCommerce industries. But all are welcome!
The conference is being run both in-person and online and ticket prices vary depending on how you choose to experience the event.
For more information about the conference and talks, visit the link below.
https://www.digitalgaggle.co.uk/conference/digital-gaggle-october-2021/
The Social Mobility Commission (SEC) has launched a new sector-specific toolkit to encourage socio-economic diversity and inclusion in the creative sector workforce.
It aims to widen access to the creative industries for people from working class backgrounds in an attempt to tackle a “class crisis” in the sector.
The socio-economic diversity and inclusion: toolkit for the creative industries, developed by the Social Mobility Commission in partnership with creative industries businesses, offers practical support and guidance to creative employers on how to identify and remove invisible barriers that arise at every stage of the employee journey.
According to new research, just 27% of the creative industries workforce comes from a working class background, compared with 39% of the wider UK workforce. For the advertising and marketing and music and performing arts sub-sectors, the percentage of the workforce from a working class background falls to just 23%.
The SEC said that “the unique structures of the creative industries workforce are driving this imbalance, with factors including the high numbers of ‘professional’ jobs within the sector, an entrenched reliance on freelance workers as well as an abundance of unpaid internships creating additional barriers to entry for those from low socio-economic backgrounds.
“Disproportionate numbers of those in senior roles who attended private school or Oxbridge may also have served to perpetuate understandings of cultural ‘fit’ and accepted behavioural codes within the creative industries, presenting an additional barrier to those from low socio-economic backgrounds.”
Those who have contributed or endorsed the toolkit include the BBC, BFI, UK Screen Alliance, Youth Music British Fashion Council, Museums Association, British Institute of Interior Design and the Publishers Association.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries said:
“A working class background should never be a barrier to a successful career in the creative Industries. We want to increase access to opportunities across the board as part of our plan to level up. This new toolkit will help support creative firms become more inclusive and give people the chance to forge a successful career in these exciting sectors.”
Caroline Norbury, CEO at Creative Industries Federation, said:
“If creativity is to shape a better future for all, then it has to reflect the diversity and breadth of experience found across the country. Ensuring opportunities exist for creative individuals to thrive, no matter their background, is an important step towards achieving this. The Social Mobility Commission’s toolkit is a critical resource for addressing the unacceptable imbalance of socio-economic backgrounds found in the UK’s creative industries.”
Farrah Storr, social mobility commissioner and editor-in-chief at Elle UK, said:
“It’s been great to see so many within the industry collaborate on the development of this toolkit. For the whole creative sector to remain vibrant, it is vital that we tap into the full potential of the whole population, not just a privileged few.
“The creative industries create the culture of the nation, which in turn necessitates full participation from the entire nation. As organisations adopt the actions set out within this toolkit to make socio-economic inclusion a reality, we will become an industry that is both rich in diverse viewpoints, experiences and stories as well as an industry that is built to last.”
Heather Carey from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and Work Advance said:
“As we rebuild following the Covid-19 pandemic, it is vital that we widen access to opportunities created in high-growth, high-skill parts of the UK economy, like the Creative Industries. Our research provides definitive evidence on the causes of class imbalances and sets out an ambitious and wide-ranging programme of change to enhance social mobility into the Creative Economy. Government and Industry must seize this moment, as we emerge from an unprecedented crisis, to address the long-standing inequalities in the Creative sector and to grasp the potential offered by diverse talent in the UK to cement our creative excellence and competitive advantage, globally.”
The Social Mobility Commission is hosting a public launch event on Monday 11 October, chaired by Farrah Storr, SMC commissioner and editor-in-chief of Elle, and featuring a discussion with industry insiders: Jamie Gill, CEO of ROKSANDA and executive board, British Fashion Council; Della Hill, creative lead at Literature Wales and Emily Jones, senior producer at Sage Gateshead. Register for the event at SocialMobilityWorks.org
Heather Carey will present the findings of PEC’s new research report: Social mobility in the creative economy: Rebuilding and levelling up?
Bristol Technology Festival (BTF) has unveiled a packed schedule for its tech showcase event, taking place during the week of October 11-15.
Now into its third edition, BTF is an annual celebration designed to bring together events, people and communities to share, learn and explore technology developments in the southwest region. Events will encompass a range of sectors from green and sustainable technology to legal and finance.
This year’s schedule includes a number of highly anticipated events, of which there are more than 50 spread across five packed days.
The theme which wraps around many of the events through the week is ‘changing the face of tech’, with the emphasis on taking tangible action beyond simply talking about a lack of diversity and inclusion. As well as demonstrating the best of what the area’s tech space has to offer, BTF 2021 aims to bring together like-minded organisations ready to inspire wide-reaching change.
It is not too late to get involved. For individuals and organisations interested in attending or hosting an event, there is still time to book tickets and submit proposals.
Softcat headlines busy BTF 2021
BTF 2021 would like to thank Headline Partner Softcat for its indispensable support of BTF 2021.
Looking ahead to the event, Rob Parkinson, CIO at Softcat, commented: “We are delighted to be involved in the 2021 Bristol Technology Festival. Bringing together local technology communities and shining a light on all the innovation the region has to showcase is an important way to drive collaboration and industry growth.
“The last 18 months have been tough for many industries, but technology has come through as an enabler and has made many re-think how they interact and do business. As the impact of technology continues to grow, forums like the Bristol Technology Festival have never been more important and we are pleased to be supporting it.”
Event organisers are also grateful to Deloitte for sponsoring the Bristol Technology Festival Launch Event, on Thursday October 7 which will be held at Engine Shed.
Here, the exclusive launch evening will be a chance for senior leaders and technology influencers from across the region to network, share ideas and see each other in person, with speaker contributions coming from the likes of Moneyhub, Deloitte and Softcat.
Changing the face of tech
Among the many highlights of this year’s festival is a fireside keynote chat with Antonia Forster.
Antonia is a Unity/C# games and software developer, specialising in immersive experiences such as AR, VR and XR. In 2017, her record-breaking TEDxBristol talk was delivered to a live audience of 2,000 people and has since gained over 92,000 views online.
A year later, Antonia was nominated and shortlisted for Nature’s John Maddox Prize, in recognition of her work as an LGBTQ+ speaker and activist. She has also been named one of Bristol’s Top Nine “Women to Watch” in STEM, and has appeared in numerous magazine, radio and television features.
The talk with Antonia is scheduled for Monday October 11th, 12:00-14:00, at Engine Shed.
It is expected to be one of many events held throughout the week that inspire both more women to pursue careers in the tech sector, and organisations to provide greater opportunities and promote diversity.
What else to expect at BTF 2021
Diversity is the name of the game when it comes to the group of volunteers helping to coordinate the festival.
Among them are representatives from Hargreaves Lansdown, Newicon, TechSPARK, and Engine Shed, with events throughout BTF being crowdsourced from organisations across the city of Bristol.
These include tech companies, public bodies, schools, community interest groups and charities, with events open to a huge variety of guests – from tech professionals and businesses to individuals wanting to know more about the area’s digital industries.
Between them, a huge variety of discussions and other activities will be open to attendees:
This year’s Bristol Technology Festival will also witness the launch of the Festival Community Partner initiative. Here, businesses have the opportunity to become one of 50 community partners, with all funds invested helping to secure the long-term future of the festival.
For more information and to view the schedule for BTF 2021, visit www.bristoltechfest.org
To submit an event proposal, complete the form here.
Join us on Thursday 21st October for a lunchtime Keynote with marketing veteran Anne Thistleton.
We all know that our mind governs the way we see, understand and interact with the world. But until recently we didn’t know how we actually processed all of the incoming data to make sense of the world. Instead, we learned to accept the fact that sometimes we made useful connections and sometimes not.
With the invention of brain scanners in the 1980s and their extensive use for that past several decades, experts have now gained insight into how our mind truly works, how we process information and how we make decisions. Consequently, new marketing concepts from Neuroscience, Behavioural Economics, Neuromarketing, etc. are becoming plentiful. And books, articles, videos, talks, blogs, even neuromarketing consulting and research companies abound. But very few are explaining the basics in simple terms, and very few are clear on the implications for us. What should I do tomorrow to apply this new knowledge to deliver better impact and results for my clients?
Tickets are priced at £30+VAT for BCI members and £45+VAT for non-members.
Anne Thistleton is the Founding Partner of LIGHT Consulting and has spent over twenty years as a Marketing Practitioner in the field of Mind Science. While leading strategy for The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa, she pioneered this work to first re-vitalise relationships (and the business) in the South Africa townships then to provide the foundation to the Open Happiness campaign. Since then, she has worked across the world and across industries, developing specific marketing-focused Mind Science applications, and then testing and improving them with multi-national companies, advertising agencies, foundations, even political parties.
Over the years, Anne has worked with many of the world’s leading cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists and behavioural economists all focused on what does it mean to marketers and creatives, and how can we apply it now. By using her expansive marketing experience, she has been able to identify and make practical the most relevant and valuable aspects of Mind Science for consumer and B2B marketers.
Book your ticket to the event with Anne Thistleton here.
Workforces in the creative industries are at risk of becoming more unequal unless efforts are made to improve diversity and inclusion.
That’s the warning by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Diversity following an 18-month research project with King’s College London and the University of Edinburgh.
The resulting report, Creative Majority, publishes a framework of five guiding principles which it says will lead to immediate and long-lasting change. It also makes a series of recommendations to the government and businesses.
The UK’s creative industries remain unrepresentative of the population as a whole, the report says.
Straight, able-bodied, white men living in London are only 3.5% of the UK population, it highlights, but “this small minority still dominates the creative sector, and in particular occupy a vast number of the most senior creative roles”.
Chi Onwurah MP, co-chair of the APPG for Creative Diversity, said the coronavirus pandemic has deepened this issue with fewer creative organisations and job opportunities for diverse talent.
Disabled people, younger workers, those not engaged in higher education and mothers are among the employees hardest hit by the pandemic. Individuals from a minoritised racial group have also been hit hard. Employment in the arts and entertainment sectors for women in those groups has fallen by 44%, more than any other group in any industry.
“Without action, we risk exacerbating inequalities further in the creative industries and an entire generation of talent – the future of the sector – could be lost,” Onwurah warned.
As part of the research, roundtables were conducted to gather evidence about diversity and inclusion in the creative industries. Among those participating were Sam Friedman, associate professor of sociology at London School of Economics and commissioner at the Social Mobility Commission, who said:
“In most of these industries there’s a kind of historical legacy of who’s done this kind of work in the past and how they’ve been able to embed, even institutionalise, their own ways of being that still, in the present, are able to shape taken-for-granted ideas about who is appropriate to promote and progress, and that’s basically the legacy of white, privileged men in this country in almost every elite industry.
“What’s being valued is a misrecognition of merit that tilts in favour of behavioural codes and forms of self-presentation that dominant groups and yes, people from privileged backgrounds but also this is hugely racialised and gendered, around acceptable ways of being in the workplace.”
Robert Adediran, EDI consultant and former executive director at London Music Masters, said:
“There’s a strong sense that everyone who is at the top is there because they are the best people for the role and that’s very damaging because it prevents us from looking for talent elsewhere.
“In music, particularly classical, there’s a sense that the art form has reached a pinnacle, that it could not possibly get any better than it already is. Again, that is very dangerous because it robs one of the key drivers for diversity and inclusion, which is to make the art form better. There isn’t the drive to bring new people in to change things and to push a more creative output or a better creative output.”
Miranda Wayland, BBC head of creative diversity, said:
“We can’t really be effective until we tackle the question of what ‘good’ really looks like. I can sit here and come up with different metrics about how diversity of thought and diversity of inclusion in our recruitment practices are really at the heart of it, but if those people who are making decisions aren’t really thinking about what good looks like, no initiative, no scheme, no target that we’ve all been imbedded in supporting over the last 10, 15, 30 years, is going to make a difference.
“We need to break the illusion that ‘good’ only comes in a certain package, from a certain background, with a certain title and a certain destination.”
The report said the creative industries have many lessons to learn from how society has adapted to big changes in the way people work.
Working from home, collaborating remotely and new safety measures show that “change, on a massive scale, is possible in a short time frame”, the report said. “The same momentum now needs to be applied to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).”
The report publishes five principles as a framework for good and effective practice that it says should act as benchmarks for anyone wanting to see results in EDI.
The five principles are:
Read more detail about the framework in the full report.
The report also makes a series of recommendations to policymakers and creative organisations.
It says: “This report represents a challenge and represents a demand. It offers a chance for policymakers, along with organisations and businesses, to step up and to lead.
“We need bold and visionary leadership to support diversity in the creative economy. As our report shows, the challenges are great. Yet, bold and visionary leadership will reap the rewards of a diverse workforce and audience. It is a challenge to which we need policymakers to rise.”
The recommendations to government include:
The recommendations to creative industry businesses and organisations include:
This event is a practical series of five virtual sessions to set you on the right track with your diversity & inclusion (D&I) efforts. It will help you make sense of what D&I means for your business, why it matters, and how to turn the conversation into action. You’ll get insights, tools and techniques to help you overcome any fears and obstacles, before starting to develop a plan.
The first session has already taken place but book the remaining four sessions by 9.30am on 6 October and you’ll be sent a recording of the first session along with the presentation slides.
Sign up here. Bristol Creative Industries members get £75 off the ticket price.
For almost a decade, Alli Nicholas has been at the heart of the Bristol Creative Industries community as our membership manager. Dan Martin had a chat with Alli about her role, the benefits of membership, how to make the most of being a member and more.
“I spent 20 years in recruitment, the last 10 of which were with Bristol recruiter Liz Gadd. She ran a business called Goddard Gadd which I helped her set up. She sold and exited the business and I stayed. I then set up my own recruitment agency which in the end wasn’t for me.
“I used to recruit for Fraser Bradshaw, who at the time was the MD of McCann but has since set up saintnicks. We stayed in touch after I left Goddard Gadd. He was also CEO of Bristol Media (the former name of Bristol Creative Industries) and I was chatting to him one day and he said he needed somebody to encourage members to renew and keep on top of the admin side of things. I did that for 10 hours a week to start with, it increased to 20 hours and then became a full-time job. That was nine years ago.”
“I’ve always officially been the membership manager and that is very much about looking after the needs of the members, going out to find new members and talking to them about the organisation. But we are a very small team so I also get involved in everything else including organising and promoting events, dealing with logistics and helping with the content on the website and social media. Many people might look at the website and get the impression that there’s a big team of people behind it but we are a small team and we work in a very agile way.
“No two days are the same. That’s what makes it really enjoyable. I absolutely love what I do. I’m hugely passionate about BCI and what it stands for. Our members are from such a broad range of creative industries so I never get bored. One minute I can be talking to the likes of Aardman about what they’re doing and the next it’s a freelance member with the seed of an idea who is thinking about setting up a business. They’re poles apart but each is exciting in their own way.”
“If you’re asking me to pick my favourite member, that’s like picking my favourite child! Everybody’s doing great things in their own special way.
“Back in 2016, we ran a 10th anniversary event. We produced a book and asked members to submit the projects they were most proud of. I remember flicking through the book and thinking “I can’t believe this amazing work is coming out of Bristol”. Things like the Waitrose carrier bags at the time were designed by an agency in Bristol and the branding for the Royal Mint was designed by a company in the city.
“If I had to mention a few examples of our brilliant members though, one is Seeker Digital, a company named 25th in Deloitte’s Fast 50, which showcases the fastest-growing technology companies in the UK. I was told about them, got in touch and they became a member. It’s great to have a company like that as part of the community.
“Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of members focused on sustainability which is an important and very topical issue. One of them is Enviral, a comms agency that helps ethical brands get into the spotlight.
“What is particularly pleasing is when you see somebody who signs up as a freelance or start-up member and then goes through a journey of growth. A company that has done that is Atomic Smash. When they first joined it was just co-founders David Darke and Piers Tincknell. Now they’re a team of around 16 people and they have moved through the membership levels. It has been great to watch them grow.”
“I think first and foremost, we’re a connector. We say we help members to learn, grow, and connect. Connect is the key word here though because it’s through connecting that people learn and grow.
“We connect people on lots of different levels. It includes our jobs board where we connect job seekers to opportunities and businesses to new talent. We connect people through peer to peer networking at events where they can share their challenges. We connect businesses to one another for collaboration and also connect businesses to brands and agencies looking for their services
“We are a community of people who have a common interest of either working in or being interested in the creative industries in Bristol and surrounding area. We’re the central hub that brings everyone together.”
“As soon as lockdown hit, we recognised the need to connect people so that they didn’t feel completely isolated. We launched a Pay It Forward campaign and encouraged members, and some non-members, to step up and offer support and guidance. We had a regularly updated blog post with offers of free help including mentoring, coaching and tips on how to manage cashflow.
“We also did a number of virtual events throughout lockdown. We had never done virtual events before so having to suddenly put on online events was a steep learning curve for us. But actually, it worked really well and they were very popular.
“We did lots of COVID-19 crisis management workshops including how to deal with clients who were reneging on their contracts, the government financial support that was available and tips on how to manage staff remotely and deal with the furlough process. We also did a preparing for recovery seminar, which was so popular that we ended up running it three times.
“People had varied challenges but we were essentially all in the same boat and navigating the same storm so we were keen to help members.”
“There are lots of different drivers for why people decide to join Bristol Creative Industries. For many people, it’s the jobs advertising on our jobs board. As a member, you get unlimited free job advertising on what is the go-to board for creative industry roles in the South West.
“There are also company branding and profiling raising opportunities with the ability to create a profile on the website and appear in the Bristol Creative Industries member directory. It is used by lots of brands looking for the services that our members offer.
“As a member, you can self-publish content on the website as often as you like. That content sits on your own profile and we promote the best posts to the homepage and main news feed and share some on our social media channels and monthly newsletter. If you’re doing some work that you’re particularly proud of, you have great client case studies or you have some thought leadership or business advice, it can all go on the website. Share quality content and we’re much more likely to promote it!
“Our business members have free access to the Engine Shed co-working space in Bristol which is a really valuable benefit. It provides a space away from the regular office or home. As a BCI member, you can use the business lounge and sign in up to two guests at a time. It’s a great space and a real hive of activity. You’re guaranteed to meet like-minded people there.
“We have a programme of events throughout the year and members receive a discount on tickets or free attendance at member exclusive events. It includes networking, training workshops, inspirational keynotes and peer to peer roundtables. Going forward, we’ll have a blended approach to events; some of them will be face to face and some will be online.
“Finally, members can access lots of other perks such as hotel, restaurant, meeting room and away day discounts.”
“Get involved! Like with anything in life, the more you put in, the more you get out. If you pay your membership fee and don’t populate your profile, you might not get the attention you’re looking for. But if you do populate your profile, you’re much more likely to make connections and generate leads. Make your profile stand out and show how you are an appealing organisation or individual to work with.
“Come to events and you will absolutely meet people there who could potentially end up working for you, give you a lead or share best practice. Our Members’ Lunch events have always been one of my favourite events as you see those light bulb moments when someone is talking about what they do and for someone else the cogs start turning and they think ‘this person can help me’.
“Join, be active, engage on social media, keep the conversation going, make connections and you will absolutely see a return on investment for your membership fee.”
“Last Friday we had our inaugural BCI Walk and Talk, which is a member-exclusive outdoor networking event and a three hour walk in the beautiful Mendips countryside. It went really well and we plan to hold it regularly.
“We’ll continue to run our Members’ Lunch events monthly. They will stay on Zoom for the time being but we hope in the not too distant future we’ll get back to doing them face to face. The next Members’ Lunch is on 14 October.
“On 22 September, we have the first in a series of five diversity and inclusion (D&I) workshops. It’s a subject everyone is talking about but lots of people aren’t sure where to start. The workshops, delivered by Morag Ofili and Mette Davis, look at the business case for D&I and how to embed it into your business’ vision, mission and values. You’ll end the series by writing an actual plan that you can implement straight away.
“We’ve got a keynote on 30 September with Andy Nairn, who has been voted by Campaign as the UK’s number one brand strategist for the last three years. We’re really excited to have him talking to us about his new book, Go Luck Yourself, which discusses the role that luck plays in building brands.
“Finally, we’re putting the finishing touches to October’s keynote with Anne Thistleton, an experienced TED talker who talks about the role the mind and psychology play in marketing decisions. Keep an eye on the events section for details.
“We’re always keen to hear from members so if you have ideas for event subjects we should cover or speakers we should invite, get in touch and we’ll do our best to make it happen!”
Not a member? Join today! Fees start at just £4.50 a month or £45 a year.
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