We work with business, both large and small. We carry out project work for smaller businesses e.g. branding or a web projects, whilst larger businesses either add us to their roster, retain our services or work with us on a series of campaigns and ad-hoc projects.

Yes, we do. For businesses in early stages if their requirements are better suited to freelance, we will open our Little Black Book and recommend suitable partners. Alternatively, we have special payment terms for young, scale-up businesses who struggle to have a credit history but want to engage us.

We have a dedicated and experienced Client Services team who guide our clients through their projects and are available to talk through briefs, changes, budgets, timings and any other requirements. Where possible (noting holidays) our clients will work with the same contact, consistently throughout their project to build up a good understanding of business needs and nurture rapport.

We’re very happy for our clients and prospective clients to talk to each other and have worked with many of our clients for a long time, some across several companies and roles. Talk to us and we can arrange the contact details.

Whilst we do have some agreed exclusivity clauses with clients, these come in return for an ongoing commitment to a volume of work. In general, we prefer more of a courtesy agreement where we collaborate, should we be approached to work with a competitor. We are also well versed at working with multiple businesses in the same sector and frequently work on highly confidential work, so have established robust confidentiality processes.

We’re experts in creative communications, coming up with the big idea and developing the core creative concept in order to roll it out across multiple communications channels: from print to social platforms, video to email and web to long-form content.

We don’t see ourselves as a marketing agency specifically, broadly half the communications campaigns we run are employee engagement campaigns run internally for our clients. We’re experts in creative communications as opposed to marketing strategy.

Whilst our campaigns are always developed with digital channels in mind and we support our clients with a series of digital channels, we are not a specialist digital agency. We are not experts in developing E-commerce platforms or managing Paid search.

We usually aren’t the most economic people to buy your media space unless it’s very niche. In most cases, you will find it more economic to either buy direct or through a specialist media buying provider.

We try not to specialise in any sector. With creative at our hearts we don’t want to fall into the trap of groupthink. Our job is to help you stand out from competitors.

That said, we have extensive experience in the following sectors:
• Not for profit: Charity and Membership organisations
• Transport and logistics
• Education: Secondary, Sixth form colleges to Universities
• IT & Technology
• Professional services
• Travel and hospitality
• Consumer goods

We try not to see ourselves as either and take more of a Human to Human approach. We have extensive experience across both B2B and B2C, as well as external and internal communications.

We cover most channels but there are some (e.g. PR and PPC) that are too specialist for us to be competitive and expert in. Instead, we can recommend reliable partners who can support you or we can work seamlessly with your choice of partners.

We have a great team with handpicked and finely tuned skills so that we can keep as much as possible in-house. Where we need external skills or capacity, for example, the recording of voiceovers or specialist illustration we are transparent with clients.

Obviously this depends on the campaign or project but where possible we like to agree on success criteria with clients upfront and support them in making the most of activity to deliver the best possible results.

We are also on a mission to make a significant contribution to reducing our impact on the environment. We have a range of ways to help our clients reduce theirs from well-established carbon offsetting programs, a variety of eco-friendly products to business initiatives like tree planting.

We’re delighted to hear that you’re taking this seriously as we do too, in fact, we have made a commitment to raise any issues with our clients when we feel diversity isn’t being considered. We believe there is a lot of work to be done to improve diversity and inclusion in the marketing and communications industry and we’re making sure we make our contribution to that improvement.

We discuss requirements with clients and provide tailor-made estimates specific to each project based on the skills/hours it will take our team to carry out the required work, plus any production requirements. We have a sophisticated online system that keeps track of what our team are working on. Our Client Services team keep clients in the loop on costs and shout if there are any concerns over the budget.

Generally, not, we prefer to honestly share with client if a project has taken less time than expected and work through why it’s taking longer if that’s the case. However, for consistent and repetitive work we’re happy to work to a fixed budget so that clients can plan ahead.

Yes. We understand that there’ll be changes to work and usually allow for two rounds of amends within our initial estimates, while further changes will be charged by the hour at our usual rates. Amendments due to creative differences are charged at the discretion of the Client Services lead and obviously, we don’t charge for any time it takes to correct a mistake if it was our own error.

Our charges are based on hourly rates which vary according to the skills, experience and seniority of the person required. We operate a flat charge of £85ph for Creative.

We tend to stick to hourly rates unless a project specifically requires a series of full days, in which case a discounted day rate may be negotiated.

Obviously, there’s no such thing as an average project. However, as a guide: an average Branding project is usually delivered for £8,000+, website design and build from £10,000+ and campaigns vary depending on assets required with the concept and key visual usually developed for £5,000+

It’s true, we believe around a third of independent agencies are struggling to survive. Luckily, we have been established for over two decades and have built up solid reserves so are very financially stable. We have made a number of efficiency improvements to combat the challenges of COVID but are feeling very confident for our future.