In summer 2021 we ran an event discussing funding for creative businesses with the south west team at Innovate UK EDGE and a group of Bristol Creative Industries members.
During the discussion, attendees said it would be useful if we could provide regular updates on the finance schemes that are available for creative companies in the south west and beyond. This guide is our response.
The guide is one of Bristol Creative Industries’ most popular ever blog posts. We keep it updated with the latest funding schemes for creative businesses so check it regularly. We also include the post in our monthy email newsletter, BCI Bulletin. To sign up, go here.
Funding news:
The government has announced that the West of England is one of its priority areas for the creative industries and the West of England Combined Mayoral Authority will receive a share of £150m in funding to “design interventions that work for the creative businesses and freelancers in their region”.
The British Business Bank, the government-owned business development bank, has launched the £200m South West Investment Fund (SWIF) “to help address market failures by increasing the supply and diversity of early-stage finance for UK smaller businesses, providing funds to firms that might otherwise not receive investment”.
Aimed at businesses in Bristol, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire, the fund provides:
SWIF is managed by four fund managers:
The region is split as follows:
North of the region:
South of the region:
The funding is split as follows:
Businesses can apply for funding directly to the relevant fund managers here.
Grants of £2,500 to £10,000 are available to help small businesses, sole traders, charities, community interest companies (CICs), community organisations and creative and cultural groups open new premises.
The deadline for applications is 11.59pm on Friday 14 November 2025. If all available funding is allocated before the deadline, the scheme may close early.
Successful applicants must start trading from the funded property by Friday 30 January 2026.
Women founders or co-founders with UK registered businesses at the late stage start-up phase can apply for a grant of up to £75,000 and bespoke business support.
Projects need to be aligned to one of the following three high growth sectors defined in the government’s industrial strategy; Advanced manufacturing, digital and technologies and life sciences.
The deadline for applications is 11am on 4 February 2026.
The BBC’s Small Indie Fund ringfences £1m a year to support small independent production companies with turnovers of less than £10 million. In 2025/26 the fund has a dual focus on TV and digital production.
The Small Indie Fund, TV supports small companies working across children’s, comedy, entertainment, factual, Film, daytime and drama.
The deadline for applications in 22 December 2026.
This £35m Creative UK and Triodos Bank investment fund provides loans of £100,000 to £1m.
Finance is directed to post-revenue creative businesses presenting promising growth potential and who:
This scheme from West of England Combined Authority is designed to help small and medium businesses and organisations purchase and install new products and equipment that reduce carbon emissions, cut utility costs and improve energy efficiency.
Grants of up to £15,000 are available on a first come, first served basis. A total of £2m is available. The scheme will officially close for applications on 24 October 2025, but it might close earlier if all funds are awarded.
The Black Artists Grant, offered by Creative Debuts, is £500 no-strings attached financial support to help Black artists.
Early Career Promoter Fund
This fund recognises the vital role independent music promoters play in supporting the talent pipeline across England, and offers grant funding and capacity building support, with the aim of bolstering the local, regional and national ecosystems.
Grants of up to £3,500 are available. Applications close on 12 February 2026.
With support from South Gloucestershire Council and funding from the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority, small and medium sized digital technology businesses can apply for a share of £70,000 in grants.
The fund is an open access programme for arts, libraries and museums projects.
Funding of between £1,000 and £100,000 is available.
This fund from Arts Council England supports individual cultural and creative practitioners in England thinking of taking their practice to the next stage through things such as: research, time to create new work, travel, training, developing ideas, networking or mentoring.
Grants of between £2,000 and £12,000 are available.
The next round of funding will open to applications in April 2026.
The £5m Supporting Grassroots Music fund supports rehearsal and recording studios, promoters, festivals, and venues for live and electronic music performance.
Travelwest provides match-funded grants for initiatives that improve sustainable travel provision in a business.
The aim is to provide financial support and incentives to employers to enable them to encourage sustainable modes of commuting or in-work travel (including site visits and meetings) amongst their staff.
The grants can be used for the implementation of physical measures, promotional events or any other measure that will encourage mode change amongst staff.
Grants are currently availables for businesses in Bristol and North Somerset.
Innovate UK’s £100m BridgeAI programme aims “to help businesses in high growth potential sectors such as creative industries, agriculture, construction, and transport to harness the power of AI and unlock their full potential”.
The programme offers funding and support to help innovators assess and implement trusted AI solutions, connect with AI experts, and elevate their AI leadership skills.
This fund supports organisations who work at the intersection of art and social change. It offers grants between £90,000 and £300,000 over three years.
Applications are currently closed but details of the next round will be announced soon.
This new £23m social impact investment fund is for socially driven arts, culture and heritage organisations registered and operating in the UK. It offers loans between £150,000 and £1m repayable until May 2030.
The Elephant Trust says its mission is to “make it possible for artists and those presenting their work to undertake and complete projects when frustrated by lack of funds. It is committed to helping artists and art institutions/galleries that depart from the routine and signal new, distinct and imaginative sets of possibilities.”
Grants of up to £5,000 are available. The next round of funding opens on 18 December 2025 and closes on 18 January 2026.
Grants of up to £100,000 are available for arts, libraries and museums projects.
The grants support a broad range of creative and cultural projects that benefit people living in England. Projects can range from directly creating and delivering creative and cultural activity to projects which have a longer term positive impact, such as organisational development, research and development, and sector support and development.
This fund aims to grow exports and global demand for UK independent film by supporting the UK film industry to achieve measurable results which would not have been achievable without the support.
Applications close on at 11.59pm on 31 March 2026.
This scheme supports the festival launch of UK films in order to enhance their promotion, reach and value internationally.
Applications close on at 11.59pm on 31 March 2026.
This scheme supports UK sales agents to increase their international promotion and sales of UK feature film projects.
Applications close on at 11.59pm on 31 March 2026.
A Start Up Loan is a government-backed unsecured personal loan for individuals looking to start or grow a business in the UK. Successful applicants also receive 12 months of free mentoring and exclusive business offers.
All owners or partners in a business can individually apply for up to £25,000 each, with a maximum of £100,000 per business.
The loans have a fixed interest rate of 6% p.a. and a one to five year repayment term. Entrepreneurs starting a business or running one that has been trading for up to three years can apply. Businesses trading for between three and five years can apply for a second loan.
If you’re running a creative social enterprise you may be able to access funding from UnLtd.
Finance of up to £5,000 is available for starting a social enterprise and up to £15,000 for growing a social enterprise.
Successful applicants also get up to 12 tailored business support plus access to access to expert mentors and workshops.
Businesses can apply for up to £3,500 to cover the costs of installing gigabit broadband.
Check if the scheme is available in your area here.
Grants to provide support towards the costs of the purchase, installation and infrastructure of electric vehicle chargepoints at eligible places of work.
The scheme covers up to 75% of the total costs of the purchase and installation of EV chargepoints (including VAT), capped at a maximum of £350 per socket and 40 sockets across all sites per applicant.
The deadline for applications is 11.59pm on 31 March 2026.
This grant supports the uptake of electric vans and trucks. It currently offers discounts up to £2,500 for small vans, £5,000 for large vans, £16,000 for small trucks, and £25,000 for large trucks.
On 18 August 2025 the government announced the plug-in van and truck grant has been extended until 2027.
If you know of another scheme that we haven’t listed and you’d like to share it with other creative businesses, email Dan to let us know.
It’s no secret that the recent US tariffs are having a major effect on the manufacturing industry.
With the additional financial pressure, many businesses will be looking for places to cut costs, and marketing is often the first to be scaled back.
We’d recommend a note of caution: marketing isn’t just a nice-to-have, and there are many cost-effective ways to ensure your manufacturing marketing boosts long-term growth, even in tough economic times.
In this guide we’ll cover:
It’s common to see businesses approach their marketing strategy as a more ‘ad hoc’ activity. In reality, this will be your roadmap when it comes to interacting with customers, growing your audience and ultimately increasing your sales.
When it comes to saving on costs, a clear strategy will help you map out exactly what you want to spend and where. If you don’t have an overarching plan and budget in place, you risk spending money on ineffective channels and losing track of how much you’re spending.
To put your plans into action, a good place to start is with your brand strategy. Once you have established exactly what your brand is, and who your audience is, you can move on to the wider marketing plan.
A good marketing plan will include:
With that established, you can move forward with confidence, knowing that all your marketing efforts will be underpinned by clear goals and a solid plan.
The manufacturing industry has traditionally relied on trade shows, print advertising, and relationship-based sales to reach customers and bring in more revenue.
While these methods still have their place, digital marketing is now an essential addition to any successful manufacturing marketing strategy in 2026.
Digital marketing can seem daunting as it encapsulates so much, but don’t feel like you need to tackle it all right away. Especially with smaller marketing teams, you need to be able to prioritise the best, most cost-effective approaches to start.
Organic SEO is the process of getting your website to appear higher up on search engines when potential customers search for terms relating to your business or industry.
Unlike paid search, organic SEO is a free marketing method that can generate more traffic to your site.
By creating content and pages that use optimised keywords, you’re telling the search engine algorithm what your content is about and the specific search terms it should rank for.
For example, if you were a packaging manufacturer and you wanted more people to find out about your shelf-ready packaging products, you would use ‘shelf-ready packaging’ as your main keyword.
This means dotting the term throughout the content on that product’s page, along with other related keywords, so you can tell the search engine that when someone looks for this service it should show your content.
The key to successful SEO is selecting keywords that have a high search volume (so plenty of people are looking for the term), and low competition (not many other businesses are ranking for it so you have a good chance of getting your page to the top!).
Google Analytics is a free platform created by Google that can show you all the data relating to your website and your website’s traffic.
It will give you information on:
And that’s just a few of the things it can do!
By looking at your website’s data you can form a much stronger marketing strategy that reaches the right people at the right time with the right content.
Social media marketing can be organic (no direct cost) or paid. The main difference here is when you put money behind your social media content, it will get put in front of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more people.
However, organic social media marketing is still incredibly important and will help build a new audience, foster trust with your prospects, and help you become an authority in your industry.
The key with social media marketing is to find out where your typical customers spend their time. For example, B2B companies often find the majority of their audience operates on LinkedIn. Whereas a lot of B2C organisations may find their audience is more active on Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
By ensuring you’re active on the right channels, you’re increasing your chances of prospects seeing your business. You’re also saving time and resources that would be wasted on platforms which won’t give you a return.
The type of content you post really depends on your business, but some good places to start are:
And the number one rule of making the most out of your social media: stay consistent. Ideally you want to be posting at least five times per week, but if that’s too much to start with, try once every week and build up from there.
These are just a few elements of digital marketing that should make a big difference to your business with little to no budget (especially if you haven’t got these strategies in place already).
If you want to learn more, you can get in touch with us and we would be happy to help!
Email marketing is a great way of getting your message directly in front of people. Where social media can be a more general approach, email marketing is more direct and targeted.
The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to have strong audience segmentation. This means grouping all your contacts into specific areas i.e. you may have a group of decision makers, you may have a group of prospects in a specific industry, or you may have a group of contacts who have been on your website before.
The possibilities for audience segmentation are endless, especially if you have large contact lists, but you need to make sure each segment is built for a specific purpose.
For example, if you create an audience segment of people who have visited your website but didn’t make a purchase, these would be the perfect prospects to put in an email campaign with a special offer or discount. This is because they have shown intent in looking at your business and your services, but they didn’t convert.
You can also run email campaigns that are more generalised, like an email newsletter. This is a great way to remind your contacts of you and your business without being too sales driven. You can run these monthly or quarterly, and it means you can keep your audiences updated on any news, offers or new products you may have.
The cost implications of this form of marketing can vary. You can do it organically for free, but this will take more time and manual effort. The other option is using a specialised email marketing platform like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign. This costs more but means you can keep all of your contacts and emails in one place, and automate your email sequences.
As mentioned previously, companies in the manufacturing industry often still rely on print materials and trade shows to attract new business.
But with the rise in digital marketing, standing out online can be a challenge. This is where video marketing can be incredibly valuable.
According to a 2025 Wyzowl report, 93% of marketers say video marketing has given them a good return on investment (ROI).
Video marketing can serve a range of purposes; from increasing brand awareness and engagement, through to boosting bottom-line sales. And there are plenty of video types to choose from! To name a few:
Video marketing can seem daunting, but once you have a plan for your content laid out, getting started is easy! In fact, it’s often the shorter videos that perform better online in terms of engagement.
Video marketing is a key player in standing out in your market and can be the big differentiator between you and your competitors.
Now that we’ve covered some of the main marketing strategies you can use for your manufacturing business, you may be wondering which one is the best.
The key here is to understand that this isn’t a tick box exercise. It isn’t about doing each activity once and expecting the results to pour in overnight. You need to be applying each strategy consistently and in tandem with one another.
Each point has a different purpose and benefit:
But the main takeaway is that there are plenty of ways to improve your marketing approach that don’t need to break the bank.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help you with your marketing strategy, get in touch with our experts and we’d be happy to help!
We want you to get ahead in new business in 2026, and on the front-foot with the latest data and best practice insights for what winning looks like in agencies like yours.
We’re a proud partner of the ninth annual jfdi/Opinium New Business Barometer, an industry report that gives you the numbers you need to measure and benchmark your agency’s new business performance.
Why take part?
✅ First eyes on the results
Everyone who completes the survey will be invited to a preview of the results when published early in the new year. And subject to the final number of Bristol Creative Industries members taking part, we will organise a members-only event, where we’ll unveil the Barometer findings alongside actionable insights to help you win in 2026.
✅ Your personal benchmarking dashboard
You will be given the opportunity to join a beta test and gain access to a personalised dashboard, showing your agency’s new business performance compared to other agencies and highlighting where you can hone your strategies.
✅ Access to segmented reports
Subject to sample sizes, the plan is to cut additional reports by specialism and size.
You’ll get a laser-focused, drill-down view, an invaluable game-changer for driving your growth strategy in 2026.
If you want to benefit from this competitive advantage, take part in the ninth annual jfdi/Opinium New Business Barometer at https://survey.opiniumresearch.com/XMIy9Y?smpl=19
When the Chancellor delivers the Autumn Budget, creative businesses across Bristol and the South West will be tuning in for signs of support — tax incentives, training funds, digital investment, and measures to steady employer costs.
As Bristol Creative Industries’ recent article, What our members want to see in the Autumn Budget 2025, highlights, the creative community is optimistic yet pragmatic. Members are calling for clarity, consistency and targeted support but they’re also pointing to something more human: the need to nurture and retain the people who make creative businesses thrive.
Budgets may set the economic stage, but it’s our culture how we listen to, reward and develop our people that determines whether we can truly seize the opportunity.
We’re lucky in the West of England. The West of England Growth Hub offers practical support to help creative organisations scale from access to finance to leadership mentoring and business development through programmes like Create Growth and the Creative Sector Growth Programme. At the same time, the Good Employment Charter provides a clear framework for what fair, progressive employment looks like: secure work, flexible working, wellbeing, employee voice and development. Signing up (it’s free) signals to both clients and teams that you’re serious about building good jobs and great workplaces.
Both initiatives point to the same truth: creative growth doesn’t just happen through funding or innovation; it happens through people who feel heard and valued.
While we can’t dictate what the Treasury does next, every creative organisation can take practical, affordable steps to strengthen culture, attract talent and improve retention.
The question is…why it matters now? The creative economy runs on people freelancers, collaborators, studio teams. But amidst client pressures, deadlines and tech change, it’s easy to lose sight of the human infrastructure that keeps the work flowing. While the national conversation focuses on budgets, our local conversation in Bristol and local areas can focus on something even more powerful: how we build workplaces people want to stay in.
So as the Budget headlines fade, here’s a challenge for creative leaders in the region:
Because growth doesn’t start with policy it starts with people who feel seen, supported and proud to create where they belong.
🚫 “It’s great to be here.”
🚫 “Hello, I am [insert name, job title]. Today I’m going to talk about…”
🚫 “Thank you for having me”
Avoid these predictable presentation intros. These just set up your talk as nothing new.
If you want your talk to be memorable you need to hook your audience from the very beginning and give them a compelling reason to pay attention.
The graphic below from Sequoia Capital illustrates a typical attention span over 60mins and the potential to lose 90% of your audience within the first five mins…but how to remedy?
Here are three ways (and a bonus fourth😁) to help to set up your talk as unmissable:
🎬 Set the scene like a movie.
“Our industry is facing seismic challenges. That’s what I would have said – until six months ago we discovered something that changed everything. Here’s what happened..”
📊 Drop an eyebrow-raising stat.
“If women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men, we could create £250 billion in additional value to the UK’s economy, according to a recent review. Here’s what needs to happen…”
🔍 Use a prop or an attention-grabbing slide.
One influential presenter wordlessly put up an image of an elephant to kick off a talk where they went on to talk about tackling ‘the elephant in the room’ of their industry, while another promised a visual to capture the current state of the economy…and put up a completely black slide.
Remember: with audio only, retention of content three days later is around 10%, but with an image that increases to an incredible 65%
⭐ Or you can call us. We can to help you to be memorable in all your business interactions.
Bristol-based creative agency saintnicks has been awarded Gold at the Digital Impact Awards, recognising its work with POSCA, part of Mitsubishi Pencil Co. The win came in the ‘Best Community Development’ category, celebrating the agency’s success in growing and nurturing an engaged creative community on social media.
The Digital Impact Awards highlight excellence in digital stakeholder engagement and the power of online brand communication. saintnicks’ campaign for POSCA focused on building authentic relationships with artists and makers across the UK, showcasing their creativity while amplifying the brand’s cultural relevance in the creative community.
Fraser Bradshaw, CEO at Saintnicks, said:
“We’re incredibly proud of this recognition. It celebrates not just great creative work, but the genuine connections built between brands and the people who love them. The POSCA community embodies everything we believe in – creativity, authenticity and engagement that lasts.”
The award-winning campaign brought together art, culture and community to celebrate creative expression and inspire participation. A full case study of the work can be viewed below.
If you’d like a chat about your challenges or request a complimentary social audit, drop them an email and say hello. You can find out more about their social media and content expertise here.
Gritty Talent’s Skills Bootcamp – Inclusion Accelerator, launches on the 14th January 2026 in the South-West of England. Book early to avoid disappointment….
Engaging, practical and designed for change, the Inclusion Accelerator has been thoughtfully developed to turbo charge inclusivity in the creative industries.
The Skills Bootcamp is open to 20 leaders, hiring managers & EDI leads within creative sector organisations and companies in the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (WEMCA) region. This dynamic, guided learning bootcamp, with the outcome of creating a company specific implementation plan, will be delivered by Gritty Talent’s own senior leaders who are creative industry professionals and EDI specialists.
What’s more it’s HEAVILY subsidised by WEMCA, who fund up to 90% of the cost for learners
For full information on funding, eligibility criteria and application details. Follow the link below.
https://www.grittytalent.tv/skills-bootcamp-inclusion-accelerator
Every autumn, the air shifts. Shadows stretch, lights glow earlier, and people start hungering for something beyond routine. They want meaning, magic, and connection…a story they can step into.
That’s why seasonal immersive events aren’t just popular; they’re unstoppable. Each year, they grow bigger, bolder, more ambitious, because they speak to something universal, our need to feel part of something shared, fleeting, and extraordinary.
And the truth is, the spaces that haven’t embraced that yet are already behind.
This isn’t about pumpkins and fairy lights. It’s about transformation and turning your existing space into a living, breathing story that people can feel in their bones.
The public appetite for immersive experiences has exploded. Seasonal events are selling out months in advance, driving new audiences, and dominating social feeds. People aren’t just attending, they’re participating. They’re hungry for connection, emotion, and atmosphere and they’re willing to travel and spend for it.
And here’s the thing: the places that already have character, story, or natural atmosphere, the ones sitting dark for half the year, are the ones that often might be the perfect venue.
Seasonal immersive programming can turn a quiet month into a sell-out. It can reframe how a space is seen, pull in new audiences, and create stories that live far beyond the season itself and build brand new audiences.
So the question isn’t should you do a seasonal immersive event. It’s why aren’t you already doing one?
Immersive design is no longer just for purpose-built attractions. It’s the future of how people experience the world around them. Every space has the potential to hold story.
Seasonal events give you a perfect excuse to unlock that, to reveal another layer of your space and make people fall in love with it all over again.
It’s not about building something new. It’s about seeing what you already have differently.
The right lighting design can make the familiar feel mythic. A single scent cue can shift memory. A piece of sound can transport a visitor before they even realise what’s happening.
This is where transformation starts, not with scale, but with imagination.
Emotion is built in.
Halloween and Christmas already carry universal feelings: fear, joy, nostalgia, hope. Immersive storytelling amplifies them.
They drive visibility. They’re PR gold, visual content magnets, and community anchors.
They make financial sense, one strong seasonal programme can sustain engagement through your quieter months.
These events are not side projects, they are cultural touchpoints, powerful, repeatable frameworks that keep audiences coming back year after year.
They create loyalty, seasonal traditions make people return.
“We do this every year” is the strongest possible brand statement there is.
Right now, the market is wide open. Audiences are ready. The appetite is proven. Technology and design tools are accessible. The question is who will seize the moment. and who will let it pass?
Spaces that act now will set the benchmark. Those that wait will be catching up.
Seasonal immersive events are no longer a luxury; they’re the smartest creative and commercial move you can make.
The best seasonal immersive events don’t rely on gimmicks or budget. They rely on intention.
They have a clear emotional journey.
They use their environment as part of the story.
They surprise people, not just entertain them.
They end on a note that lingers.
Audiences don’t remember everything they saw. They remember how it made them feel.
And that feeling, if designed well it can shape how they see your space forever!
At Immersive Ideas, we don’t do cookie-cutter Christmas lights or predictable Halloween thrills. We design experiences that transform space into story. Our work blends psychology, design, and emotion to create worlds that connect deeply, memorable, meaningful, and made for your audience.
Wondering if your space has potential? This is the moment to unlock it.
Even if you’re only exploring what might be possible, let’s start the conversation and see where it leads?
Worried about timeframe? Budget? Don’t be. Already this year our clients are testing the waters, preparing the ground work now for going big next year.
Let’s have a chat, reach out at [email protected]
Together, we can shape the kind of seasonal experience people will still be talking about long after the lights go down!
In short:
We find ourselves talking about Earned Visibility a lot at the moment, and for good reason. The new world of AI search is as seismic a shift for marketing, brands, and consumer discoverability as moving into the age of the internet was. For those who haven’t been keeping up, Earned Visibility is our approach to discoverability in the new world of AI.
But what is the difference between Earned Visibility and earned media?
The world has changed. At the time of writing, 62% of Brits are now using AI-enhanced search to find information over traditional search engines, and this trend is not slowing down.
Gone are the days of customers looking for a brand via traditional search and being presented with ten blue links. Gone are the days of customers reading multiple sources to get an answer.
Now, whether someone is looking for a complex understanding of a personal health issue or where to find the best holiday deals, instead of scouring multiple sites and running multiple searches, people are increasingly turning to AI-powered search.
The result? If your brand is not included in the answers that AI tools are showing users, then your brand is basically invisible.
In response to this tectonic shift, we have been spending a lot of time and effort working with data scientists, experts, and a variety of platforms to get ahead of things and understand exactly what brands need to do today and tomorrow to be discovered by consumers. We call this Earned Visibility.
Basically, it’s a new way of approaching the world of marketing.
The bad news? If you’re not embracing Earned Visibility and you’re not being recommended in AI answers, then your consumers won’t be finding you.
The good news? One of the upshots of this fundamental shift is that doing the right things to be included in the AI answer closely aligns with brand and marketing best practices in general. Marketing is no longer about tactical silos – it’s coalescing around the future of discoverability. This is Earned Visibility.
If you’re interested, you can find out more about this as well as discover your exact EV score here.
Whilst it may sound fairly similar, there is a huge difference between the meaning of earned media and Earned Visibility. Earned media is a term that refers to brand mentions, social media mentions, customer reviews or media coverage in channels that a brand does not own. Not to be confused with paid media or owned media!
For example, if your brand has carried out a proactive press engagement campaign that has resulted in your brand being included in The Times, The Guardian, or others, this is earned media.
Earned media has, and continues to have, inherent value. Customers are more likely to trust content that is presented to them by a known news or media title than content presented directly by a brand.
Think about it: is your opinion more likely to be swayed by an article presented by British Airways saying “we’re the best airline in the world,” or by an article on the BBC website saying BA has just been voted the best airline in the world?
Whilst earned media has a crucial role to play in the new world of AI discoverability, it is fundamentally different to Earned Visibility itself.
In short, yes! The framework of Earned Visibility includes a range of factors that any forward-thinking brand should be embracing when it comes to getting in front of customers and influencing consumer behaviour.
AI tools absolutely use media coverage as an indicator for brand quality and trust. What’s more, media coverage continues to be incredibly important in terms of influence and consumer behaviour.
In essence, earned media should be a key part of an Earned Visibility strategy.
Both are important, but you should start with Earned Visibility.
Earned visibility is an entirely new way of approaching the world of marketing. A considered Earned Visibility strategy, when implemented properly, will mean that you are doing everything you should be to get your brand included in AI answers – but also everything you should be doing more broadly in terms of reaching and engaging with your customers across the wider marketing mix.
The key here is that activity should no longer be approached in tactical silos, but seen as part of a wider whole.
A great first step is to understand how you are currently performing in terms of your brand’s Earned Visibility score. You can find your own Earned Visibility score here.
Contact the Yours Sincerely team to begin building your Earned Visibility strategy.
When you think of branding, chances are your mind jumps to the sexy stuff – ads, taglines, packaging, maybe even a catchy jingle. And yes, all of that matters. But the brands that people remember, the ones they talk about, trust, and come back to? Those brands are built on something much more human: connection.
At Epoch, we believe branding is about more than just looking good, it’s about meaning something. And meaning something starts with relationships. Not just between a brand and its audience, but also between us and our clients.
In a lot of agencies, Client Services are seen primarily as project managers. Scheduling meetings, tracking budgets, delivering and re-delivering timelines. And while we do all that and do it well, a great Account Manager is about so much more than just managing meetings and margins. Client Services at its heart is about building bonds. It’s about being a partner who listens, challenges, supports and truly gets it. Someone who cares just as much about the why as they do about the what.
When brands get too caught up in numbers, impressions and deliverables, they can forget that they’re speaking to real humans, with complex feelings, challenges and lives that don’t revolve around a product.
It’s not that deep, I hear you say. And sure, fizzy drinks don’t save lives, but they are a part of people’s lives. Sometimes a key part, proven by my very real Diet Coke addiction. They can represent celebration, nostalgia, identity, joy or just that small shoulder dropping moment of your day. Brands that become a part of people’s lives, earn the right to shape culture. That kind of cultural weight isn’t built by accident, it comes from an intentional effort to understand people deeply, and to not dismiss the importance of their small moments. And we believe that kind of effort starts not with a campaign, but with a conversation.
That’s why our Client Services teams make a point of showing up. Literally. Even though we’re based in a single office in Bristol, we travel the world to spend time with our clients in person. It’s something we get a lot of feedback on, and it means a lot to us. Because while emails and Teams calls are great for keeping the wheels turning, nothing beats the energy of being in the same room. The off-hand remarks that spark an idea. The shared laughter over dinner. The moments that remind us that we’re not just client and agency, we’re people with a shared passion working together to make something great.
And here’s the thing: how we show up for our clients is directly shaped by how we show up for each other. We’re big believers that internal culture drives external impact. When your team is built on trust, respect and openness, it shows. It shows in the friendships it creates, in the way we collaborate, the way we push creative boundaries, and the way we navigate challenges together.
That culture of care makes us better agency partners. We’re not just ticking boxes or hitting deadlines – we’re invested. In the relationship, in the work, in the long-term success of both our clients and our brands. That means sometimes having difficult conversations. It means knowing when to ask more questions, when to push, and when to pause. And it means both celebrating the wins, and addressing the challenges, big and small, because we genuinely care.
So yes, Client Services is about getting things done. But it’s also about how we do it. With empathy. With clarity. With curiosity. It’s a role that sits at the intersection of strategy, creativity and commerciality. Always striving to make the chaotic and complex, clearer and easier to digest. Constantly translating between client and studio, between vision and execution, between the impossible and possible.
When it’s done well, Client Services becomes a quiet superpower, a force that holds everything together and elevates everyone’s work. It’s not about being the loudest in the room, but the one who makes sure everyone in the room is heard.
Because at the end of the day, we’re not just helping our clients build brands. We’re helping them build brands that build bonds. And in a world of easy disposability, those bonds are what truly last.
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