Starting, building and scaling a capability

Today, I am excited to introduce Media.Monks, the new integrated brand that brings together the content, data&digital media, and technology capabilities of S4Capital into one unified brand. Together, our global talent network of over 6,000 interdisciplinary experts will operate out of 57 talent hubs in 31 countries across the world.

With this integration, our clients can expect the same industry-leading level of data services from our team, and will benefit from our extended global headcount and expertise across a full spectrum of digital services, from content production and strategy to marketing transformation and everything in between.

As we move into the final stages of merging Brightblue with the wider S4Capital family of companies, I felt the urge to jot down some thoughts on my journey of setting up Brightblue and leading it through to the integration with a much larger organisation.

I’ve broken this down to the four key milestones I’ve gone through during this exhilarating journey: starting, building, merging, and integrating. These are my thoughts – by no means am I giving any advice here, as I firmly believe people work in very different ways. This is merely a reflection on my experience.

Starting a Business

Starting the business might have actually been the hardest part – it takes a pretty large leap of faith to go from the comfort of having a salary and holidays to being completely responsible and accountable for your income. The perception is that it’s all “work when I like, how I like,” but the reality for me was quite different. I may not have had a direct boss, but I had to be on hand for clients at all times to get the business off the ground. I physically went on holiday, but my mind was always on the fact that any day I have off is a day lost in growth.

Those early days were testing times, but I found that resilience and hard work got me through it. Resilience is required as you get quite a lot of knocks and bad breaks at the start (I think that happens to test your mettle!), and hard work is needed as the more conversations and leads you have going, the more your chances go up of pulling in bigger, meatier projects. In hindsight, having a co-founder would have helped enormously here in the beginning – however I was very lucky in that my wife knew the industry and was incredibly supportive throughout.

Building the Business

As the income started coming in and the team grew larger, the pressure eased. What I didn’t quite appreciate in the early days is how reliant you can be on one client, which is a very precarious position to be in: if they drop you, your business drops, and you need to make hard decisions about the team. Luckily, I had some great advice throughout my Brightblue life from my advisor and chairman Paul Edwards, who was invaluable at pointing out things I hadn’t spotted yet, and also coached me and helped manage and scale the team. I found the process of having an external advisor/non-executive director invaluable in terms of keeping me sane, but also keeping the standards up in the company – keeping us on our toes and helping drive the mission, vision and values that were key for us to attract and retain talent.

Merging

After many years of great growth, we got to the point where we had nurtured a fantastic team and had built some amazing market-leading products. In order to really accelerate our growth, we knew we needed a partner to go global. We avoided private equity – cash wasn’t the issue – access to clients and facilitation of global growth was the ambition. After a lengthy process, helped along by our excellent advisors at SI Partners who smoothed the wrinkles, we matched up with S4Capital. We were blown away by their agility, their sheer focus on the future and their culture of entrepreneurship. It was a nerve-racking decision, but luckily we had informed the team along all parts of the process and it was a collective call that we all backed. And what a great decision it was!

Integrating

Once we had done the deed, we quickly moved onto integration. S4 are pros at this – the Post Merger Integration team made everything very smooth, and we very quickly felt a part of the team. It’s only been 10 months, but we’ve seen huge global growth from the group which continues to accelerate, as well as the opportunity to develop even more market-leading products. We have merged now with eight more cutting-edge companies since we joined S4. The pace of change and the talent base is phenomenal. 

With this comes unrivalled, market-leading capabilities across content, media and data. As far as the future goes, we will continue to integrate into one P&L and one name (watch this space!), making it much easier for clients to navigate and manage all of their media and content services with one entry point.

What a journey – we’ve been very lucky to find such a great partner and we look forward to continued growth in our teams and capabilities. I’m certainly very excited!

Out of the Blue – May 2021 Newsletter

THIS MONTH WE FOCUS ON:

European Football Championship

The summer is nearly here!!!

What better way to spend it than with football fever? This month we are taking a look at some exciting articles around data analytics and marketing, surrounding the Euros.

Can AI pick the winner of the Euros?
The questions older than time itself…who’s going to win? Well, in 2016, various entities predicted that very question. Using processes including the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, many different entities including Goldman Sachs predicted the mighty, Les Bleus would triumph. France did get to the finale but lost out to Portugal, who according to GS, only had an eight percent chance of winning!!!
Broadcasting an increasingly important source of Revenue
This infographic from Statista highlights the importance of Broadcasting throughout the last seven European Championships. Between 2012 and 2016, this source grew by over twenty percent. With more of us at home this year and the championship spread throughout Europe I can’t imagine this number will be slowing down.  
Hands up if you like retro football ads….

The article looks at the creative side of advertising; recalling iconic adverts from three large sporting brands. My personal favourite is the Brazilian football team using their silky skills at the airport. I would definitely recommend watching the likes of Ronaldo, Denilson and Eric Cantona strut their stuff through baggage claim!!!
Free Advertising for the Euros?

According to the Drum, ITV are offering one lucky advertiser the opportunity to have a free prime time slot during the Final for the “most emotionally engaging campaign”. Brands better be quick however as the deadline is a month away (27th June) with the winner revealed a couple of days before the final.

Personally, I cannot wait until we can once again hear the chorus of fans singing “Heskey makes it Five” or the dream of England galloping to glory.

Until next month!

Luke. L

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Out of the Blue – April 2021 Newsletter

THIS MONTH WE FOCUS ON:

Marketing Effectiveness

This month we are looking at the marketing effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out.

Reputation Boost

Pharmaceutical companies didn’t always have the best reputation. The nine biggest companies opted to not take shortcuts in their development of the vaccine and some promised to not profit from the roll-out. They have marketed their vaccine through various channels including online videos and since then, public opinions have improved.
Influencers
 
Artificial intelligence has shaped advertisement design, most prominently in visual online spaces such as digital banners and social media posts.
NHS TV Adverts

The government have released TV adverts throughout the course of the pandemic about staying at home and saving lives. The NHS released a comedic campaign in February with Elton John and Michael Caine promoting how easy and safe the vaccine is to help influence older people to get their jab.
Consumer Confidence

The success of the vaccine roll-out has been reported across all news outlets and has allowed a roadmap of restrictions to be eased in the UK with many sectors opening back up. Consumer confidence is as high as its been for over a year, with the economy making a strong rebound.

Until next month!

Annie

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Out of the Blue – March 2021 Newsletter

THIS MONTH WE FOCUS ON:

Artificial Intelligence

This month we are looking at how artificial intelligence is changing marketing.

The growth of AI

The advent and subsequent growth of machine learning approaches in the marketing industry has stood out amongst other technological innovations.
AI in advertising
 
Artificial intelligence has shaped advertisement design, most prominently in visual online spaces such as digital banners and social media posts.
Helping to make market decisions

Beyond design, artificial intelligence has been used to inform marketing decisions; from advert audience targeting to media spend optimisation. The latter relating closely to our work at Brightblue. 
Integrating AI into your customer lifecycle

There are numerous opportunities to integrate machine learning into the customer lifecycle, which proposition is right for your business?

Until next month!

Sam

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Out of the Blue – February 2021 Newsletter

THIS MONTH WE FOCUS ON:

Mental Health during the Pandemic

This month we are looking at how COVID-19 has impacted our Mental Health and why our mental health is as important as our physical health

Worldwide Impact

A survey carried out by The Commonwealth fund and SSRS shows that a quarter of respondents in the UK and a third of respondents in the USA have experienced a negative impact on their mental health during the pandemic such as stress or anxiety.
What is driving mental health problems during the pandemic

According to an ONS Survey, stress and anxiety have been the two largest drivers of mental health deterioration during the pandemic.
How mental health is experienced across different groups

In this Global Web Index Health survey some groups, such as healthcare workers, were reported as more likely to experience mental health issues.
Taking mental health in our own hands

Going for walks and staying in contact with friends and family are some of the ways in which participants of the MentalHealth.org survey managed to reduce stress.

Until next month!

Camani

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