cxpartners sees two new hires join the business to boost how we support clients as our portfolio grows.
We are thrilled to welcome two new team members – Gabriella Lambert and Chris Edge.
Gabriella joins us as Client Engagement Director, bolstering our account management and business development within our Financial Services team. She joins with a wealth of experience in creating sustainable customer experience strategies for multinational organisations, startups and the nonprofit sector. She previously worked at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) as the Head of Customer Experience.
She has spent her career building customer experience departments and overarching design strategies that move from being sales and product driven to being customer-focused.
Feel free to reach out to Gaby at [email protected] to have an informal chat to learn more about ways cxpartners and the Financial Services team can help your business.
Chris joins cxpartners as Account Director, strengthening the client services team following a number of recent major client wins.
He is highly experienced, with over 15 years working in client services and marketing at digital, creative, employee engagement and film production agencies. He has added value to clients and delivered solutions in many sectors including IT, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services and education.
Chris is also a qualified PRINCE2 Agile Project Manager. If you’d like to get in touch, please contact him at [email protected].
Gaby and Chris are brilliant new hires for cxpartners as we continue our growth as a team and support our growing client base. We have recently welcomed new clients such as WaterAid, UK Export Finance and UCAS.
Welcome to the team!
We are hiring for several roles at the moment, in both our Bristol and London offices, including:
ADLIB certified as a B Corp in September 2019. As we approach our 2nd anniversary, it has become abundantly clear that certifying is the start of the journey. A starting point from which to measure, guide and improve.
As a B Corp Ambassador, and the person that introduces B Corp to each of ADLIB’s new starters, I’m continually reminded of the complexity and breadth by which a business and its stakeholder group are measured. There isn’t a light switch you flick on and become a B Corp, it’s a living and breathing thing which fundamentally comes down to considering each and every stakeholder that comes into contact with your business and the planet we live on. If that care is authentic, the rest will fall into place through good practice, impact measurement and using business as a force for good.
We’re immensely proud of being one of the first recruitment businesses to achieve B Corp certification. From conversations with several CEOs / MDs of well-respected digital and technology recruitment firms over the past 12 months, we should be seeing more certifications imminently, a very positive move for the industry.
Becoming a B Corp has also positively progressed our client proposition, we’re fortunate to work with an ever-growing portfolio of purpose driven organisations, with which we share underlying beliefs in personal and life values. We’re also proud to have turned away clients from the defence and gambling sectors.
It’s our belief that B Corp should become a normal part of every company’s everyday business. We know that an inclusive workplace brings engagement, and creating an environment of involvement, respect, and collaboration ultimately drives more business value. This has proven itself beyond words for ADLIB as we stand here today readying for recertification in 2022.
This article was originally published on the ADLIB Blog.
Develop your narrative skills and write rich, engaging games.
A strong story is key to engaging and retaining players in video games. Held over 7 weeks, this online course teaches the story-structure essentials that will help you craft richer and more compelling games.
This is a professional development course for anyone who works – or aspires to work – in the gaming industry as well as writers and designers seeking to develop their interactive storytelling skills.
The course has been created by the UK’s foremost expert on narrative structure John Yorke and Caroline Marchal, founder of British studio INTERIOR/NIGHT and Lead Designer for Heavy Rain.
In this training course, you’ll investigate the relationship between player and protagonist, discover how to merge story and gameplay, and find ways to use those skills in a real-world development team. Working in a small group, you’ll receive weekly one-to-one feedback from the tutor team.
By the end of the course you’ll have written an industry-standard story treatment for an original game.
On successful completion of the course, you will receive a certificate of completion evidencing your learning and study hours. You will need to set aside 4-5 hours per week to complete the assignments.
Read a review of the course on Polygon.
Exclusive 25% discount on the £1,200 published course price. Just £900 to Bristol Creative Industries members for 35 hours of intensive learning.
MORE INFORMATION HERE or email [email protected]
Access Creative College (ACC), a leading, independent college for the creative industries has acquired dBs, the sound & music institute. The move represents an expansion of FE and HE services for ACC, offering learners a coherent, connected and defined journey from post 16 to degree level.
From its campuses on Mitchell Lane, St Thomas Street and Wilson Place, as well as at its centre in Plymouth, dBs currently offers specialist music and sound production courses to help students build meaningful careers in the audio industry.
Access Creative College delivers vocational education in the creative industries to over 3,000 students at campuses in major cities across England, offering specialist courses in computing, games, media, music and events. The college aims to prepare young learners for careers in the creative industries through innovative, practical employment-led training.
In Bristol, students will have access to facilities across both the existing dBs and Access Creative College sites. ACC’s state of the art campus in central Bristol has just had a £4.5m expansion to include an events space, music studio and various production suites.
With a common goal to deliver the next generation of creative talent through engaging, industry relevant courses, ACC and dBs will come together to offer learners initially in Bristol and Plymouth an extended range of courses from levels 2-7.
It is anticipated that this full range of courses – including Access to Higher Education and degrees in Games and Computing – will subsequently be rolled out across ACC’s other existing cities including Manchester and Birmingham. Students will be able to move between cities and sites as they continue their learning journey.
Jason Beaumont, CEO at Access Creative College, comments, “So many students from both dBs and ACC have gone on to achieve a great deal of success within the creative industries in Bristol and beyond. We see this as a marriage between two institutions to provide students in the city with a coherent, connected and defined journey in their learning, at whichever point they choose to study, from leaving school through to degree level.
“dBs has a very strong track record in successfully delivering technical degrees up to postgraduate level. Our plans are to build on this and develop a suite of degrees for our progressing students across all our provision.”
As implementation continues on the Skills for Jobs white paper, Boris Johnson used his ‘levelling up’ speech on 15th July to underline the need to escalate the value of practical and vocational education through the lifetime skills guarantee. The ongoing reforms support the idea that more adults should have the opportunity to access the skills and training they need, which lead directly to a job.
Jessica French, Investment Manager at ACC’s backers Apiary Capital, comments “We are delighted to be supporting Jason’s ambitious plans to grow Access Creative College’s HE provision across the country and see this acquisition as an important first step in offering a new kind of HE experience for learners in the creative and digital sector.”
Nige Burt, CEO and Co-founder at dBs comments, “This is a very exciting development for dBs in Bristol. The joining of the two organisations means that students in Bristol have the opportunity for an exceptional learning experience leading to entry into the creative industries.”
This announcement follows a significant 18 months for Access Creative College, during which it secured investment from Apiary Capital and welcomed the National College for the Creative Industries (NCCI) to its portfolio. ACC has also recently announced a number of new senior appointments, including former Minister of State for Universities Jo Johnson, as the college’s new chair, and former Ofsted inspector and Adult Learning Inspectorate Steve Stanley as Director of Evaluation and Impact.
Having recently binge-watched the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’, Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 3) | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube I can’t help but compare some of the similarities between the industry, and game, that is F1 and the seemingly very different world of SEO.
The competition in F1 is tough, there are no prizes for coming over the finish line last, there are only points if you place in the top 10 and only 3 places on the podium. It’s a zero-sum game with obvious ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
In our SEO world, I liken your website and Search Marketing to one of those F1 teams.
There are only 10 spaces on page 1 of a Google search and you need to be there if you want to be in the rankings race.
So what should you focus on to make sure you rank no. 1 on Google ahead of your competition?
Here are a four, (and very loose 😉) Formula 1 analogies to help explain how to make sure your competition is not pipping you to the finish line:
In Formula 1, the car and it’s engine are key to winning. A superior car like Mercedes is consistently performing ahead of the competition. So, we need to make sure your engine is tip top, and able to compete with the competitor’s engine.
In this instance, your content creation, superior thought leadership, content outreach and backlinks are the ‘engine’ for your business SEO efforts, driving the marketing activity and creating winning engaging content. However, this does take a lot of time and effort and so it is vital to make sure you have a clear plan to optimise what your team spends their time on.
Formula 1 teams spend as much time and money on their aerodynamics as they do their engine. Do you spend as much time on technical SEO as you do content creation? If not, you should. These marginal gains from coding optimisation and competitor analysis to analysing page speed, schema and your analytics can be the difference between ranking at the top of Google or not. However good your content/engine is, if the technical SEO is not constantly improving, you’ll have a crash at the most unexpected moment
The reality is that if Mercedes were racing against a Mini they wouldn’t need to spend as much time and money on their car. It’s the same with SEO and whilst I’m not trying to say don’t do SEO, please make sure you stop and actually research and understand what your competitors are doing online. Your race ahead, may not be as hard as you expect.
F1 teams spend huge efforts trying to understand all the finer points of what the competition is up to. So make sure you spend time to understand why your competitor is ahead of you in a search. What’s giving them the edge? Do you really need a brand new car or will a small smart tweak do the job? Make sure you spend time not just creating the offsite content that you need to, but look at the finer technical details of your site, and tweak and change if needed to get some quick wins.
For me, Lewis Hamilton is an outstanding driver, but arguably, because of the team behind it and the Mercedes car, they would still win a lot of races with one of the ‘less experienced’ drivers from other teams. Equally, a great driver can’t win a race in a slower car.
So as far as Search Marketing is concerned, if your strategy and digital marketing team have a poor sense of technical SEO knowledge and understanding, you may never succeed. Make sure you have the Lewis Hamilton of search marketing managers or seek support and guidance from those that can help. We are increasingly supporting our clients with Search Marketing Mentoring so their team can win. Could your business benefit from SEO Mentoring? (varn.co.uk)
Whatever you do, like a F1 team, you must make sure it is cost effective, constantly evolving and the time/investment spent can actually drive a good return on investment.
It’s very common to rip up the current marketing strategy and start again, but as we have seen with many clients and their websites, maybe you need to keep what you’re already doing and focus on the changes which will make it simply perform better.
If we can help you take your SEO engine apart have a good look under the bonnet of you and your competition’s search marketing, then do get in touch with the team at Varn.
Mr B & Friends has welcomed two new members of the team this summer. Olivia Cox and Faye Stephens have joined the Client Services team as Senior Account Manager and Project Manager respectively.
Olivia has lived in Bristol since her time at UWE, and has solid experience both client and agency side. She had Mr B & Friends on her radar having seen the agency’s work on the Bristol Bears rebrand, and when the role came up, the timing was right for her to make the move. In her spare time she likes to take on new challenges – from learning to row to calligraphy to building a bin store!
Faye has recently relocated to the area from London, where she worked on the ASDA account. With a solid background in communications and content, she’s excited to delve further into the world of brand transformation. Faye has been embracing her move to the South West, getting to know the area and soaking up the culture. She also enjoys turning her hand to art and craft projects.
Simon Barbato, CEO at Mr B & Friends says, ‘We’re delighted to have secured these appointments to the team. With excellent project management experience and fantastic relationship building skills we think both Olivia and Faye will be a massive hit with our clients.”
Liana Dinghile, Partner at Tonic Creative Business Partners, discusses flexibility – is it a good or a bad thing for the future of work?
Most agencies are already embracing a more flexible approach to work and an overwhelming majority of employees would like to see this continue. But as so-called Freedom Day approaches and businesses get to grips with what the future might really look like, it’s worth considering where being less flexible can increase your chances of success.
Counter-intuitive maybe. But some things will need to be inflexible and non-negotiable for a more flexible future to succeed. Let’s explore.
The conundrum
On one hand, remote working has changed the game that needed changing. It’s levelled the playing field by creating access and inclusion for diverse talent and given people the opportunity to better balance their lives. Productivity has increased and priorities have been sharpened. But on the other hand, many argue that creativity, culture and learning have been compromised as a result. The double-edged sword now forcing a hybrid work revolution.
Every business is finding its way through this revolution. Some are leading with new ideas and bold policies they hope will work – from four-day weeks to mandated days and localised work hubs. Others are following and failing to master the transition – criticised for uninspiring or restrictive policies or not properly explaining or setting clear boundaries for people to get creative with.
In all cases, however you move forward, it mustn’t come at the expense of employee trust or compromise the strength of your culture. These two factors are still an agency’s best advantage when looking to win the big briefs and the battle for talent.
The non-negotiables
With boundaries, people are more likely to experiment and make good judgements. When supported, people are more likely to support others and act beyond their own interests. All basic principles, but never more fundamental and at the centre of a new cultural contract that’s separating the best from the average in business and society.
#1 A solid values system. Having a strong belief system at the heart of every action you take, evident in every leadership decision and willingly embraced by every member of your team. Non-negotiable.
#2 A minimum standard of work. Setting parameters for what great looks like for the work. Wherever and however work gets done, having a standard that is universally understood, championed and honoured. Non-negotiable.
#3 Empowered teams and managers. Setting clear objectives at a team and project level to set the boundaries for autonomous action in the interests of the clients they are closer to. Support leaders to manage the complexity and be the simplifiers and role models their teams need. Non-negotiable.
#4 A well-harnessed culture. Creating a culture of wellbeing and psychological safety for people to openly share their needs, concerns and successes as they find their way through a different time. Non-negotiable.
Structured flexibility
With the non-negotiables in place, you’ll have the confidence to find the flexibility level that’s right for you. Here’s three new ERA principles to help get the balance right:
Continue the EXPERIMENT
– Draw on learnings from the last 18 months of experimentation. Ruthlessly reappraise the core work of the agency and what it takes to do it really well. Where has remote working accelerated or challenged your capacity to deliver to this standard?
– It will take time to fine-tune and adapt a future work policy. So be upfront with your teams that this is an experiment and be clear about where you need their help to stress test.
– Whilst its unhelpful to follow blindly because ‘Apple or Twitter tried it’, there’s a lot of experience out there to learn from that may give the benchmarks you need to explain the benefits of your strategy.
Be RUTHLESSLY focused
– Seriously ask and challenge what an existing office or potential workspace is for. Architects are experimenting with different models from ‘plazas’ to ‘neighbourhoods’. Co-working spaces are seeing a revival and hotels are reinventing themselves as work hubs with benefits. Lots of possibilities, but what will your ‘workspace’ be for – learning, collaboration, contemplation? Be ruthless about whether it measures up.
– Genuinely ask your teams how ready and confident they are to change. Be clear about what their needs really are rather than be forced to change things to retain them later down the line. Create space for people to share concerns about work, welfare or location. What you learn will be the underlying data needed to design a truly equitable workplace culture.
ACT and ADAPT
– Create the blueprint for your fully remote or hybrid future and draw from your research to demonstrate how it’s designed to the specific dynamics and workflows of your agency and teams. Put into practice as an experiment and be upfront and clear on how, and how often, you’ll measure success.
– Be ‘all-in’ from the start. Draw on your belief system and rally everyone around the experiment. Recruit their support and feedback to know what’s working and will be right long term. And don’t forget to role-model the changes you want to see in your teams.
Winning agencies will attract and retain a diverse mix of talent based on the strength of culture and thoughtful design of their workplace strategy. They will exceed expectations for productivity and creativity by harnessing the strengths of their teams. And they’ll do so not because of where they come together but how they make it count. Here we see the rise of the interdependent agency – mastering the non-negotiable bonds in order to realise the true power of flexibility.
First appeared in Creative Brief BITE on 15 July 2021.
We all know how important it is to encourage equality through our culture in the workplace. But it’s no secret that women are underrepresented in senior leadership positions.
It’s everyone’s shared responsibility to become not only advocates, but champions of women from diverse backgrounds within their organisations – and in their lives at large. And in the creative sector, if we want to truly do our part to help women stake their claim, it means businesses taking ownership of their own equality scores in a number of ways – not least, by appointing women to the senior leadership positions we need them to be in.
At Proctor + Stevenson, we’re one of the UK’s longest-established independent marketing agencies. Despite this, we’ve never been conformists, and we’re a good step ahead of your traditional London-based agency in more ways than one.
Our Founder and Chairman, Roger Proctor, has always been an outspoken industry figure. He’s championed diverse young creative talent from the South West of England and Wales – an often neglected region for the arts – throughout his career.
Back in 1979, he laid in our bold and independent foundations in Bristol. And the rest is history. We’ve been challenging inequities and hiring diverse talent ever since – such as through hosting the South West Design + Digital Student Awards (which saw a particularly high volume of entries from young female designers this year).
In short, the talent is there. So what changes are being made?
At the start of 2021, Roger and the senior team restructured Proctor + Stevenson by splitting the larger brand into three companies: P+S Creative, P+S Technology and P+S Strategy, all overseen by the P+S Group (you can read more about these changes here). And this change marked a new milestone for the P+S team.
Our restructuring was the perfect opportunity to progress our own equality targets across the team at Proctors. It was at this point in our journey that we ensured the P+S Group met a target of 50/50 male-to-female directorship.
So, without further ado, meet our board…
· Joy Locke is our Company Secretary. She applies her 20+ years’ experience with us to take lead of everything operations, finance, accounts, and administration. She ensures that we were keeping on track with budgets.
· Ailsa Billington is one of our Directors. She leads our client services operations and takes charge of directing major global campaigns for our multinational portfolio of clients. She directs over all teams in the P+S Group to make sure that we deliver the best campaigns to transform our clients’ businesses for the better.
· Nikki Hunt is our Financial Director. CIMA-qualified, Nikki brings a wealth of experience in management accountancy, HR, payroll, and health and safety to our business, keeping us running efficiently and safely.
· Roger Proctor is our Chairman. He founded P+S in 1979 and has continued to lead its transformation ever since. Under his leadership, the business has grown from 2 people to more than 70, plus a network of freelance talent, and has won a global portfolio of clients such as Panasonic, National Grid, Saudi Arabian Airlines, and much more. He is passionate about the power of creativity to make positive change and is also heavily involved in strengthening the links between the creative industries and education.
· Mark Jamieson is another of our Directors. He helped establish our presence in the Middle East and is an expert in developing, building, and maintaining positive client relationships in across all sectors.
· Steve King is the final member of our current team of Directors. He leads our large-scale digital projects on everything concept creation, development, and project delivery. He’s worked on many innovative and world-first technology projects.
At Proctors, we’ve always taken equality and diversity extremely seriously. Because when we celebrate and empower women in business, it benefits everyone.
We strive to nurture careers amongst our female talent, building them up into more senior roles within our business. And we want to continue to progress further. We’re currently building a broader, transparent picture of our teams, our diversity, and our biases to discover how we can do better.
There’s lots more to be done to help narrow the gap between women in leadership across the UK. It’s a fact that only 5.6% of women in the UK run their own business and women only account for 33.8% of positions as directors on business boards in the UK, with only 16% of creative directors reported to be female.
We’ve just launched the first instalment of our Women in Business interview series. In it, our own Marketing Manager, Becca Peppiatt, sits down with Peaches Golding OBE CsJT, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol. This interview, like the rest of the series, delivers insight into the female perspective of working in business, so aspiring young women can see themselves represented in leadership roles. Stay tuned for more instalments of the series, coming soon.
We can all do our part to progress the important conversations which need to be had about an industry that is in many ways stuck in the past, ignoring some of its blatant inconsistencies. There’s lots more to be done and we intend to continue to work hard to narrow some of the gaps that exist. We need to think intersectionally about how we hire, and how we can create healthy, fair environments for women to succeed in.
For more information about Proctor + Stevenson, or to discuss our services or teams in more detail, please email us.
Designers, animators, writers and everything in between. If you’re an ambitious student or graduate brimming with creative thinking, we want to offer you an authentic taste of agency life. We’re giving you the chance to work on big projects and campaigns, from conception to completion, alongside our talented creative team.
So if you want to break into the industry, learn from some of the best, and have fun doing it; send your portfolio and a covering letter to [email protected]
Want to know more?
The lucky candidate will be offered a six month, paid internship starting around August or September. We’re happy to be flexible.
During your time with us, you’ll get an opportunity to experience every facet of agency life; from marketing strategy and collaborative idea generation, to beautifully crafted creative solutions across design, motion, copywriting and digital.
All of this while side-by-side with great people and an agency culture that’s second to none.
Here are just a few of the things you’ll benefit from at Mr B’s:
“As a Mr B intern you’re straight into the deep end of agency life: with briefs rolling in, there’s never any doubt that you’re an important part of the team. I couldn’t have found a better way to learn huge amounts about design and the industry, or to meet so many great people.”
Interested? Send your portfolio and a covering letter to [email protected]
The team at Noisy Little Monkey have welcomed a new addition to the Senior Leadership Team this month. Charlie Hunt will be responsible for managing people, processes and money for the organisation.
For the past seven years, Charlie worked at one of the largest SEO agencies in the UK, progressing from Finance Director to General Manager and overseeing the day-to-day running of the business.
Alongside the appointment of a new Operations Director, Noisy Little Monkey has welcomed another two new hires to the team including Andy Thornton (Digital Marketing Executive) and Alexandra Keyworth-Wright (Inbound Marketing Manager). They’ll both be supporting clients with all aspects of their digital marketing including SEO, marketing automation and HubSpot.
We can’t wait to see how the new team members will help the business thrive.
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