Jurassic Park is often cited for its technical innovation or iconic moments, but its real influence runs deeper. Long before immersive experiences became the buzz word we know today, the film demonstrated how to build a world audiences could fully step into, understand, and believe in. For creatives, designers, and producers, Jurassic Park functions as a near perfect case study in experience architecture.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is how clearly it establishes its internal logic. Before the dinosaurs appear, the audience is oriented.
We are shown how the park operates, how guests move through it, what is automated, what is controlled, and where the boundaries lie.
This mirrors best practice in immersive experiences. Audiences need orientation before participation. Clear rules do not limit immersion, they enable it. When people understand how a world works, they relax into it. When those rules later fail, the impact is emotional rather than confusing.
Jurassic Park earns its chaos because it first earns its structure.
The arrival sequence, the branding, the orientation film, the guided tour vehicles. This is onboarding in its purest form. The park reassures its guests that they are safe, looked after, and part of a carefully designed experience.
Experience design relies on the same mechanism. Audiences need to know what kind of experience they are entering, how they are expected to behave, and what level of risk or participation is involved. Without this, surprise becomes anxiety rather than engagement.
Jurassic Park understands that trust must be built before it can be broken.
A common misconception in immersive work is that closeness equals immersion. Jurassic Park proves the opposite. The audience is rarely placed in direct danger. Instead, tension is created through perspective. Watching from inside the car, behind glass, under the fence.
The film controls audience position with precision. This is exactly how immersive experiences maintain emotional intensity without overwhelming participants. Immersion is about relationship to events, not physical distance from them.
The science in Jurassic Park is famously flawed, yet the film remains emotionally convincing. That is because its characters behave like people and its consequences feel earned.
Immersive experiences do not need realism. They need emotional logic. Audiences will accept extraordinary premises if the world responds to them honestly and consistently.
At its heart, Jurassic Park is a cautionary tale about creation without accountability. The ability to build something spectacular does not absolve the creator of responsibility for its impact.
This is a vital lesson for immersive practitioners. Immersion amplifies emotion, vulnerability, and trust. With that comes a duty of care. Designing worlds is not just a creative act, it is an ethical one.
Universal
Jurassic Park matters because it is not just a blueprint for brilliant world building, it is also a quietly terrifying dystopia for the future of live experiences and attractions if we get complacent.
Strip away the dinosaurs and you are left with something uncomfortably familiar. A premium attraction driven by scale, automation, branding, efficiency, and spectacle. Guests are processed, reassured, and managed. Human complexity is treated as an inconvenience. Risk is assumed to be solvable by systems. Sound familiar? If not, spend five minutes in a badly designed immersive experience where no one quite knows what is allowed, where the exit is, or who is actually in charge.
Jurassic Park shows us what happens when experience design prioritises control over care, throughput over trust, and innovation over responsibility. It is the logical end point of the thinking that bigger, faster, smarter, more immersive is always better. The joke, of course, is that this is exactly how people get eaten by raptors.
For immersive creators, this is the real takeaway. World building is not neutral. Immersion magnifies everything, emotion, fear, delight, confusion, vulnerability. The more convincing the world, the greater the responsibility of the people who build it. Consent, clarity, pacing, agency, and safe failure are not nice extras. They are the difference between magic and meltdown.
This is where thoughtful immersive design matters. Not just how impressive something looks, but how it behaves under pressure. What happens when things go wrong. How audiences are supported, not managed. How trust is earned, not assumed.
At Bristol based Immersive Ideas Experience Agency, this is exactly where we focus our work. We design experiences that respect audiences, honour story, and understand the emotional mechanics of participation. We build worlds that feel alive because they are coherent, human, and accountable. Not theme parks with better tech, but experiences with purpose, care, and consequence baked in from the start.
Jurassic Park endures because it understood something the industry still occasionally forgets. Just because you can build it, does not mean you should build it that way.
And if the future of live experiences ever starts to feel a bit too much like a glossy orientation film promising everything is completely safe, while the fences quietly hum in the background, that is probably the moment to pause, step back, and rethink the design.
Why reach beyond English?
Everybody sort of knows about translation: books by international authors, certificates and diplomas for immigration purposes, even those cheap electronic gadget user manuals that sound like they were written by aliens from outer space… But what about business?
If your company is based in an English-speaking country, it feels natural to use English in business and to target English-speaking markets. As for creatives, so much of their work is tied with culture and words, that they feel more at ease operating in their mother tongue.
And yet, there is a world out there. So, gaining more visibility, and more customers, is worth the effort to reach beyond English.
Visibility abroad and new client profiles
While still using English in day-to-day business relations, all kinds and sizes of businesses can use translation to reach a bigger audience. Let’s look at a few examples:
An independent travel writer can pitch their articles for publication in more travel and in-flight magazines if they can also include the destination countries they write about.
Video game devs will get more players by having their games localized into key market languages. Or if sticking to English for the in-game content, there’s multilingual community management.
In film and video, foreign subtitles and dubbing open up new audience bases.
For artists, photographers, musicians, production companies, applying for an international award or exhibiting at a festival abroad will be a real visibility booster.
And agencies that are translation-capable are able to compete on a bigger stage: a lot of international groups and global charities need to work with PR, web and marketing agencies that can handle copy in multiple languages.
How best to approach your translation project
Once you’re clear on why you want to use translation, comes the how? question.
Choosing the best fit between a translation agency and freelance translators will depend on your project’s specifics: do you need a lot of different languages or only one/a couple? Is consistency in quality and tone of voice important? Do you need additional services like DTP and graphic design? High volumes translated with a short turnaround time? Or shorter, recurring pieces of copy where a long-term relationship will help?
Whatever the form your translation team takes, keep in mind these three essential tips.
Need translation help?
For help adapting your public-facing content for a French audience, or defining the scope and workflow of your translation project, get in touch for a chat (in English or in French): https://bristolcreativeindustries.com/members/sandra-mouton-french-translator/
Whenever I introduce myself as a Fractional Chief People Officer (also called a CPO), someone usually asks what the role involves. It’s a great question, but what matters most is why this model is so valuable for creative agencies.
Fractional roles are certainly gaining in popularity – but behind the trend is a very practical shift: creative businesses increasingly need senior expertise, but not on a full-time payroll.
This article explains what a Fractional CPO does, why the model works so well, what kinds of projects we lead, and some real examples from my own work.
What does “fractional” really mean?
Think of a Fractional CPO as a highly experienced senior people leader you bring in part-time, on a contract, or retainer basis. You get strategic leadership without the commitment or cost of a full-time hire – that’s ideal when budgets and headcount are tight.
But this isn’t the same as a short-term interim. Fractional CPOs usually stay involved for several months, working as an embedded part of your leadership team and delivering outcomes that strengthen the business for the long term.
In my work, I combine hands-on HR leadership with flexible delivery, bringing C-suite experience to creative agencies that don’t yet need – or can’t justify – a permanent CPO. For growing companies, that experience can make all the difference.
Five advantages of the CPO role:
You get C-suite capability and strategic people leadership at a fraction of the salary and benefits of a permanent CPO.
Fractional CPOs focus on diagnosing issues quickly and delivering measurable improvements – not lengthy reports or unnecessary complexity.
Increase or reduce support based on what’s happening in your business: periods of fast hiring, restructuring, investment rounds, or leadership transitions.
A Fractional CPO can stabilise your people operations through periods like founder transitions, M&A, leadership gaps, or rapid growth – ensuring the business stays compliant, aligned, and well-prepared.
Many creative agencies grow fast before their people processes catch up. A fractional CPO helps build scalable systems, coach developing HR teams, and set the culture before problems take root.
How does a Fractional CPO support a creative agency?
Typical engagements focus on the people challenges that most business owners don’t have the time – or specialist expertise – to tackle on their own:
These are all areas where mistakes can be costly – but where the right fractional support can unlock real performance and stability.
Examples of my fractional CPO work
Through my consultancy, en:Rich, I’ve supported creative agencies and also SMEs across multiple sectors. A few examples include:
In conclusion
A Fractional Chief People Officer is a cost-effective way to access senior people and leadership expertise that might otherwise be out of reach. Whether you’re scaling, preparing for investment, or simply trying to stabilise your people operations, a fractional CPO provides the leadership and structure needed to support growth – without adding full-time headcount.
For many creative businesses, this model is becoming the smartest way to professionalise HR, de-risk the business, and build a culture that attracts and retains great people.
Need some outside help?
If you’d like support on a fractional, interim or part-time basis across culture, people strategy or HR leadership, you can take a look at my Fractional CPO page:
https://www.enrichpeople.co.uk/fractional-chief-people-officer-cpo
A solid content marketing strategy is the foundation for meaningful results and long-term success.
A content marketing strategy is a plan for creating and sharing content that appeals to your target audience and helps you achieve your business goals.
Whether you’re a start-up trying to make your mark or an established brand wanting to stay ahead, having a clear content marketing plan can be a game-changer. At AMBITIOUS, we’ve helped many businesses turn content into business growth by integrating it within the broader PR and digital marketing landscape.
This guide will walk business owners and marketers through the essential steps to create a content marketing strategy that drives growth and keeps your brand competitive.
We’ll cover everything from defining your goals and understanding your audience, to planning content types, mapping the buyer’s journey, setting SMART goals, and measuring results.
By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap to build a strategy that delivers real business impact.
A content marketing strategy is a blueprint. It outlines the groundwork for the types of content you will produce, the topics it will cover, and the formats and channels you’ll deliver in.
You could think of it as a game plan for winning over potential customers and keeping them coming back for more… and that wouldn’t be incorrect. When viewed in isolation, a content strategy absolutely supports sales.
But, for the most successful brands, content marketing and content strategy do so much more than support sales. A content strategy keeps your brand fresh and your insights timely and valuable.
In short, it helps you remain relevant in a fast-changing market.
Now that we’ve covered what makes a strategy successful, let’s look at the key components that go into building one.
Building a content strategy involves several key components, each of which plays a crucial role in ensuring your efforts are effective and aligned with your business objectives.
To quote Simon Sinek, ‘Start with Why.’
Before you create a single piece of content, you need to understand why you’re doing the things you’re doing. Not just from a content perspective, but from an entire sales and operational perspective.
In his book,Start with Why, Sinek puts forward that the most successful brands put the why at the heart of everything they do. Taking a purpose-led approach allows you to approach subsequent strategies from a position of authenticity.
So rather than coming from a starting point of pure economics, put your mission and your vision at the heart of your content strategy.
You wouldn’t show up to a black-tie event in flip-flops… right?
Well the same principle applies to your content.
If you want to effect change and impact consumer decisions; you need to understand your audience, inside and out. Creating detailed buyer personas that go beyond basic demographics of age and geography can be incredibly valuable here.
What are their aspirations? What keeps them awake at night? What are the main pressures and challenges they’re facing?
Someone’s age, location, and job title isn’t going to give you great insight. By going beyond just demographics, you can establish what kind of content your audiences are engaging with the most.
With deeper, more detailed audience insights, you can create content that resonates with your audiences on a much more personal level.
You can then use existing audience insights and customer feedback to further refine your personas, curating your content to better address their needs.
You have your mission, your vision and your customer profiles.
Next, it’s time to understand the buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey typically includes three stages: Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
In this sense, every business is different, and as such, strategies and tactics must adapt. Content strategy and content creation aren’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
An FMCG brand will have a much shorter customer journey compared to a business that makes diagnostic machines.
A few blogs and some social posts aren’t going to make a quick conversion if your customer’s buying journey is traditionally 12 to 18 months or more. In cases like this, it’s about creating content strategies that are heavy on touchpoints and reinforcing your brand through much longer periods of awareness and consideration.
On the flip side; shorter journeys with bigger audiences – like FMCG – get to decision stage making much faster, so require content to match this cadence. It’s much faster, much more fluid and in the moment.
Creating content is all about matching audience and intent; you need to make sure that you’re putting the right content, in the right places, at the right time.
Your brand voice holds power, so use it wisely.
This is the real-world reflection of your mission, vision and brand values. Are you the wise mentor? The innovative disruptor? The friendly neighbour? Whatever your brand voice, consistency is key.
Also, people don’t just buy products; they buy into brands they can relate to. A strong brand identity, guided by clear brand guidelines, ensures consistency in both visual and tonal style across all content and marketing materials, strengthening brand recognition.
Maintaining a consistent brand voice across social media platforms is crucial for establishing and maintaining brand loyalty, which is key to amplifying your reach and engagement over time.
With a brand voice established and a firm understanding of your audiences, you can answer the question: what kind of content shall we produce?
There’s a lot of format options to choose from, including:
You don’t need it all to succeed. The key is to select the types of content that are most likely to resonate with your target audience. This will then inform the most appropriate channels upon which to activate those assets.
Generally speaking, having your own on-site content like blogs and articles is a universal must.
Whether you’re selling MRI machines or barefoot shoes, having on-site content that pulls through into search engine results pages and AI search platforms is going to be a major part of your content strategy.
So owned content has to be a foundational pillar of any content strategy.
Beyond your own channels, it’s about selecting the content types and channels that resonate with your target audience. If one of your prime audiences is NHS procurement teams, then you’re going to want to focus your efforts into channels like LinkedIn—with a mix of written thought leader content and video-led content marketing to catch their attention.
A fast-fashion brand would find more value in focusing on TikTok, with its in-built shopping API and fast-moving, trends-focused nature.
Important note: there’s a reason why we don’t classify social media platforms as ‘owned’. The reason being, that while the account itself is yours, you don’t own the channel itself. If TikTok or Instagram went under, then that channel is gone. Anything that is not 100% within your complete control, is classed as shared.
There are two more universal must-haves: video and direct-to-consumer content.
Whatever platform or channel you’re activating – whether it’s YouTube, LinkedIn, or TikTok – video content is the primary focus. So you need to account for video production in your content marketing strategy.
Then there’s direct-to-consumer content. Or in simple terms, email marketing.
Personalisation in sales and marketing is booming. With the sheer number of brands competing for attention across every channel and platform, the space has never been louder and more competitive. It’s incredibly easy for consumers to simply become overcome with brand fatigue and when that happens, they just start switching off.
But if you can successfully leverage a direct line of contact via email marketing, that can be a powerful thing.
Now that you have a sense of the key elements, let’s explore how to activate your content across multiple channels and formats for maximum impact.
The most effective and impactful content strategies take place across multiple channels, in multiple formats. By choosing the right mix, you can ensure your content reaches and resonates with the people who matter most.
To make this as effective as possible, combine owned elements, like on-site blogs and articles and your email channels, with the right mix of shared channels for your audience for maximum reach and effectiveness.
Look to ways you can repurpose content across different channels and formats.
Uou may want to conduct a piece of industry trends research. That piece of research becomes a designed whitepaper. That whitepaper can become a valuable sales asset, in both digital and print formats.
But it can be more.
It can then be broken apart, with news stories and releases created to generate earned media. Key elements of the whitepaper can then be created into shorter social assets, which can be activated across company and personal LinkedIn channels.
It can also be created into various blogs, summarising your findings and offering the whitepaper as a download. This gives you a lead magnet and a means of generating valuable consumer data.
You can activate these findings in your newsletters. You could even take it one step further and bring it into interactive formats like webinars, which can be especially effective for audience engagement. Those webinars could then be repurposed as further video content to be used on LinkedIn and even YouTube.
When taking this kind of integrated approach, the ultimate aim is to connect as many dots as possible.
When distributing your content, consider a broad mix of marketing channels from email marketing, social media accounts, video, digital and print design, even paid advertising like Google ads to create the greatest possible reach and impact.
With your content now planned and distributed, it’s essential to keep your strategy organised and on track.
A content strategy without a plan is like a road trip without a map. Chances are you’ll have fun, but you’ll most likely get lost.
This is where your marketing strategy and plan intersect with your content strategy. Through your marketing plans, create schedules and roadmaps, outlining campaigns, moments, and activations. Detail this with the outputs and assets you’ll need to create, with time-bound goals, to help keep you on track.
In the day-to-day, content calendars can keep everything on track and on schedule, particularly if you’re having to manage complex production schedules for video.
This will not only ensure consistency but also help you allocate resources, raise issues and delays effectively, and adapt to any required change. This helps ensure all team members and freelancers are on the same page, maintaining alignment and efficiency throughout the entire production and content creation process.
You want to stay on track and you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. To manage expectations, it’s crucial to set SMART goals. These are:
SMART goals help you to achieve a few things.
Firstly, they’re built on solid foundations of goals. For example, instead of saying, “We want more website traffic,” a SMART goal would be, “We aim to increase website traffic by 20% over the next six months by publishing two blog posts per week.”
This helps join all the dots and create content production processes with firmly established timelines and completion journeys. This clarity ensures everyone on your team knows what you’re aiming for and how to get there.
They also help you outline what’s achievable, given your organisation’s current production capacities and capabilities. For example, you may not be in a position to be able to produce your own video content, either through lack of capacity or capability.
So SMART goals can also help you identify areas where you need to bring in extra resources and skills in order to achieve these goals.
These goals act as your guiding star, helping you focus your efforts and measure the success of your content marketing efforts.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the metrics that help you measure the success of your content marketing strategy.
These are ultimately showing how well your overall strategy is performing, relative to your original strategic goals and aims.
For your website, look to metrics like:
While overall impressions can give you a picture of the general reach of your site, actual on-page data is going to be much more valuable when analysing your content.
Social media platforms offer a different set of metrics. Here you’ll be looking at:
But you’ll also need to monitor sentiment on social. 1,000 comments look like a good number on a report. But if 950 of those comments are negative in sentiment, then it’s far less positive than the numbers show.
The reason why we establish KPIs isn’t to dictate any success or failure further down the line, it’s more about identifying progress, tracking what’s working, and most importantly, what isn’t.
Ongoing auditing and analysis help shape tactical, strategic, and creative decisions.
One of the biggest self-imposed flaws you can bring into your marketing strategy is to only review your activity once per year.
Ongoing auditing and analysis is a crucial step, not only in creating a content marketing strategy, but evolving it in real time.
Review your existing content to see what’s hitting the mark and what needs improvement. Determine which types of content are the most effective. Then, put plans in place to create more content which matches this.
You need to identify what isn’t working and establish why. If something doesn’t work once, try it again in a different way. But if something isn’t working over long periods of time, then continuation is likely not worth it.
By doing this, you can identify gaps in your content. Look for opportunities to repurpose content into new formats, maximise the value of your existing content, and remove anything that is low-value and surplus to requirement.
Rather than doing this once a year, do it with more focused regularity. More regular content audits provide valuable insights that inform your ongoing strategy.
With your strategy organised and performance measured, let’s look at how data can become your superpower.
We know that optimising your content for better visibility in search is crucial to ensure it reaches a wider audience, improves your rankings, and ensures your content stands out in search results.
But competing for keywords, intent, and eyeballs is more than just a challenge in creative writing.
It’s about leveraging the right data and insights and using tools like Google Analytics, SurferSEO, and SEMRush to give you the edge.
The same applies to social media platforms. Proprietary analytics, or third-party tools such as Hootsuite, let you see what’s working in real time.
But don’t just collect data… act on it.
You need to be prepared to adjust your strategy based on these insights. The best content strategies are the ones that adapt.
With data as your guide, you can confidently plan and adapt your strategy for ongoing success.
There’s no silver bullet for successful content. What makes a content strategy successful is two-fold.
Firstly, it’s about strategic planning, critical thinking, and creativity. You need to be able to hone in on audiences, demographics, messaging and narratives, and understand the buyer’s journey and how you can subtly influence it in your favour.
Great content strategy establishes these foundational elements, meaning you can have great creative outputs underpinned by strong data and insights. So before you’ve even drafted a word of copy, or shot a second of video content, you need to have this understanding.
But you also need to be able to react and adapt.
A framework is great. It gives you guardrails. But a dogmatic approach to your strategy could do more harm than good.
Things may not work as you predicted, attitudes change, behaviours adapt, trends come and go, and algorithms change the way content is delivered and consumed.
If all you’re doing is staying within the lines of your strategy, chances are you’re missing out.
By following these steps, you can build a content marketing strategy that is structured, effective, and adaptable.
Having a documented content marketing strategy is crucial to guide your efforts and ensure success.
Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, improve your search ranking, surface in generative AI responses, or create personalised marketing content for your customers, a robust content marketing strategy underpins these goals and gives you the roadmap to achieving them.
But a winning content strategy isn’t just about creating more and more content. It’s about creating the right content, for the right people, and putting it in the right place at the right time.
At AMBITIOUS, we’ve seen firsthand how a content strategy can transform businesses. It’s not just about getting likes or shares; it’s about building relationships with your audience that last and deliver real results.
Get in touch to talk about how we can help you develop a strategy that’s as unique as you are.
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.
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