Score: 5
Last year: 6
How the agency rates itself: 6
MBA likes to think of itself as an agency that sits at the crossroads where digital and direct interconnect. And its proposition of a joined-up offering linking data and creative technology to the way consumers buy is one that provides it with a decent, if unspectacular, living.
Last year, MBA revealed it was pushing the envelope still further by exploring the potential of embedding artificial intelligence. The agency has been talking to a number of clients about what could be done, including Investec, with which it has been working on the launch of the brand’s Click & Invest product.
At the same time, Stephen Maher’s relentless urgings to the industry to move on from thinking of CRM as complicated programmes that blindly spit out communications at customers has struck a few chords. Most notably with E2Exchange, the community of entrepreneurs fronted by Sir Richard Branson, which appointed MBA without a pitch to run its social media.
Riviera Travel, the escorted tour and river cruise specialist, also found MBA’s proposition sufficiently compelling to choose the agency to run its social and PR activity.
Alas, MBA was denied opportunities to bolster its client portfolio with a couple of high-profile names.
It lost out to The Corner in a three-way pitch for the task of building a new brand platform and a broader communications strategy for National Accident Helpline.
And it failed to capitalise on the ending of easyJet’s eight-year relationship with Havas Helia at the end of last year to land the budget airline’s pan-European CRM account.
By rating itself six, MBA admits to having had no more than a modest 2016. But modesty rather than shouting loudly has always been MBA’s way.
How the agency describes its year in a tweet
New Google,RSM clients;new O2 Goggles,Thermal Everest work;Gold for O2 Hologram;Platinum IPA CPD. MBA: Where Digital and Direct Interconnect
Score key: 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival in question