13 January 2021
Boldspace named ‘agency to watch’ as 2021 gets off to a flyer
As starts to the year go, 2021 will take some beating in the ‘extraordinary’ stakes. On the one hand, news that the country would head back into lockdown just as we looked forward to moving into a new, expanded Oxford Street office hit us all like a tonne of bricks. On the other, we’ve picked up where we left off, being labelled as one of the industry’s agencies to watch.
Back in December we were named by Little Black Book in the ‘class of 2020’, 14 agencies to watch that were launched in the midst of a pandemic, and now PR Week have labelled us one of the ‘11 new UK PR agencies to watch in 2021’.
We are extremely honoured and proud to be included in these lists, but it is especially pleasing given the impressive range, depth and sheer volume of new agencies that have started in the last 12-months, with PR Week noting a three-fold increase in agency start-ups versus the previous year.
A bold new approach
This increase in entrepreneurial spirit across the communications marketplace – be it in advertising, marketing or PR – is perhaps unsurprising given the pandemic and many being forced to go it alone. But for us, the pandemic was and is an irrelevance – ours is an industry desperate for a new way of thinking, a new way of doing, and a bold model fit for the future.
This means making data and creativity simultaneously accessible, meaningful and empowering for all brands.
It means levelling the playing field for challenger brands by building an agency that fuses technology and creativity to give them competitive advantage.
It means an end to agency siloes and seamless integration – not only within advertising, marketing or PR, but across each.
It means a more agile operating model, with quicker reactions and a clearer, data-led and objective view of activity and advice.
It means efficiency at the core of everything, with client fees spent on insight, ideas and delivery, not administration.
And it means a business model that puts people and sustainability at the core from the very outset – incentivising correctly, fairly and transparently, while always prioritising the world we live in.
Are you thinking what we’re thinking?
2021 may be but two weeks old, but we know from our journey to date that we aren’t the only ones thinking this. In fact, our experience to date has thankfully corroborated our belief in the need for change deeper than we could ever have hoped for – as we preach our new, more effective, hybrid model of working. We hit our first year’s client targets in six-months, despite the pandemic and economic chaos around us, and to date have won 10 industry awards and accolades – from ‘Best Brand’ at the Daveys and the Drum’s ‘Best Use of Content on Social’.
We’ve built, designed and launched new brands like Onko; delivered award-winning work for the Healthcare Workers’ Foundation, with one campaign driving a donation increase of 300%; raised the profile of new brands like high-profile fintech start-up Vestrata, delivering more than 150 pieces of coverage and a 10,000% rise in branded search; and taken a data-led approach to our work with Ecoffee Cup, combining content, PR and SEO to drive an increase in online orders of 74% in just three months.
John Doerr wrote back in 2017 that in a crisis ‘bad companies fail, good companies survive and great companies improve.’ 2021 will bring continued challenges for us all – personally and professionally – but when we come out the other side, the fundamentals in the advertising, marketing and communications industry will be exactly the same as they were before, with the same old players delivering the same old work in the same old way.
We will never go back to the old way of doing things – and we hope you won’t either. This is the time to evolve.
