Nielsen billings 2017: n/s
Declared income: £5.6m
Total accounts at year end: 24
Accounts won: 3 (biggest: n/s)
Accounts lost: 1 (Comparethemarket.com)
Number of staff: 55 (+25%)
Key personnel: Mark Eaves, founder; Mark Boyd, founder; Seb Royce, executive creative director; Samirah Ravin, commercial director; Jo Osborn, operations director
Star player: n/s
Gravity Road’s year got off to an anxious start when managing director Katie Lee decamped for Sunshine. A replacement didn’t come quickly, and as the year went on the shop opened up its leadership structure with homegrown talent such as business directors Jacinta Sczuman and Alex Preece taking on greater responsibility.
It was a year light on pitches, and business growth came from within the agency’s stable. The shop picked up extra work from Sainsbury’s, taking on digital strategy and performance marketing, alongside digital creative and social, as well as from Sainsbury’s Bank. It also extended its remit for PokerStars beyond Europe, becoming its global creative agency, and won business from two major companies in healthcare and technology.
Gravity Road resigned Comparethemarket.com’s digital account, worth about £600,000. Despite this, it managed to grow annual revenue by 45%, and this March sold a majority stake to You & Mr Jones.
As usual, the agency showed it knows how to entertain. In August it released a bizarre and darkly comic film for Three about online-streaming addicts. Then, in a UK media first, it shot an ad on Snapchat Spectacles for Sainsbury’s. It returned with more celebrity battles for PokerStars, featuring Usain Bolt and Kevin Hart, while its ad for Belvita was named the world’s most emotionally engaging ad of 2017 by the Feelmore50 survey.
The year ended with Seb Royce joining as the agency’s first dedicated executive creative director. Early this year, Lee was eventually replaced by former Sainsbury’s marketer Sarah Ellis, while the You & Mr Jones deal means that Gravity Road is set up well to fulfil its wide ambitions.
SCORE THIS YEAR |
SCORE LAST YEAR |
SELF RATING |
| 6 | 7 | 8 |
Agency's year in a tweet
Only six years old, but we’re already at big school.
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
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*indicates where agencies claim the corporate governance constraints of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation
