When did you launch your agency and what were your reasons for going it alone?
We launched at the very start of 2014 with a belief that the way experience-based marketing was being offered by agencies, and used by brands, could be bettered by a long shot. In truth I was frustrated by the experiential marketing industry and the way agencies worked.
Firstly I was tired of big, one-off experiential events with dubious business benefits. I felt that there was an opportunity to offer something far more strategic, where brands used events as just one touch point within a strategy that spans multiple touch points across their brand. The idea is that every interaction you have with a brand is an experience, so the company should be leveraging that. By thinking this way, we could offer more cost-effective but ultimately work with greater impact.
Secondly, I wanted to work with brands in a more collaborative and consultative manner. We wanted to ditch the 'Tah-dah' of pitching ideas developed in isolation, and start working as an extension of the brand's existing capabilities. So this means sometimes just giving the strategic and creative help rather than the whole activation.
Which campaigns have been your favourites to work on this year and why?
We've absolutely loved every minute of working with Dyson, because the work is really rewarding. We can see the tangible impact we're having on the business and that's so fulfilling. Also, every single member of the team is such an absolute pleasure to work with.
How successfully has your agency traded so far?
I'd say we've done really well considering our standing start. What has been really encouraging is seeing our strategic and consultative services sell just as well as our activation offering. It serves as evidence that a lot of brands have in-house capabilities that they just need to add a little something special to, and aren't necessarily in need of one-stop shop, one-size-fits-all agencies.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Without a doubt it has been communicating a clear definition of what we do. Which is a funny one, given that we're in the communications business.
It's a struggle because we see what we do as an evolution of experiential marketing. But a lot of people haven't yet got their heads around what that was supposed to be. So we have this two-headed problem where we need to explain the benefit of using experiences and at the same time articulate why our way of doing it is better than the alternative.
A big help has been the process we went through when recording a series of videos on brand experience, which we've published on YouTube. That process of having to get all your thoughts out in a coherent, consistent and step-by-step way has helped massively.
What have you got coming up in 2015?
We want to spend a lot of 2015 engaging with the marketing community on both agency and brand sides, to get a debate on brand experience started. I'll be doing that with our own events and content.
I'm also really looking forward to expanding our team, which is just around the corner. That's going to be brilliant.
Do you have any long term goals, targets and strategies for your agency?
Our strategy is results-focused. We think there's a huge opportunity working with the less glamorous brands who don't have the kinds of budgets that allow them to spend on vanity projects, but who want to see real results at the end of their project. For us that might mean projects that are smaller in scale but more regular in occurrence. At least that way we know they're working and can create client relationships that will stand the test of time.
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