Company launch

Trouble Maker

Trouble Maker, a new end-to-end content, media and distribution agency, is launching with a major client, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, on board.

The four founders, who have worked with brands including Red Bull, McDonald’s, Mercedes-Benz and Absolut, have created a pioneering new model that pushes campaigns to inspire change, do things first and make trouble.

Strategist Jonathan Fraser, commercial growth specialist Adam Clarkson, digital planner Jonny Grum and CEO Simon Hankin have experience that spans strategy, creative, production, technology, social, and distribution. They will work initially from their Noho offices with an initial staff of ten.

Peroni Nastro Azzurro was won from incumbent Wunderman Thompson in a competitive pitch. Trouble Maker is appointed global lead agency for the brand, responsible for campaign development across all channels, including digital and social.

Richard Ingram, the MD of Asahi International, said: “Peroni Nastro Azzurro has a clear and globally relevant positioning, helping consumers to live their lives with true Italian style. We were delighted to appoint Trouble Maker as our global creative agency and look forward to their expertise in making digital and social work at its hardest for our brand, through their creation of meaningful connections around the world”.

Adam Clarkson, chief business officer at Trouble Maker, said: “We love the trade but not the tradition. Our business is predicated on the belief that creative and media should do more than simply work together in relay, they should influence each other and be ever-present equals in priority, from the first thought to the billionth view.”

Jonathan Fraser, chief strategy officer at Trouble Maker, said: “At Trouble Maker, unorthodox is the name of the game, because we believe the traditional agency set-up has lost both pace and relevance. Our team is brimming with agility, ambition and understanding of the need for value. Trouble Maker’s core values are: do it first, inspire change and make trouble.”

Acquisition

Bynder

Bynder, a digital asset management (DAM), has acquired We Adapt, a SaaS solution to help brands scale their video content creation. 

With the addition of We Adapt, renamed Video Brand Studio, Bynder offers brands a single platform to scale on-brand content capabilities across print, images, and video. 

Bert van der Zwan, CEO of Bynder, said: “We are thrilled to welcome We Adapt, its customers and the entire We Adapt team to the Bynder family, We’re excited to help our customers streamline production and distribution to get even more varied content to market faster so their teams can focus on the high-value creative work.” 

Once fully integrated, Video Brand Studio will be available as an optional add-on module alongside Digital Brand Templates and Print Brand Templates. The integrations Video Brand Studio offers with digital advertising platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram complement Bynder’s other downstream integrations to provide customers an integrated process for content creation, management, and distribution that boosts efficiency and agility. The same advertising platform integrations also give customers greater insights into creative performance through online video campaign performance data. 

Maarten Boon, founder and CEO at We Adapt, said: “Both Bynder and We Adapt share a common goal–to automate and scale the creative and distribution process so marketers can spend more time on high-value projects.

“We’re joining Bynder to accelerate this vision, and we’re looking forward to offering our customers the benefits of best-in-class DAM and creative automation.”

Client wins

360 OM 

London-based cold brew coffee brand, Bottleshot Brew, has appointed performance marketing agency 360 OM to handle its performance marketing campaigns across PPC and paid social.

The contract win will see 360 OM partner with the cold coffee brand as it develops its ecommerce presence following the shift in audience behaviour due to the coronavirus. 

Annie Mitchell, founder of Bottleshot Brew, said: “As our company has shifted focus to e-commerce during this stay at home and alert environment, we are very excited to be working with 360 to build our brand awareness online and learn about our customers.

“360 will be instrumental in our understanding, not only of who our customers are, but also how they are engaging with coffee products and what their education and buying process looks like. We hope to help simplify their journey for quality, convenient coffee.”

Led by director Tariq Mohammed, 360 OM is a performance marketing agency that works with brands to accelerate growth through paid search and paid social.

Mohammed said: “Following the impact of coronavirus, we’ve noticed a huge influx in the need for brands to increase their ecommerce presence to stay relevant and grow their online customer acquisition.”

Dept

Following a rigorous international pitching process, FIFA has appointed digital agency Dept for three different projects at the FIFA World Football Museum.

Jake Welsh, Dept’s principal creative consultant and director, said: “FIFA is one of the most influential brands in the history of sports, uniting nations and bringing continents together. The organisation is taking exciting steps forward with digital and eSports, but its history stemming back over a century is just as riveting.

“Dept will bring the monumental moments showcased in the museum into the digital world, accessible for a global audience.”

Dept will support the FIFA World Football Museum in the field of digital marketing, with community management on social media and with the website relaunch. With these activities, the museum aims to strengthen its digital presence and make the website more accessible for online visitors.

The FIFA World Football Museum noted that it selected Dept for its global scale, strategic approach, and full-funnel solutions merging data, technology and creativity. 

FIFA World Football Museum and Dept are now collaborating on the development of a digital marketing strategy. The website relaunch preparations are also in full swing with plans to launch the new website in July. Improving the museum’s social media activities is also a key priority, as Dept is advising the FIFA World Football Museum on their communication on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

The museum, located in FIFA’s headquarter city, Zurich, exhibits more than 1,000 items, including memorabilia from every FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Dept

Online food delivery marketplace, Just Eat Takeaway, has selected digital agency Dept to build and accelerate its new e-commerce platform for the partner services (B2B) department. 

The project involves migrating, building and designing the digital restaurant marketplace for its most important partners – the restaurateurs.

The restaurant marketplace is a B2B solution in which data is used to support the business activities of restaurateurs and foster partnerships. 

Dick Franken, director of partner services at Just Eat Takeaway, said: “The new e-commerce platform for our partner services allows us to fulfil our ambition to serve restaurateurs better with a scalable platform. This way, Just Eat Takeaway will become a genuine partner of restaurateurs, not only for selling but also for product purchasing. Dept is the perfect partner for this step and our ambition.”

After merging with the UK’s Just Eat earlier this year, a deal worth £9bn, Just Eat Takeaway has become one of the biggest players in Europe’s food delivery market. 

As maintaining a solid relationship with restaurateurs is crucial, the meal delivery platform chose Dept as their digital partner to lead the venture; from concept to building, design and migration to Commercetools. Dept has extensive experience in commerce for clients such as Bugaboo, Holland & Barrett, and Canyon.

Sarah Wubben, operations director at Dept, said: “We can’t wait to start this collaboration. Just Eat Takeaway and Dept fit together perfectly, as we share a limitless ambition, have a similar manner of working and an extensive digital knowledge. By serving restaurateurs as well as  clients, there is an enormous amount of data and potential. We see many opportunities on the horizon to grow meal service delivery ecosystem together, but for now, the primary focus lays on the successful migration.

“We’re very proud to have this collaboration. Just Eat Takeaway and Dept fit together perfectly, as we share a limitless ambition, have a similar manner of working and possess a lot of digital knowledge.”

Hitsearch

Digital marketing agency Hitsearch has announced three new major client wins, with Orla Kiely, Iceland Foods and the Green Sheep Group all joining the agency’s growing client list.

Fashion brand Orla Kiely has appointed Hitsearch to take on a six-month project encompassing SEO, PPC, blogger outreach, influencer marketing and user experience and conversion rate optimisation, following a four-way pitch.

Major supermarket Iceland Foods has selected the agency to boost user experience and conversion rate optimisation. Hitsearch has recently invested heavily in cutting edge biometric equipment that allows them to test ‘real’ customers in the testing studio and get ‘real’ feedback about the physiological reactions to a website journey and will be undertaking a number of neuromarketing projects for the retailer.

Additionally, the Green Sheep Group has awarded Hitsearch a two-year paid media contract, focusing on the Little Green Sheep and Snuz brands, following a competitive pitch against three other agencies.

Andy Donaldson, director at Hitsearch, said: “The industry is experiencing challenging times at the moment, so we are pleased and extremely grateful to add three major clients to our roster.

“Premium fashion brand Orla Kiely represents everything we love about creativity, art and a solid product base and we are very much looking forward to working together.

“For many years, Iceland Foods have been leaders within their market. Their ongoing investment in their online presence and digital offering has brought us together, and our partnership will help their customers tenfold. Our mission is to make the Iceland website an even easier place to discover, buy and deliver food. Iceland is using our unique neuromarketing service to ensure that the great in-store customer experience is echoed online.

“Green Sheep group are a fantastic British brand and we are so excited to be working with them to grow their website revenue through a range of paid search channels.”

Matthew Lowe, head of experience at Iceland Foods, said: “We’ve been working closely with Hitsearch and using their bio-metric measuring to establish key areas for improvement on Iceland.co.uk that wouldn’t normally become apparent in traditional user testing and panels. We’ve already seen great results from this, and we’re excited to continue our partnership, empowering us further to put customers at the heart of our decisions.”

Prohibition 

Integrated communications agency Prohibition has won a competitive pitch to provide PR services for international breastfeeding brand, Lansinoh.

The Leeds-based agency secured the retained contract and has been briefed to implement a targeted PR strategy, designed to drive brand awareness amongst Lansinoh’s key audiences.

The PR strategy will also incorporate larger campaign activity across the coming 12 months.

Lisa Craven, UK marketing manager at Lansinoh, said: “We’re really pleased to have brought Prohibition on board – we have some really exciting projects lined up for the next 12 months that they’ll be instrumental in delivering.

“Prohibition demonstrated a real understanding of our brand and target audiences throughout the pitch process, and their ideas were a perfect fit for Lansinoh.

“Since appointing Prohibition only a matter of weeks ago, we’ve already launched our first campaign, which has yielded fantastic results. We can’t wait to see what other success our future projects have in store.”

Will Ockenden, director and co-owner at Prohibition, added: “Lansinoh is definitely one of the market leaders in its industry, so we’re thrilled to have them as a new, retained client. Winning Lansinoh was also something of an agency milestone, as it was our first ‘lockdown pitch’ – something that has now become very familiar to us all.

“We have some really big campaigns in the pipeline – we can’t wait to get our teeth stuck into them and deliver real, tangible results for the brand.”

Copper

Copper Consultancy has been appointed to provide communications and engagement support for the Towns Fund delivery programme, as part of an Arup-led consortium.

The government scheme, run by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), will invest £3.6bn in more than 100 towns across England, as part of the government’s commitment to level up UK regions through boosting long-term economic and productivity growth.

The Towns Fund will deliver wide-ranging benefits to social and cultural infrastructure, such as improvements to transport, town centres and broadband connectivity. Investing in UK towns will enhance the area for people to live, work and visit by contributing to the increase in jobs and skills across local communities

Copper will draw on experience of delivering high profile place-making projects, to provide specialised, informative and engaging communications to communities that will support the development of the scheme, alongside partners Arup, Nichols, FutureGov, Grant Thornton and Savills. 

James Gore, director of economic development at Copper Consultancy, said: “We are very proud and excited to add this work to our growing portfolio of economic development projects, which are more important than ever before, as the country not only progresses its Brexit commitments, but also seeks to take steps towards the recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re looking forward to working with our consortium partnership and MHCLG to help build stronger relationships with communities and allow towns across the country to thrive as the plans develop.”

Click Consult

Digital marketing agency Click Consult has confirmed that its contract with Tesco, as the retailer’s search and digital agency, has been extended for a further two years.

The extended contract will allow Click Consult, based in Hooton, Cheshire, to continue improving several areas of the search marketing strategy for Tesco.

The retail giant first partnered with Click Consult in August 2019 for Organic Search (SEO) services across three Tesco Business units; Grocery, Real Food and the Club Card scheme.

Click Consult’s CEO, Matt Bullas, said: “We’re delighted that Tesco has once again put their faith in our agency and that they have renewed the partnership for another two years.

“Since Tesco chose us in 2019 we have worked on a large part of their website and across a number of their services to ensure that they see the best possible performance. Our technical expertise means that we have been able to deliver in all areas and we look forward to continuing this in the future.

“The team here at Click Consult has relished the opportunity to work on such a widespread project and the results that we have delivered have now opened this new door.

“Tesco is one of the most recognisable brands in the UK market and a leading retailer in the grocery section. We know that there are a lot of technical changes that need to be implemented and a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes which is why we are glad to have had our contract extended.

“The SEO team here at Click Consult were recently named the ‘Best Organic Team’ in the country by The Drum and this is reflected in the work that we do for Tesco and other large clients.

“We look forward to starting on the new workflow and planning out the strategy for Tesco over the coming months and can’t wait to see yet more positive results.”

Akeneo

Cornwall-based clothing retailer Seasalt has selected Akeneo, a global provider of Product Information Management (PIM) solutions, to ensure a consistent online shopping experience for its customers as it continues to expand.

Akeneo’s PIM platform will allow the company to centralise all of its product data and quickly measure that data quality and consistency to drive improvement, delivering compelling, consistent, and personalised customer experiences across sales channels.

Will Charnley, Omnichannel Director at Seasalt, said: “Until now we have been managing our online product manually, which was time consuming and a drain on resource, as we had to bring in teams that wouldn’t normally be involved.

“By implementing a PIM with Akeneo we can build efficiency into the process and be far more reactive to customer needs.”

Using the previous system, launching a new product range would have taken up to three days, but with Akeneo in place Seasalt estimates that this timescale will be at least halved, and possibly reduced even further.

Charnley added: “We selected Magento as our e-commerce platform at the end of last year and as Akeneo is already integrated with that system it made sense for us to work with them. We’ve since been very impressed with Akeneo’s project team and the functionality of the platform, which is not only helping us in the short term, but will enable digital transformation and scale digital growth in the longer term.”

James Barlow, country manager at Akeneo, said: “Seasalt is exactly the sort of company we love working with. It has grown from a local family-run business into a national success with 70 stores in the UK and Ireland and is now poised for international expansion. I think the key to its success is that it continues to understand its customers as well as it did when it started, and we look forward to helping them continue to do so as they grow.”

BMB

British fitness company Gymbox has appointed BMB to refresh its branding and produce an advertising campaign for early July.  

The appointment follows a multi-agency pitch handled directly by the 17-year-old fitness business – there is no incumbent agency. 

BMB is commissioned to review Gymbox’s brand strategy, style and identity; the brief includes producing an advertising campaign to go live next month, as it plans to re-open as post Covid-19 restrictions are lifted in the UK.

Rory McEntee, brand and marketing director at Gymbox, said: “We’ve always been the antidote to boring gyms and BMB showed us what that means in this new world. We’re really looking forward to partnering with them to move the brand forward.”

Claudia Wallace, MD of BMB, added: “Gymbox is a loved brand in the UK, as it has always offered a diverse range of over 100 diverse classes appealing to different interests. We relish the opportunity to retain the brand people love and recognise, while refreshing it for the new reality for its customers post-lockdown.”

Fight or Flight

Technology company Roland DG has appointed B2B comms agency Fight or Flight as its pan-EMEA agency of record, following a five-way pitch that concluded in mid-June.

Roland DG is the number one provider of wide-format digital inkjet printers for the durable graphics market, and supplies the sign, graphic arts, commercial print, packaging, labelling, promotional gift, textile, engraving, milling and 3D modelling industries.

The brief is focused on promoting Roland DG’s line-up of innovative products and solutions, supporting its expansion in sectors such as retail, textiles, industrial and dental and re-energising its brand, reputation and thought leadership across 60+ EMEA markets.

The pitch process was initiated by former American Airlines and Expedia exec Stephen Davis, who was appointed as EMEA marketing director six months ago. Davis’s remit is to reinvigorate the Roland DG brand in the region and he is in the process of leading an EMEA-wide marketing re-organisation.

He said: “Roland DG has a long history of innovation in EMEA and our products and services power a diverse range of businesses across the region. The decision to appoint a full-time pan-regional PR agency is a statement of intent and a clear signal that we’re committed to investing in and revitalising our brand in the months ahead.”

On the decision to appoint Fight or Flight, Davis continued: “We were impressed with Fight or Flight’s passion for creative and innovative B2B comms, and its track record managing multi-market assignments for blue chip organisations.”

David Woodward, managing partner at Fight or Flight, said: “We’re delighted to land such a prestigious account in our first couple of months as a new agency. Roland is a fantastic brand with a great heritage, and we’re excited by the creative challenge of communicating the full potential of the company’s innovative products.”