Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 Econsultancy

Top 100 Digital
2018
Agencies 2018
#EconReports
The definitive listing of the

UK’s largest digital agencies
Project supported by
Contents
Editorial The Top 100
p4. State of the industry

Agencies are undergoing a period of business
p35. How the guide works 
p36. Top 100 agencies by fee income
transformation, facing threats from in-housing,
consultancies, new sources of competition Managing Editor
p39. Top full service and
and clients aggressively managing costs. Donna-Marie Bohan
Report Editor Donna-Marie Bohan looks marketing agencies
at industry trends over the last year.
p41. Top design & build agencies Editorial enquiries to
p14. Too Important to Outsource? p42. Top creative agencies top100@econsultancy.com
The New Reality for Digital
p42. Top technical agencies Contributors
BIMA Co-President and TH_NK Managing Partner
Natalie Gross reflects on how the changing p43. Top regional agencies Ben Davis
face of the BIMA membership mirrors the
broader transformation facing the industry. Laurence Bird
p44. Most respected agencies and
Leonie Mercedes
influential industry professionals
p18. Finding the Right Talent to Natalie Gross
Meet Digital Demands p45. An Interview with Peter Veash, Nikki Gilliland
Founder and CEO of The BIO Agency Rebecca Sentance
In an increasingly complex political
landscape, UK agencies are tackling new
p47. Top 100 profiles Ruth Mortimer
difficulties in recruiting and retaining talent,
writes Senior Writer Nikki Gilliland.
p80. Ones to watch
Business Development
p21. The Growth of Diversity Initiatives Team
Research Analyst Leonie Mercedes explores Danyon Billings

the benefits of diversity and inclusivity in Diana Amaral
marketing and suggests how organisations Case studies
can foster more inclusive workplaces.
Project Management Team
p83. This section showcases a collection
p24. The Power of Data Humanisation WNS Global Services
of case studies submitted by a
Surging demand for the study of consumer number of the Top 100 agencies.
behaviour is driving the neuromarketing Design
technology market. Econsultancy Research These stories highlight examples of
Christopher Hipson
Director Laurence Bird discusses how new successful work that demonstrate
techniques are delivering strong business results.
digital excellence. Each case study
outlines a summary of the agency’s Published by Econsultancy
p26. The Changing Role of Agencies work, objectives, strategy and key 4th Floor, Wells Point,
in the “madtech” Era tactics, results and awards won. 79 Wells Street,
The past few years have brought new pressures London, W1T 3QN
to bear on agencies and their business
models. Prompted by revelations over the
widespread practice of pocketing rebates, +44 (0) 203 199 8474
brands are increasingly scrutinising their
contracts with agencies, writes Econsultancy
Deputy Editor Rebecca Sentance. All rights reserved.
p29. A User’s Guide to Interesting Upstarts No part of this publication

Econsultancy Managing Partner Ruth Mortimer may be reproduced, copied
discusses the new sources of competition or transmitted in any
challenging the future agency model.
form without permission
from the publishers. All
p32. How Does AI Play a Critical Part
in the Future of Agencies? details are correct at the
time of going to press
Econsultancy Editor Ben Davis takes a practical
look at AI and agencies of the future. and subject to change.
Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 3

EDITORIAL
State of
the industry
Agencies are undergoing a period of business transformation,

facing threats from in-housing, consultancies, new sources
of competition and clients aggressively managing costs,
especially those that are related to media. Report Editor
Donna-Marie Bohan looks at industry trends over the last year.
2018 financial data shows that the New entrants include agencies
Top 100 digital agencies have grown such as EY-Seren, Somo, Mirum,
on average 20% year-on-year from 1000Heads, Feed, Maverick, Poke, 
£2.3bn in 2017 to over £2.8bn (Figure Croud, Think, Maginus, Edit, W12,
As Research Manager,
1). The Top 5 agencies hold 40% of the Tryzens and Dare Digital.
Donna-Marie Bohan
entire fee income of the Top 100 whilst
manages projects across
over half of the entire fee income is Some large agencies were unable
the research team to
held by the Top 8 agencies alone. to disclose financial information or
produce market insights,
unwilling to participate this year. This
best practice guides and
Hitting the top spot in 2018 for the sees the loss of Deloitte Digital and
trends and innovation
second consecutive year is Accenture Publicis.Sapient from the Top 10, which
reports for the digital
Interactive, followed by IBMiX in are part of large networks that come
marketing industry.
second place and Atos Digital Services with complex financial organisation.
In addition to her role
in third place. Cognizant Interactive
Other notable players missing as Managing Editor
made a debut appearance coming
from the ranking include Havas, of the Top 100 report,
in at number four. The professional
PWC Digital Services, AKQA and R/ Donna-Marie focuses on
services firm Cognizant announced
GA (part of the Interpublic Group managing research for
its place in the ranking with the
of Companies and this year’s peer- EMEA markets. You can
acquisition of agency Zone in 2017.
selected most respected agency). follow her on LinkedIn:
WPP merged POSSIBLE, Cognifide,
Acceleration, Fusepump and Salmon
Though we still believe fee income to  linkedin.com/in/
last year to form Wunderman UK,
be the most accurate way of ranking donnamariebohan/
which is ranked at number five.
digital agencies, the difficulties
in calculating and disclosing the
value results in inevitable omissions
throughout the ranking table.
4 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

£2,807,259,600
£2,334,594,268

Figure 1:
Total fee income
of the Top 100
2017 2018 Digital Agencies
Historical data demonstrates that the dominance Agencies are asked each year to select a primary
of the Top 10 agencies in the ranking is a trend function. Figure 3 compares the percentage of
that continues to persist. Over a five-year period, agencies under each primary function with each
the average net fee income of the Top 10 agencies function’s percentage of the total fee income
has steadily increased to £159,565,388, whilst the of all agencies in the ranking. Full Service/
average fee income of the remaining agencies in the Marketing agencies dominate, with 65% of the
ranking has been more or less stagnant (Figure 2). total fee income, followed by Design & Build
(18%), Technical (15%) and Creative (2%).
£159,565,388
£127,940,101
£95,108,505
£73,721,049
£59,420,319 
Figure 2:
Average fee
£9,826,679 £10,661,007 £11,145,872 £11,724,745 £13,465,790 income of the
top 10 digital
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
agencies vs.
average fee
Average fee income: top 10 digital agencies
income of the
Average fee income: rest of digital agencies rest (2014-2018)

58%
Full service/Marketing
65%
25%
Design & Build
18% 
Figure 3:
Technical
11% Percentage of
15% Top 100 agencies
by primary
function vs.
6%
Creative percentage of
2%
total fee income
by primary
% of total number of agencies % of total net fee income of Top 100 agencies function (2018)
The presence of agencies primarily categorised An area of work that has grown in recent years is
as technical has grown over the last five years. User Experience, which now accounts for an average
The demand for technical agencies is further of 14% of fee income from digital activities. This
evidenced by the fact that technical development, development goes hand in hand with evolving
on average, accounts for 24% of fee income from consumer expectations for personalised experiences.
digital work. Figure 4 illustrates that creative
work commanded the greater share of fee
income five years ago, but technical development
has outstripped creative since then.
Technical development 24%

19%
Creative 19%
21%
Marketing (planning, strategy or consultancy) 15%

16%
UX 14%
10%
Ecommerce 13%
18%
Media planning/buying 12%

13%
SEO 11%
18%
CRM and email 8%


11%
Managed
Managed services (e.g. services (e.g.hosting,
ad serving, ad serving, hosting,
applications Figure 4:
applications management) 7%
management) 9% Average
Social media 7% percentage of
12%
total fee income
Software re-sales 1% across business
5%
disciplines
Average % of total fee income 2018 Average % of total fee income 2014 (2014 vs. 2018)

The proportion of net fee income derived from Agencies were also asked to select the top five sectors
Social Media, SEO and Ecommerce, on the other in which they service clients. As Figure 5 shows,
hand, has declined. This trend can perhaps be retail, financial services and travel and leisure are the
understood within the broader context of increasing top sectors serviced by digital agencies this year.
consolidation of marketing activity in-house.
As more digital work becomes commoditised,
the focus is shifting to marketing planning,
strategy and consultancy services (15%).
Retail 66%
Financial services 65%
Travel and leisure 45%
Technology 34%
Automotive 33%
Telecommunications 27%
Energy and utilities 25%
Consumer goods 25%
Government and public sector 24%
Healthcare and pharmaceutical 23%
Publishing, media and entertainment 22%
Transport 17%
Charities and not-for-profit
Food and drink 12%
16%

Manufacturing and engineering 8% Figure 5:
Real estate and property 7% Main sectors
Education 6%
served by the
Gaming and gambling 5%
Top 100 digital
Other 11%
agencies in 2018

Industry highlights
and key themes
The following analysis and commentary
looks back on some of adland’s defining
moments and key themes in 2018.
The disruption of media buying
Transparency issues and changes to programmatic

buying practices are radically changing the role of
agencies. Based on a 2017 study, the Association
of National Advertisers (ANA) reported that 60%
of agencies are taking steps to address media
transparency within the client-agency relationship.1
Concerns about non-transparent practices such as

rebates and hidden fees have subsequently fuelled
growth in client demand for auditing services. While
some clients are taking control of programmatic
work, with an ANA report showing that over a
third of advertisers are moving programmatic
work in-house and away from agencies2, this
year’s number one agency on the ranking is
attempting to capitalise on the market trend by
getting into the media buying space itself.
Accenture Interactive launched a programmatic Agency holding groups refine their

services unit, encompassing media planning, buying propositions as their business
and management. Accenture Interactive also offers
media auditing and pitch management services in
models come under attack
addition to media buying. Issues related to this have
2018 was certainly a tough year for some agencies,
not gone unnoticed, with some observers remarking
with Top 100 entrants noting the loss of some
on a conflict of interest at play. Martin Vinter, Head of
clients or the end of contracts. The industry is
Media at specialist media consultancy Ebiquity, says:
being disrupted by different forces but are the
shifts occurring somewhat sensationalised?
“Whatever firewalls and segregation of media
buying and auditing will be in place, it won’t appease
It seems that the industry is riddled with a few
anyone. This is clear conflict – operationally and
contradictions. On the one hand, there has never been
philosophically. In the age of ‘transparency’ – and
as much money spent on advertising, yet the rise of
all that this encompasses – savvy marketers will see
ad blocking and the challenge for brand cut-through
that this as a significant issue. Impartiality, whether
suggest that advertising is now less effective. Fee
agency side or consultancy/audit side is crucial for
income of the Top 100 is growing yet the existential
the industry to weed out the issues that have existed
threat of agencies is much talked about and lamented.
in the past. This development unfortunately goes
against the grain of recent positive developments.”
Are agencies really struggling for survival?
The threat of consultancy disruptors, of course,

has received much attention in the last couple of

years. However, there are other competing forces
at play, most notably the rise of in-housing, the
formation of independent collectives as well as
the emergence of new sources of competition (a
trend discussed in greater detail by Econsultancy’s
Managing Partner Ruth Mortimer on p. 29).
Let us take a closer look at some of the main

issues impacting existing agency groups.


“The holding companies
undoubtedly need to seriously
evolve to meet fresh industry
demands. And, in the case of WPP
especially, this has posed some
serious questions over whether
an agency of that scale should
be restructured to reflect market
trends and the current climate.”
Luke Smith
Co-Founder and CEO, Croud
1. The third phase of Controversy aside, Sorrell’s exit from WPP

strategic development and the arrival of Mark Read as his successor
highlights that the marketing and advertising
Michael Farmer, author of Madison industries are deep in transition. Luke Smith,
Avenue Manslaughter: an inside view of Co-Founder and CEO of Croud, says:
fee-cutting clients, profit-hungry owners
and declining ad agencies, contends that “The holding companies undoubtedly need to
holding groups are in their third stage of seriously evolve to meet fresh industry demands.
strategic development. According to Farmer, And, in the case of WPP especially, this has
this third phase refers to centralising and posed some serious questions over whether an
downgrading silos. He puts forward a view that agency of that scale should be restructured to
agencies are short of talent and insufficiently reflect market trends and the current climate.”
integrated or creative, so holding companies
are taking over as super-agencies.3 What does this post-Sorrell world mean for
agencies? Perhaps the industry will shift more
This idea mirrors Publicis Groupe’s ‘The towards people-based marketing and customer
Power of One’ strategy or WPP’s concept of centricity to meet current market demands. For
‘horizontality’, a term that represents a model example, agencies have recently been investing in
put in place by Sir Martin Sorrell to encourage their own proprietary tech, a factor driving further
people in different agency units to work consolidation in the market, and building better
collaboratively in order to offer a broader range audience insight tools to help clients with media
of services to specific clients. Most of the agency and creative work. Clients, after all, are seeking more
holding companies have been refining their agile, simplified and flexible arrangements with
propositions in some way in recent years. partners in order to create connected customer
experiences in a fragmented media landscape.
2018 was marked by the ominous departure of
Sorrell from WPP in April. Since the departure of
the industry magnate, speculation and prediction
has been made about the breaking up of WPP
or the consolidation of its agency brands.

Luke Smith also reflects on the cultural
implications of these shifts within the industry: 
“We’re also seeing the somewhat sad demise of the “The industry is polarising,
age of the personalities in the agency world, with
with one end being driven
Sorrell and Vincent Bolloré having departed and surely
a couple of the other leaders not far off. This means by the need to automate
the holding companies are in danger of becoming
and drive down costs. On
incredibly corporate and faceless with grey offices
in Zone 2. A far cry from what agencies used to be the other, the drive upwards
known for and this isn’t what attracts young talent.”
– taking marketing into the
Whether or not this sentiment is widely shared, future boardroom via digital and
agency models, at any rate, will continue to evolve. In
operational transformation.”
order to drive change for clients, the agency groups
need to alter how they do business with them.
2. In-housing digital
Speaking at DMEXCO in Cologne this year, Blake
Growing pressure on the client-agency relationship Cahill, SVP Global Head of Digital Marketing and
has been a consistent theme for some time Media at Royal Phillips, suggested that a hybrid
but it has never been more apparent than now. model of working with partners, depending on a
There are a couple of reasons why this is the case, brand’s business maturity, is the way forward.
including mounting concerns about brand safety
as well as the dominance of Google, Facebook Cahill spoke about how Royal Phillips manages a lot of
and Amazon, which has meant that advertisers processes, testing and ongoing production internally
are buying directly from tech platforms. and how it has flipped its model of partnering with
agencies by working with them on strategy first and
Furthermore, in-house teams are under more then creative execution. The brand has also changed
pressure to prove marketing effectiveness and its remuneration practices by awarding higher
drive growth. Econsultancy’s Future of Marketing remuneration to strategy and consultancy services.
research backs up this theme, with 60% of
advertisers surveyed agreeing that proving marketing Not all marketing activity will occur in-house at every
effectiveness is more important now compared brand. Clients may also choose different partners for
to 2 years ago. Added to this, ‘maximising the ROI ideas and execution. While it may be an operational
on campaigns’ is considered the top objective challenge to bring the briefing process and flexible
for 49% of advertisers over the next five years.4 teams together, Cahill argues that a blended
approach to partnership ensures that brands develop
With driving growth in a high-volume world of always- the best of breed partners for each engagement.
on content at the top of the marketer’s agenda,
work is migrating in-house or to lower cost countries Consequently, we see a very mixed landscape,
– another force competing with agency groups. with agencies, consultancies, big tech platforms,
adtech and martech companies as well as
newer innovative players all trying to reinvent
3. Seeking solutions – a hybrid
and compete for the same lines of work.
model in a complex ecosystem
Notwithstanding the competition, BIMA Co-
While in-housing is a notable trend, the demand for
President and Think Managing Partner Natalie
solutions is high. Clients are seeking partners to help
Gross argues that the mix of business types is a
them navigate the mire of technological change.
positive development for the digital community
in an article where she discusses the broader
A lot of work can be done at scale in-house but
transformation facing the industry (p. 14). This
the extent of in-housing depends on a brand’s
mixed ecosystem, she argues, ensures creativity, new
budget and what it is prepared to organise.
perspectives and a willingness to drive change.

76%
52%
48%
24%

Figure 6:
A comparison of
agency groups
vs. independents
Agency groups Independents
in the Top
% of total number of agencies % of entire fee income of Top 100 agencies 100 (2018)
Indies form their own “Sadly, smaller agencies still suffer from
collectives to compete with the perceptions that, as they are smaller,
they should be cheaper, when in fact the
industry incumbents
value they create is significant.”
While networked agencies are undergoing
This independent agency spokesperson suggests
a period of transformation, independent
an opportunity in this middle ground position:
agencies are not standing still either.
“As the holding company behemoths increasingly
Independent agencies account for 48% of the
flounder to respond to clients’ needs for more
Top 100, whilst agency groups represent 52%
agile and responsive vendors, and the biggest
of the agencies in the ranking. Despite the fairly
consultancies struggle to produce breakthrough
even split in representation, agency groups hold
insight and creativity, the independent agency offers a
76% of the total fee income of the Top 100,
flexible (and affordable) alternative, and one capable
whilst independents hold just 24% (Figure 6).
of forming enjoyable and lasting relationships.”
One independent agency spokesperson
Another trend developing is independents combining
comments on this disparity:
in owner-led groups to offer an alternative proposition.
For example, ten independent agencies joined
“The industry is polarising, with one end being driven
forces this year to form an owner-driven collective
by the need to automate and drive down costs. On the
network called Together Group and combine their
other, the drive upwards – taking marketing into the
capabilities on client briefs. Whilst agency groups
boardroom via digital and operational transformation.
are restructuring their businesses to respond to
various challenges, indies are seeking collaborative
“We, like many mid-sized agencies, are pinioned
models to scale their own capabilities to meet client
between these two forces – undercut by AI and cheap
demands and compete with industry incumbents.
Asian resource, on the one hand, and outgunned
by the mega global consultancies on the other.
“Clients, too, are conflicted. Is marketing a commodity

to be bought on a cost basis as procurement
believe, or is it a strategic growth driver worthy of
significant investment? The challenge for a mid-sized
independent is to persuade clients that our prices
are worth paying and our talents up to muster.

The Facebook/Cambridge
Analytica debacle

The arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation
Facebook did and will
(GDPR)5 in May and the Facebook/Cambridge continue to operate very
Analytica (CA) data breach scandal marks a turning
point for the industry. The implications of these
much in the way that it was
events for marketing and advertising are heightened intended to – to provide
scrutiny over privacy and data security issues and
a shift in power from advertisers to consumers.
advertisers with a means
to reach micro-targeted
Croud Co-Founder and CEO Luke Smith says:
audience segments
“Back in the day, no one talked about data privacy at with highly personalised
dinner parties. However, this chain of events has got
people talking about it in homes across the globe, messaging. The adage of
cementing the issue in mainstream conversation.” “if you aren’t paying for
The marketing and advertising community had the product, you are the
already been taking a more cautious approach product” is very much what
towards social media platforms even before news of
the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged. Concerns Facebook relies on.”
around brand protection, along with the added
complications surrounding GDPR implementation, Michael Hewitt
were already making brands think more carefully Content Manager, Stickyeyes
about their relationship with data-driven ad platforms.
Michael Hewitt, Content Manager at Stickyeyes, Hewitt believes that Facebook will more than likely
thinks that the Cambridge Analytica scandal come out of this as a more mature advertising and
will probably go down as a mere footnote in marketing platform. He says that the company will
the context of marketing and advertising: tighten its policies, it will look to raise the standards
it holds advertisers and developers to over time
“Facebook is clearly going on the charm offensive and it will more than likely remove or replace
to win back the trust of both users and advertisers. targeting options, but the core business will remain
Whilst Cambridge Analytica demonstrated that the same. He says that whilst many will point to
the gateway between advertisers and users Facebook’s slowing user growth and slump on Wall
was woefully unguarded, in many respects, at Street as a sign that this scandal has hit Facebook
its base level, Facebook did and will continue hard, he believes that those problems are rooted
to operate very much in the way that it was in issues far bigger than Cambridge Analytica.
intended to – to provide advertisers with a means
to reach micro-targeted audience segments with It remains to be seen whether the CA incident
highly personalised messaging. The adage of will result in an appreciable migration away from
“if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the Facebook. If this scenario unfolds, agencies might
product” is very much what Facebook relies on.” capitalise on the opportunity to reach audiences
with other media types. If government regulation
becomes a likely scenario in the future, this could
impact the effectiveness of advertising on the platform

and brands may shift their media buying strategies.
Yet heightened interest and concern about

privacy can only be a good thing for advertising
and data-driven marketing. Luke Smith says:
“In the long run, I have no doubt that this will help
the industry to move on positively. Increasingly,
brands will have to make far more effort to forge
valuable, two-way relationships with customers that
will make for better engagement for all parties.”

Talent pipeline concerns remain The growth of diversity initiatives
Now a somewhat clichéd theme, talent and skills Conversations about diversity came to the fore this
are, once again, major concerns for the industry, as year, culminating with developments such as the
discussed by Econsultancy writer Nikki Gilliland (p. 18). #MeToo and Time’s Up movements against sexual
harassment and the #WomenCannes campaign.
How can the marketing and advertising
industries ensure that the talent pipeline Long listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey
meets new digital demands? Business Book of the Year Award, publications
such as Emily Chang’s Brotopia have appeared,
Julian Ward, Group Head of Talent Acquisition highlighting inequalities within the tech industry
at Stickyeyes, believes that the industry needs and how women and minorities are speaking
to consider how it is raising awareness and out to address the inequalities that exist.
educating the next generations of talent about the
opportunities that digital can offer, and to think There is evidence that change is occurring
more laterally about the skills and qualifications that within the media and advertising industries.
are relevant to what the industry does. He says: Analyst Leonie Mercedes discusses the growth
of initiatives and gradual progress regarding
“We come across many undergraduates and diversity and inclusion issues (p. 21).
school leavers who are largely unaware that there
is a rewarding career waiting for them in the It has certainly been another interesting year for the
digital industry. We come across mathematics industry. For further commentary and analysis on
undergraduates who have relatively little other themes such as the role of AI and the future
understanding of the opportunities available of agencies (p. 32), the convergence of martech and
to them in fields such as paid search and adtech and the power of data humanisation, please
programmatic advertising, or school leavers read the subsequent articles in this report, which
unaware that a digital apprenticeship could offer are brought to you by the Econsultancy team.
them more than a marketing-orientated degree.”
1 https://www.marketingdive.com/news/ana-60-of-ad-agencies-
Given that the demand for digital talent greatly are-working-to-address-media-transparency/448314/
outweighs the supply, Ward believes that it is
2 https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/47123
incumbent on industry professionals to engage
3 https://www.trinityp3.com/2018/06/confused-about-the-advertising-industry/
with educational establishments and spark passion
4 https://econsultancy.com/reports/the-future-of-marketing/
in the next generation of digital marketers:
5 https://econsultancy.com/reports/a-marketer-s-guide-to-
the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/
“Once we secure talent, it is then up to us as forward-
thinking organisations to nurture that talent through
training and development, to leverage relationships
with technology partners to make sure that their
talent continues to keep abreast of the ever-
evolving digital landscape, and to keep innovating
with new ideas that keep people engaged.”

EDITORIAL
Too Important
to Outsource?
The New Reality
for Digital
BIMA Co-President and TH_NK Managing Partner

Natalie Gross reflects on how the changing face
of the BIMA membership mirrors the broader
transformation facing the industry.
BIMA1 is the national industry Over the past 12 months, for example,
association for digital and tech our AI, Immersive Technology and
in Britain, with a membership Blockchain events and publications 
comprising a broad cross-section of the have been among those generating
Formerly CEO of Amaze,
consultancies and agencies listed in this the greatest levels of interest. Why?
Natalie Gross is currently
report. We represent more than 300 In a particularly wide and, in many
Managing Partner at
corporate members with a combined cases, misunderstood landscape, these
Think where she is
annual turnover of more than £1.3bn events and publications have enabled
responsible for driving
and a workforce of 15,000 people. more of our members to understand
the agency’s vision and
the big picture, develop points of view,
growth strategy. Natalie
Our members give us a unique share case studies and create shared
has spent the past 18
perspective on the changing face definitions. Crucially, our Think Tanks
years guiding global
of the digital landscape. They are helping members determine how
clients through their
determine the events we host next. and when to build these emerging
most ambitious digital
They influence the evolution of technologies into their own businesses.
programmes. She is also
the BIMA Awards categories. They
Co-President of BIMA,
inform our BIMA Councils and Think This article addresses the key
the industry association
Tanks and tell us what the focus movements and trends we have
representing digital in
of these Councils should be. seen develop in the industry over
Britain. In her tenure, she
the last year. It looks at the ways in
has transformed BIMA,
which our members are adapting
evolving its purpose
to the new landscape, and the
and structure. You can
new client-agency relationships
find her on LinkedIn:
being driven by those changes. It
also explores the future because
 linkedin.com/
one of the things our membership
in/natgross/
demonstrates most clearly is that
standing still and offering a generic
proposition is simply not an option.

Making emerging technologies
part of the offering 
In the past 12 months, many of our members have “Clients want and need
established (or are establishing) niche practices
alongside their overall offering, and they have digital capabilities and
developed partnerships with technology providers. culture at the heart of
Others are now taking the bolder move of placing
some emerging technologies at the core of their their organisation. That is
business, transforming their propositions wholesale. driving an increase in brand-
This is where the breadth and depth of our side digital practitioners.
membership gets interesting. We are seeing the larger Increasingly, it will be
consultancies quickly integrating the ‘mature’ end
of emerging tech into their enterprise solutions. In unthinkable to outsource
addition, we are seeing unique offerings coming out entirely to agencies.”
of startups and niche consultancies such as Us Ai and
Rewind. These businesses are building reputations for
collaboration and sharp creative thinking to support Jon Davie
brands in learning about and applying emerging Chief Customer Officer, Zone
technologies like robotic process automation,
conversational user interface and Interactive VR.
We see the same speed of change and diversity

of technology in the shortlist for the 2018 BIMA
Awards. Entries to the Awards were received from
global brands such as Google, client-side teams
like Cancer Research UK and Sony Music, startups
like Hero and The Bot Platform and hundred-year-
old(ish) brands like the BBC. The list of organisations
that have entered has never been more diverse.
Why such diversity? Emerging tech is no longer at the

fringe of organisations and in siloed business areas. It
has grown to become a de facto organisation-wide
issue commanding a great deal of Board attention.
As emerging tech and digital becomes more

integral to business, brands are considering that
it is too important to outsource and are instead
building in-house capabilities en masse.
As Jon Davie, Chief Customer Officer at Zone (part

of Cognizant Interactive), puts it: “Clients want and
need digital capabilities and culture at the heart
of their organisation. That is driving an increase in
brand-side digital practitioners. Increasingly, it will
be unthinkable to outsource entirely to agencies.”

The new working relationship

Determining the needs of brand-side
practitioners within the digital community “Many brands are looking
has become a key focus for BIMA. for something new: smaller,
BIMA established a new Brand Council because we more agile partners who
understand that, whilst there are clear similarities can work together in a
across clients and agency-side practitioners,
some client-side challenges will be unique to nested way to solve some
driving digital transformation from the inside. very specific problems. ”
The relationship between clients and agencies
will change fundamentally from a transactional Nadya Powell
and customer-supplier relationship to one of Head of Diversity and Inclusivity, BIMA
much greater collaboration, working with a mix of
internal and external expertise, in a multi-location,
multi-size and multi-agency composition. Tarek Nseir, Founding Partner of digital
transformation agency Think, believes that
Consultancies and systems integrators (SIs), already collaborative networks are essential for delivering
providing a home for large brands and governments a unique experience for their clients.
to spend their digital pounds, will continue to use
their strategic advantage and focus on providing “What is different today about small independents
end-to-end digital experiences. Whereas £500K-£2m is the network effect these specialists are having.
customer experience, CMS and app projects may At Think we talk about ‘fierce collaboration’ and
well be the core income for some agencies, they believe that working together in a meaningful way
may well simply be a small part of a much bigger is a fundamental driver for the digital economy.”
enterprise technology play for consultancies
and SIs. For agencies in general, that makes The convergence within the digital community –
commercial life considerably more challenging. agencies, consultancies, SIs, tech providers, startups
and brands – no doubt heralds the most challenging
Yet more than one type of business can enjoy success. and competitive landscape our industry has seen.
Not every brand will bring everything in-house. Not Yet from BIMA’s perspective, we also see this as
every agency or consultancy will be required to a wonderful opportunity to learn together.
deliver enterprise-grade services. Many clients will
want something different from the external partners As Pete Trainor, founder of AI consultancy Us Ai,
they procure, both commercially speaking and in says: “We are all battling on the same field for the
relation to the specialist skills, working approaches first time in quite a while because of the technology
and, importantly, personalities that they bring. changes that are happening. Coming together
– to learn, collaborate and build connections – is
We have noted the growing trend towards fundamental to the continued and accelerated
collaboration with small, nimble, complementary growth of the digital community in Britain.”
specialists. ‘Micro’ consultancies, as they are
sometimes referred to, often have expertise or points
of view that brand-side practitioners want. Nadya Collaboration in action
Powell, BIMA’s Head of Diversity and Inclusivity and
Co-Founder of creativity and change consultancy Seeing collaboration as the future is something
Utopia, is a firm believer in this emergent model: that applies just as much to BIMA as to the
members we serve. We have launched a strategic
“Many brands are looking for something new: smaller, partnership with Microsoft in the last 12 months,
more agile partners who can work together in a so that our members can nurture their existing
nested way to solve some very specific problems. tech talent and empower employees and
This is a great opportunity for individuals who want customers to be more collaborative and creative.
to work in the digital industry but don’t want to
go down the agency path. By working together The partnership has quickly developed into a
and using networks and peers to try different reciprocally rewarding relationship. Through
things, people can work in beta, learn and play.” the partnership, members across England and
Scotland are engaging in technology roadshows,
connecting with senior stakeholders and
accessing R&D funds. They also have early access


‘The Future of Digital
Agencies’ event in
June 2018, hosted
by Microsoft in
association with BIMA
and BIMA member
Wirehive, explored
the role that digital
agencies can play
in driving digital
transformation.
to software in development, meaning digital Marrying business needs to an agency’s clearly

agencies will now have direct influence on the differentiated proposition will become increasingly
development of core Microsoft software. important when it comes to clients selecting their
agency partnerships. Over the last 12 months,
From Microsoft’s perspective, the company has a we have seen many of our members sharpen
genuine desire to partner with a broad cross-section their propositions. AKQA is a wonderful example
of business and seeks to influence client-side brands of this with their acquisition of Universal Design
by scaling new products with a digital community. Studio and Map Project Office; a clear case of an
agency marrying its track record and pedigree for
Big tech companies like this, after all, are not just innovation with products to move a brand forward.
looking to place their products and relationships in
the hands of a select few. They wish to engage with
the broadest range of organisations that are flowing New perspectives
with ideas and appetite for technology adoption.
We expect more of these partnerships to emerge Much discussion has been made about the rise
within the wider digital community in future. of the consultancies, but one thing that BIMA
knows for sure is that the evolving structure
of the digital landscape is unpredictable.
The end of the generic proposition
Yet the dominance of one type of agency over
Operating in an incredibly competitive and fast- another risks stifling creativity. At the heart of
changing environment will not benefit everybody, BIMA is an ambition to create a total community
however. The landscape for digital and integrated that is brimming with new perspectives and
communications agencies is a tough place to be, a desire to take our industry forward. The
particularly for those that have failed to establish an breadth of our membership shows that we are
effective point of difference in their brand proposition. a home for this full spectrum of business.
Offering a point of differentiation is not a new The new playing field of big and small, full service
concept, but the demand for high-value skills has and specialist, full ownership and collaborative
masked the fact that some agencies have not got independents, in-house and externally sourced
it together enough propositionally. Now though, expertise, is a fascinating composition.
as the market has become more discerning, a
generic proposition will no longer be enough. As our industry evolves, our ambition
remains to be an effective voice for all.
1 https://www.bima.co.uk/

EDITORIAL
Finding the Right

Talent to Meet
Digital Demands
In an increasingly complex political landscape, UK

agencies are tackling new difficulties in recruiting and
retaining talent, writes Senior Writer Nikki Gilliland.
Talent supply remains one of the A report by Deloitte backs up this

biggest challenges faced by digital notion. It suggests that, despite
agencies today. As many organisations significant uptick in investment in 
strive to keep up with increasing digital emerging technologies, just 16%
Nikki Gilliland is a writer
demands, while also taking on a more of organisations believe their talent
for the Econsultancy
data-driven and analytical approach, pools have enough knowledge and
blog, covering topics
recruiting professionals with the right expertise to deliver a digital strategy.
including mobile,
technical skills can prove difficult. Similarly, just 23% of respondents say
UX, social media,
that their leadership team has a clear
ecommerce, and much
London-based marketing agency, understanding of certain technology
more from the world of
Big Group, says that “the plethora and how it will impact their business.1
digital marketing. You
of platforms and systems now
can follow her on Twitter
available to clients mean that It seems agencies are stuck between
or connect via LinkedIn.
there is an ever increasing need a rock and a hard place. On the one
for technologists that can master hand, they need to innovate, but
 @nikki_gilliland
different applications and systems.” on the other, they lack the ability
to do so. As a result – and despite
 linkedin.com/in/
This, Big Group suggests, combined confidence in digital capabilities
nikki-gilliland-
with “the talent pool of creative being low – this has not stopped some
6b28b05a/
technologists not expanding at a rate from betting on new technology.
matched by demand, has the potential
to hamper and restrict the vibrant Many agencies are now investing
independent sector of digital agencies.” in artificial intelligence. While this
temptation to invest is understandable,
it can be dangerous without the
specialist knowledge to harness and
implement the technology correctly,
potentially leading to underwhelming
and gimmicky campaign results.

The Brexit effect One way to combat this, as agency Two UK suggests,
is simply to win more clients, effectively keeping
As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, a steady turnover whilst the lower budgets are
there is the question of whether Brexit will have in place, in order to be in a position to capitalise
a damaging effect on agencies both recruiting through growth when normal business resumes.
and retaining the digital talent they need.
Will Brexit widen the digital skills gap even further? How are agencies tackling
talent issues?
With negotiations still underway, it is difficult
to predict the future with any real certainty. Some Top 100 agency submissions this year point
What we can do, however, is analyse the effect towards poorly targeted higher education initiatives
of the referendum and its results so far. as a big reason behind recruitment issues. Crafted
suggests that “due to the nature of marketing
As stated in Econsultancy’s ‘Navigating Brexit’2 report, courses, graduates often aren’t able to focus on
net migration of EU citizens to the UK has fallen technical knowledge of digital channels, and instead
from 189,000 to 90,000 since June 2016. Looking develop this within their early roles in digital.”
at this figure in the context of talent, it correlates
to more than a 50% reduction in the growth of the Of course, a good balance is necessary. While
potential EU talent pool for UK-based organisations. the main focus might be on the shortage of
technical roles, agencies must still work hard
For agencies trying to adjust to Brexit and its to foster creative talent in order to strike a
repercussions, an immediate focus should good balance of skills in multiple areas.
be to build a picture of the potential impact
across employee roles. This could be in terms Other factors such as the growing desire for
of specific job roles (i.e. within programmatic or professionals (particularly in creative roles) to
data science) or even agency locations whereby freelance can also play a big part. At the same time,
there might be greater intention to leave. we have also seen an increase in the use of fixed-
term contracts. This confusing mix of how and where
Meanwhile, when it comes to recruiting talent, it is professionals want to work – and how agencies are
important for agencies to emphasise the openness of able to accommodate them – can result in further
their organisation, and to build on existing reputations difficulties in recruitment and organisational set-up.
for openness and diversity. This extends not only to
nationality, but also gender equality and disability. Going back to a lack of skills, it appears the
government is taking steps to address the issue. Earlier
Of course, agencies are not only worried this year, the Institute of Coding was announced. It is
about talent. The ‘Brexit effect’ also seems to a consortium of more than 60 universities, businesses
be hampering client confidence, with many and industry experts, working together with the aim
agencies this year expressing concern over a lack of helping graduates build the right skills, in fields
of spending on new projects and campaigns. ranging from cybersecurity to industrial design.

In the meantime, it is also up to agencies themselves
to implement training in order to upskill existing 
employees and train new talent. Initiatives like
this can also enable agencies to look beyond “Technology is fundamental
traditional university education and foster talent from
to the future success of
underprivileged or less traditional backgrounds.
agencies. This should be
RAPP is one agency that has put a big emphasis
applied to recruitment.
on this, having worked with the IPA and Creative
Pioneers to broaden its search for talent to We should be making it
encompass school and college leavers rather than
more appealing for the
just graduates. It has also taken part in ‘Advertising
Unlocked’, which was a day-long event attended by next generation of talent
over 25 young people from diverse backgrounds,
who want to work in a
with the view to finding them a future role.
fast-paced, innovative
Luke Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of agency
Croud, comments on some of the ways in which
business environment.”
the marketing and advertising sectors can ensure
Luke Smith
their talent pipeline meets digital demands,
emphasising the role that technology can play: CEO and Co-Founder, Croud
“Technology is fundamental to the future success

of agencies. This should be applied to recruitment. Proof that investment
We should be making it more appealing for the next is worthwhile
generation of talent who want to work in a fast-
paced, innovative business environment. We have Econsultancy’s 2018 Digital Trends3 report
a big development team at Croud, and everyone is suggests that there is temptation for agencies
expected to be involved in the innovation process. to neglect skills and training, particularly
if they are struggling commercially or do
“Time and time again, our team surveys highlight not have a readily available budget.
training and development as key priorities, so we’ve
made this central to every employee’s development However, the report also highlights how significant
plans. Thinking like a tech business in terms of investment in digital skills and training is
the spaces you create for people helps, as does strongly correlated with high performance.
making everyone a shareholder in the business.
The report shows that top-performing companies
“We have also shifted away from a city-centric (i.e. companies that exceeded their top 2017
model, which has allowed us to source talent from business goal by a significant margin) are twice
up and down the country, as well as overseas. as likely to be investing significantly in digital
We have our famous (I think) Croudies – a skills and education during the coming year.
worldwide network of more than 1,900 freelance
digital specialists – who share their skills and This provides food for thought for agencies,
provide coverage of more than 100 markets in especially in the context of the competitive nature
77 languages. We’re harnessing talent that has of the industry, and the growing demand on
chosen to work in a different way, and we’ve got a organisations to innovate in specialised areas.
surplus of supply – this is the future of working.”
Essentially, it is no longer enough to sit back and
hope talent lands on the doorstep. As education
evolves and political uncertainty continues, it is up to

agencies to empower employees and invest in the real
skills needed to innovate – not just the technology.
1 https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/less-
than-half-of-executives-believe-they-have-digital-skills.html
2 https://econsultancy.com/reports/navigating-brexit-a-
provisional-guide-for-marketers-and-hr-talent
3 https://econsultancy.com/reports/digital-intelligence-
briefing-2018-digital-trends/

EDITORIAL
The Growth
of Diversity
Initiatives
In this section, Research Analyst Leonie Mercedes explores the

benefits of diversity and inclusivity in marketing and suggests
how organisations can foster more inclusive workplaces.
Many events over the last 12 months, It could be argued that inequalities
culminating in the establishment of in the industry stem, at least in part,
the Time’s Up1 movement against from a lack of representation. 
sexual harassment, have thrown a
Leonie Mercedes works
spotlight on the inequalities that A 2016 study among 272
on Econsultancy’s
exist in the creative industries. digital agencies by BIMA and
research team and
SapientRazorfish4 found that 39% of
contributes to the
It is an issue that is also clearly on agencies have a 50:50 gender split,
researching, writing
our minds in marketing, as entries to but that the majority of respondents
and editing of reports.
this year’s Top 100 Digital Agencies (54%) say that their agencies have
With a background in
highlighted the opportunities afforded not reached a gender balance.
B2B journalism, she has
by having an inclusive workforce Furthermore, just under one-fifth
formerly held positions
and identified the challenge of (18%) of agencies say that they have
at Contentive and
hiring diverse talent. Meanwhile, a workforce that is 100% white.
Newton Media Group.
some of the industry’s movers and
shakers have been taking action to We know that diversity and inclusivity
raise awareness of the experiences is good for business. McKinsey &
of minorities in the media. Company’s 2017 report ‘Delivering
through diversity’,5 shows that greater
At the Cannes Lions International gender, ethnicity and cultural diversity
Festival of Creativity this year, the within an organisation is correlated
#WomenCannes2 campaign invited with greater profitability. So why
women and men to wear black aren’t more minorities represented in
on the last day of the festival as a marketing? Put simply, change is hard.
symbol of solidarity with Time’s Up,
while Pitch Magazine Founder and “While it’s easy to take the moral high
Editor Sherry Collins ran an ad3 on ground and wave a banner, shouting
the back of her magazine to draw ‘This must change!’, the onus is on us
attention to the harassment that some to create and foster an environment
women of colour face at the festival. that enables change to happen,”
says Claire Rogerson, Employee
Engagement and Talent Development
Specialist at agency RAPP.

More minds, more
ideas, more impact
In an industry that depends on engaging

with people, whoever they are and whatever
experiences they have had, it makes sense to
nurture a diverse and inclusive workforce.
“It is absolutely vital that a range of perspectives and

voices are part of the creation of communications
because our audience is incredibly diverse – even
within one ‘target audience’,” says Jo Wallace,
Creative Director for marketing communications
company J. Walter Thompson and founder
of Good Girls Eat Dinner,6 a regular dining
event which connects inspirational, female
role models across the creative industries.
Rogerson agrees: “Marketing is all about people,”

she says. “We are not all the same… What motivates
us, our beliefs, our values, our cultural heritage, our
norms, our politics, our vices and virtues – all of these
are shaped by our backgrounds and lived experiences.
A cultural shift
“Our industry, therefore, needs to reflect
this in its creativity and output. For that, McKinsey’s ‘Delivering through diversity’ report
we need a diverse workforce.” also identified that companies find improving
the representation of diverse talent a particularly
Kelsie Nattrass, Lead Solutions Consultant at challenging goal. Implementing such a fundamental
customer experience management platform cultural shift requires us to think more deliberately
Sprinklr, says: “From my own experience, a diverse about the decisions we make in the workplace.
company and office culture is just plain inspiring.”
As Rogerson explains, many of our actions and
She adds: “We must champion and build workplaces decisions at work are made at an unconscious level.
that have a mix of people... Otherwise, we end “Rather like driving a car, we’re not constantly thinking
up doing and creating the same thing over and about what we’re doing and why, we are just doing
over, expecting innovation to just happen.” it, and sometimes we get into bad habits,” she says.
“Diversity has to be a deliberate effort before it’s

muscle memory, and that responsibility is on
all of us in the industry today,” adds Nattrass.

McKinsey says that companies that are leading in
“We must champion and their diversity efforts ensure that their inclusion and
diversity initiatives align with their overall growth
build workplaces that have strategies. Companies tend to fall short if they lack
a mix of people... Otherwise, leadership accountability for meeting their diversity
and inclusion goals, have not built the business
we end up doing and case for it or have not prioritised an action plan.
creating the same thing
There is no lack of understanding in the creative
over and over, expecting industries of what more inclusive teams can offer,
innovation to just happen.” says Rogerson. “What really has been lacking
is accountability, and with it, the impetus to do
Kelsie Nattrass things differently. This is changing now, and I see
Lead Solutions Consultant, Sprinklr evidence of this on a regular basis,” she says.


“Train people around
the company’s outlook
on diversity, promote
that way of thinking,
so people are under no
illusion that it’s something
they want to foster.”
Jo Wallace
Creative Director, J. Walter Thompson
Taking action diverse backgrounds with those working in the

creative industries, and The Diversity Taskforce8, a
To understand how to build more inclusive collective of marketing and advertising agencies,
workplaces, it makes sense to look at what is creating runs ten initiatives. These initiatives include
inequalities in the first place and address those conducting independent diversity audits and
issues. Three factors to consider are a perceived lack running a cross-industry mentoring platform, with
of access to the industry (you cannot be what you a view to promoting inclusivity in the sector.
cannot see, as the saying goes), unconscious bias
and how to nurture and retain the talent you have. Once companies secure their talent, they should take
steps to ensure that people feel supported. “Make it
Nattrass believes that there are two key moments that clear how people can complain if they don’t feel that
create inequalities in the tech industry: getting your they’re being treated fairly. This promotes a clear
first job and getting promoted later: “Both of these vision for an inclusive organisation and in turn will
moments in your career can be extremely challenging attract a spread of good candidates,” says Wallace.
if you don’t have the right relationships in place.”
“Train people around the company’s outlook
As many talented people may not be aware on diversity, promote that way of thinking,
of the opportunities that exist in marketing, so people are under no illusion that it’s
it is important that agencies reach out. something they want to foster,” she adds.
“We also need to make our industry more inviting Changes like these require a shift in mindset,
and accessible, so that we attract more diverse which can take time. However, as marketing
candidates and create more role models from teams should reflect the audiences they seek to
a diverse background,” says Rogerson. “The engage with, inaction would be imprudent.
mantra ‘see it, be it’ is so true. We need to actively
create opportunities for people from diverse
1 https://www.timesupnow.com/
backgrounds to shine and inspire others.”
2 https://www.womencannes.com/
3 https://www.thepitchfanzine.com/assumenothing/
Accordingly, RAPP hires apprentices for roles where
4 https://www.bima.co.uk/Article/16-Dec-2016/Digital-agencies-suffer-
possible, and is developing an internship programme
from-widening-skills-gap-and-lack-of-diversity-amid-Brexit-worries
designed to create opportunities for young
5 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/
homeless people to get work experience. To avoid
our-insights/delivering-through-diversity
unconscious bias, it is piloting blind CVs and running
6 http://www.goodgirlseatdinner.com/
mandatory unconscious bias training for all staff.
7 https://www.creativementornetwork.org/
8 http://www.valensteinandfatt.com/taskforce.html
Meanwhile, the Creative Mentor Network7 identifies
and connects talented young people from

EDITORIAL
The Power of Data

Humanisation
Surging demand for the study of consumer behaviour is

driving the neuromarketing technology market. Econsultancy
Research Director Laurence Bird discusses how new
techniques are delivering strong business results.
Neuromarketing – the use of Fast forward to 2018 and one might

neuroscience to measure the impact be forgiven for thinking that this
of marketing and advertising on year is all about data, analytics and 
people – is not new. In 2013, Guy machine learning, yet there seems to
As Econsultancy’s
Reason suggested on Econsultancy’s be a resurgence in the popularity of
Research Director,
blog that “Somewhere around the good old human side to insights.
Laurence Bird leads the
2009, neuromarketing arrived in the This stems from the need for brands
content and research
public conscious with a tidal wave to truly understand what really drives
strategy and team
of enthusiasm”1. Reuters reports people’s decisions and therefore
for Econsultancy’s
that the global neuromarketing what may impact their revenues.
subscribers globally.
technology market is expected to
Laurence’s extensive
reach $100 million by 20232. The numbers alone are not enough
experience in digital,
to tell this story so marketers, data
media and marketing
Neuromarketing techniques include scientists, market researchers and
includes research and
not only eye tracking, facial encoding their colleagues are in search of an
strategy positions at
and brain imaging (fMRI and EEG), answer to their eternal question:
Haymarket, Time Warner,
but also sensory marketing and why? Why do some customers buy
Disney and the IAB as
psychological techniques. These have service A rather than B? Why are some
well as consultancy
a variety of benefits, from seeing what customers satisfied by a product
work. Laurence holds a
potential customers look at when while others are not? Why do they
global top-tier Executive
viewing an ad or content marketing to stop shopping when our predictive
MBA from Imperial
analysing brainwaves to gain a better model shows they should? Why is
College Business
understanding of whether consumers our latest campaign not showing
School, where she
like a new product or ad. These ROI? The list goes on and the way to
specialised in Strategy,
techniques are not bulletproof and quench their thirst for knowledge – the
Entrepreneurship and
have been criticised as being ineffective only way – is not more data, but the
Marketing. You can
at best, if not misleading, as clinical right data together with true insights
find her on LinkedIn:
psychologist Vaughan Bell proclaimed into these human beings to unearth
in 2015, “The marketing industry has the reasons behind the numbers.
 linkedin.com/in/lbird/
started using neuroscience, but the
results are more glitter than gold”3.


“Ultimately, data
humanisation
has the power to
generate positive
outcomes such
as increases in
branding metrics,
conversion rate and
revenue – a win-win
for businesses and
customers alike.”
Some great examples of such initiatives are included At Lab, psychology, behavioural economics and
in this year’s Top 100 entries. For instance, Total Media neuromarketing are used to craft the modern user
has developed a behavioural product, the Empathy experience. Lab’s achievements include evolving
Engine. This product combines in-house and third- their neuro offering into a concise set of frameworks,
party machine learning techniques with a range of models and approaches that deliver incredible
neuroscience and behavioural science methods to results. Looking into the future, Lab Joint Founder
understand consumers’ trait psychology and the and Director Tom Head says: “We want to be the
emotion that sits behind what they are telling. most human-savvy digital agency in the country.”
They layer clients’ first-party data with their Empathy Data humanisation can be powerful. If done well, it
Engine output and use data science techniques can lead to actionable insights that can help explain
to develop audience segments that go beyond consumer behaviour and customers’ motivations.
standard demographics. Using their behavioural These insights can result in tangible benefits,
planning approach, they create the signals and including advertising and packaging that resonate
environments to buy against for each segment. with customers, more relevant products and services
as well as improved user experience and satisfaction
Total Media also uses biometrics to evoke the levels. Ultimately, data humanisation has the power
right emotions in their creative and measure to generate positive outcomes such as increases
the change in the audience’s perception of a in branding metrics, conversion rate and revenue
brand using associative emotion analysis. – a win-win for businesses and customers alike.
Other agencies such as Collective create human-

1 https://econsultancy.com/blog/62199-neuromarketing-
first experiences to help businesses communicate is-dead-long-live-neuromarketing
with greater purpose, trust and relevancy. Their
2 https://www.reuters.com/brandfeatures/venture-capital/article?id=34591
approach – Human Natured Thinking – blends
3 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/28/
behavioural science, technology and creativity vaughan-bell-neuroscience-marketing-advertising
primarily within the digital, social and content space.
Nomensa combines expertise in psychology,

user-centred design and accessibility to create
meaningful digital experiences that are shaped
around those who truly matter: the users.

EDITORIAL
The Changing Role

of Agencies in the
“madtech” Era
The past few years have brought new pressures to bear on

agencies and their business models. Prompted by revelations
over the widespread practice of pocketing rebates, brands
are increasingly scrutinising their contracts with agencies,
writes Econsultancy Deputy Editor Rebecca Sentance.
As brands seek to close the loopholes increasing financial pressures and

that allowed agencies to absorb part a changing technology landscape,
of their ad spend, agencies have agencies are reinventing their 
been experiencing a sharp downturn business models in order to stay vital
Rebecca Sentance is
of revenue, often exacerbated by to brands, evolving into a consulting
the Deputy Editor of
brand cost-cutting in other areas. role in which they offer technological
the Econsultancy blog,
expertise to help brands navigate
publishing in-depth
While all this is happening, the the merged world of madtech.
articles about strategy
landscape of advertising and
and best practice in
marketing technology has begun
to shift. The increasing convergence The rise of madtech martech, emerging
technology, search
of martech and adtech – previously
thought of as separate entities What is the difference between and SEO, digital
with different jurisdictions – has marketing technology (martech) transformation and more.
given rise to a new hybrid known as and advertising technology

“madtech”, which blends marketing, (adtech)? At base, both are new  @rainbowbex
advertising and technology. types of technologies designed

to aid in the promotion of a  linkedin.com/in/
Some people, including Chief brand, business or product. rebecca-sentance-

0953b0b9/
Marketing Technologist’s Scott
Brinker, argue that the martech/ Ad tech is often thought to be for
adtech distinction was always arbitrary. media buying and paid media,
Nevertheless, the notion that the two while martech is seen as being for
have merged has dissolved boundaries personalisation and owned media.
that existed, or were perceived to As such, adtech is typically regarded
have existed, between media buying as the province of agencies (which
and ad buying, between in-house typically control media spend),
and agency spending – throwing the while martech is considered to be
traditional role of the agency into flux. the province of in-house teams.
How are agencies adapting to this However, while these divisions might
new era of uncertainty? Between once have had some basis in truth,

the current reality is much more fluid, making
the industry distinction between mart ech and 
adtech fairly arbitrary. In an article entitled ‘Why
the dichotomy between adtech and marketing “Some brands have brought
tech is dysfunctional’, Scott Brinker points out that programmatic ad buying
the tools for managing social media advertising
are not generally classed as adtech, despite the in-house. Even when
fact that they lie within the realm of paid media.1 the ad buys are external,
The same goes for ads on search engines.
DMPs [Data Management
“As for the line between agencies and in-house teams, Platforms] are increasingly
it almost goes without saying that there is no such line
any more,” wrote Brinker. “Some brands have brought based in-house because
programmatic ad buying in-house. Even when the brands want to control
ad buys are external, DMPs [Data Management
Platforms] are increasingly based in-house because their own audience data.”
brands want to control their own audience data.
Scott Brinker
“Vice versa, agencies are providing all kinds Editor, chiefmartec.com
of marketing technology services beyond the
realm of advertising: website development,
search engine optimization, social media
marketing, conversion optimization, content
marketing, influencer marketing, and so on.” Evolving business models
As awareness of this fluidity permeates the industry, At the same time, growing pressure to end established
a new concept has been coined to refer to the practices, which have allowed agencies to turn a profit
convergence of martech and adtech: the catchily- by pocketing rebates, instead of ploughing them
named “madtech” (often written as “MAdTech”). back into brands’ campaign spend, has prompted
agencies to reinvent their business models.
The age of madtech is seeing brands increasingly
moving into spaces that have previously been The purpose of a media agency is to help brands
occupied by agencies. For example, Ayal Steiner, navigate the world of advertising, which has
Managing Director APAC at Outbrain, explained at a traditionally been done by allowing them to
Which-50 Media roundtable that many brands are manage media budget and execute media
now looking to execute adtech buys themselves, buying on behalf of a brand. With the boundaries
directly from their marketing stack, a task that between martech and adtech breaking down,
would usually be carried out by an agency.2 however, brands have been taking control of media
spend, bringing their marketing and advertising
“That raises a big question of what is the role activities in-house and under one roof.
of a media agency there, and how they can
evolve to add value to the equation.”


“We’re seeing many brands
take core skills such as
a web development and
digital marketing in-
house, and using agencies
for consultancy and new
thinking... So we all have
to reinvent ourselves to
remain in business.”
This does not mean that brands do not need agencies.

Instead, as the complex and fragmented landscape
of madtech companies continues to grow (despite
popular belief that it will inevitably consolidate3),
brands are sorely in need of experts in technology
who will help them to navigate this crowded
marketplace, and agencies are moving into that role.
Agencies are now strategically advising clients

on the best technologies to employ and, in
many cases, are influencing the technology
being developed to suit the needs of clients.
The commentary from agencies featured in

Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018
ranking echoes this trend. One agency wrote:
“As we constantly evaluate the services we offer and

their impact on our clients’ digital performance,
we often find there’s an internal need among
prospects and clients to better understand the
latest technology and approaches that could The road ahead for agencies in the madtech era will
deliver greater value to their digital activity. still be a challenging one, as they face new obstacles
such as increasing competition from businesses
“As such, we believe there’s an opportunity for us that are looking to move into the same space.
to develop our training offering, with the aim to
educate and inform attendees across a variety Nevertheless, far from being squeezed out by the
of topics, via workshops and classroom-based convergence of martech and adtech, agencies are
training. […] Our training will also be supplemented instead seizing the opportunity to tap into new
by bespoke sessions or digital consultancy, which markets and develop a business model that will
we’ve already begun rolling out to clients.” likely prove to be far more sustainable – as well as
beneficial to the industry as a whole – than their
Another Top 100 entry confirmed the old practices. Long live the age of madtech.
need for agencies to reinvent themselves
in order to stay relevant.
1 http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/dichotomy-ad-tech-martech-work/308114/
“We’re seeing many brands take core skills 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoZKEv2KlU0&feature=youtu.be
such as a web development and digital 3 https://chiefmartec.com/2018/05/martech-consolidation-expansion/
marketing in-house, and using agencies for

consultancy and new thinking... So we all have
to reinvent ourselves to remain in business.”

EDITORIAL
A User’s Guide
to Interesting
Upstarts
In this article, Econsultancy Managing Partner Ruth

Mortimer discusses the new sources of competition
challenging the future agency model.
If anyone loves future gazing, it’s 1. Publishers/media/

agencies. Yet few predicted even a content creation
few years ago that their competitor
businesses

landscape would be so altered by the
Ruth Mortimer is
incursion of management consultancies
Virtually every publisher operating right Managing Partner
and brands taking work in-house.
now has a creative shop as part of its of Econsultancy
portfolio. The IAB recently released where she oversees
If consulting firms have become the
its first ever directory of publisher product development
new normal – as Accenture Interactive
branded content studios this year.1 and manages the
and IBM iX dominate the Top 100
While some of these businesses sponsorship business.
list for another year – what new types
are focused mainly on sponsored Ruth formerly ran
of business might we see appearing
content and advertising solutions, the award-winning
in future to challenge agencies?
an increasing number are offering Festival of Marketing
a sophisticated blend of context, and edited Marketing
I have picked just five core groups of
content and distribution services. Week magazine. She
interesting upstarts that I think will
compete with agencies over the next is also a PPA award-
At scale, companies like Oath (formerly winning columnist
few years. There are many more sources
Verizon), which owns AOL, TechCrunch, and the author of five
of competition out there, but these five
HuffPost and Yahoo!, among others, books on marketing.
groups are already fairly established
are combining access to audiences,
and so pose more of a scalable
context, content creation and digital
threat than some of the smaller
marketing tech. It doesn’t take a
entrepreneurs operating in this space.
huge leap of imagination to see that
telecom giant AT&T’s estimated $2bn
acquisition of AppNexus this summer
allows it to occupy a space that
straddles content (through its $85bn
purchase of Time Warner), digital ad
space and mobile data. This is not
so much an agency as an all-in-one
audience monetisation machine.

Furthermore, it’s not just Oath and AT&T making 3. Modern partnership brokers
interesting moves in this space; we are now
beginning to see the emergence of niche publishers, While media companies and communities
too. Cycle Media in the US, for example, produces have access to mass audiences, another source
content related to sports and offers everything from of competition for agencies is coming from a
standard sponsorship of its content right through group best described as brokers. This group
to influencer campaigns using its communities. comprises a diverse mix of intermediaries
Meanwhile, LADbible’s branded content agency beginning to offer services that compete with
Joyride regularly produces campaigns for agencies and management consultancies.
both its own and other social channels.
Econsultancy’s sister brand Oystercatchers fits nicely
into this area. Once a pitch consultancy, it now
2. Communities runs large-scale consultancy and transformation
projects that stray into areas that once would have
While communities have long been part of the been the preserve of brands such as Accenture.
digital space – Reddit, probably the granddaddy
of them all, has been running since 2005 – the Sunday Dinner is another such broker. Founder
new community sites are sophisticated audience Lindsay Slaby – a former Droga5 employee –
delivery machines offering ever more services. wrote an excellent post on LinkedIn after Cannes
Lions this year warning agencies about their new
The community sites are not publishers – the content competition.2 Her firm offers consultancy but
and discussion that fuels them are generated by the uses the medium of dinners to bring together
audience rather than professional content producers influential people to crack briefs in a new way.
– but they too seek to offer brands services that
would have once been the domain of an agency. Meanwhile, The School of Life, which began as a
concept store and training school to help consumers
Mumsnet has long provided a range of insight and develop emotional intelligence, has shifted to
sponsorship services to brands in the parenting providing business services similar to what would
space. Girlboss offers everything from custom social have once been offered in workshops by agencies.
activity to influencer marketing and invites partners
to get involved, somewhat like a community version
of Refinery29. As more of these sites offer a range 4. Workspace and
of services similar to those offered by publishers, workflow brands
without the overheads associated with scaling
content production, they form interesting alternatives Some of the newer entrants to the B2B space are
for reaching audiences, particularly niche ones. companies that focus on workplace or workflow
solutions, but they also provide services that
once might have been handled by an agency.
The smartest workspace brands are a mix

between office providers and private members
clubs. While many started out offering physical
services as a benefit of membership, they are

now increasingly offering business services.
WeWork acquired community platform MeetUp

at the end of 2017 and digital marketing startup
Conductor earlier this year, moves that many view
as a precursor to offering further community and
digital services. As WeWork’s UK and Ireland Managing
Director, Leni Zneimer, explained to Econsultancy:
“WeWork is just one of our business lines.”3
The company has launched a coding academy,

Flatiron School, which comes to the UK this
year and as more people use its app to meet
people, book rooms and network, it becomes
an area ripe for audience monetisation.

Working spaces and communities are increasingly
overlapping. In the US, The Wing provides co-working 
spaces for women, while in the UK, The AllBright
is a working space and private members club for “At the moment, YouTube or
females. Both brands work with partner suppliers Instagram or Facebook owns
to offer services to their influential audiences.
the context, the environment
5. Brands getting in on the act and the format in which we
talk with our own customer.”
Increasingly, businesses are offering digital,
content and marketing services. The most
Henry Davis
established operator of this type is, of course,
Amazon, which functions not only as a media President, Glossier
owner offering advertising space but also has its
own creative shop to help brands create ads.
Smaller brands are frequently getting in on the

act, too. Glossier, a beauty brand that delivers hip
cosmetics direct-to-consumer, originally developed
out of a popular blog, Into The Gloss. Glossier has
openly stated that its aim is to own every part of the
marketing funnel, including the context and the social
environment, and uses its dedicated community
to help co-create its products and marketing.
It was no surprise that Glossier’s president Henry

Davis spoke at this year’s Cannes Lions about themes
that once would have been within agency territory.
“At the moment, YouTube or Instagram or

Facebook owns the context, the environment
and the format in which we talk with our own
customer,” he said. “Actually, if we really believe
that having customers as a core part of the
company is the way to build brands of the future,
you have to start to own that relationship.”
Now, if you are currently working at an agency and

reading this with an outraged look on your face, I
say this to you: No, these companies and brands
are not agencies. They do not do what you do. But
that’s the problem. You are never truly disrupted
by the threat you can see on the horizon.
You need to watch out for the interesting upstart who

met your largest client in the WeWork communal area
or at the bijou dinner organised by a broker you have
never heard of, and who suggests they could offer
that something you did not even know was missing.
1 https://www.iab.com/news/content-studio-directory/
2 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cannes-future-agency-
model-right-under-our-noses-lindsey-slaby/
3 https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/70188-a-day-
in-the-life-of-uk-ireland-md-at-wework

EDITORIAL
How Does AI Play

a Critical Part
in the Future
of Agencies?
In this article, Econsultancy Editor Ben Davis takes a

practical look at AI and agencies of the future.
‘AI-powered’ has been a convenient This article outlines practical

way for agencies and martech vendors ways in which agencies are,
to supercharge their propositions, and will be, using AI. 
even when the intelligence of
Ben Davis is Editor of the
their tech may be unclear.
Creative Econsultancy blog and
has written over 1,000
Computers scientists themselves
regularly debate what actually defines Truly creative AIs are currently articles about marketing
intelligence. Wikipedia informs me that the stuff of science fiction. But and technology
“as machines become increasingly are they consigned there? topics. You can follow
him on Twitter:
capable, tasks considered as requiring
The answer to that would seem to be
‘intelligence’ are often removed
‘yes’ if we use language generation  @herrhuld
from the definition, a phenomenon
(proxy for thought generation) as an
known as the AI effect, leading
example. Language generation is one
to the quip, ‘AI is whatever hasn’t
of the most difficult nuts for AI to
been done yet.’” Such nuances are
crack. Anyone on Twitter will know
never going to stop a good agency
that every so often an AI’s attempt at
marketer plastering those two letters
writing a new Harry Potter chapter,
over every page of their website.
for example, goes viral through its
Most of the media coverage and sheer ludicrousness. Neural networks
opinion pieces I have read about AI are also trained to come up with
in marketing take one of two angles ‘jokes’, but unless your sense of (anti)
– either a banal optimism about data humour is incredibly absurd, their
science (couched in generic and non- efforts do not make much sense.
committal language) or a discussion
How is AI actually being used
of which jobs are for the chop (ending
by creative agencies?
with the triumphal assertion that robots
will never paint like Picasso or write
like Shakespeare – ignoring the fact we
would laugh at any human who said
they aspired to those creative heights).

Well, deep learning has been used to perform the
splicing together of video clips, writing of advertising 
storylines and composition of music. Pretty much
all of the time, such AI has been experimental and “Let’s not underplay the
used as little more than a gimmick i.e. if you did significance of machine
not know an AI had been used, you could probably
guess (spotting an obvious creative dissonance). learning optimisation for
Plenty of human oversight, of course, was needed big advertisers though.
to create these flawed efforts. Column inches may
have been won, but the creative was never intended If your business is in a
to be placed in prime advertising real estate. competitive market or
Where AI seems to have a future is in creative you are a retailer with a
direction. Unsurprisingly, if you want to play to the large product catalogue,
strength of an AI, the best thing to do is to use
it to spot patterns. This might mean using it to efficiencies are a big deal.”
search archives of award-winning campaigns and
then advise on elements to include in your own
ad (this approach was used by McCann Japan in Examples of media agencies championing AI
2017).1 Or it could mean an AI trained to judge include Albert and Blackwood Seven (whose
the tone of creative and predict its success with entire propositions are based on AI – Albert even
this tone. Again, the hard work lies in training such has its website on an .ai domain to make the
an algorithm and interrogating its decisions. point) and iProspect with its CORE algorithm.
These examples are all about AI helping to reduce It should be pointed out here that this adjustment
the odds of creative failure, to direct the creative, of ad creative and targeting in real-time based on
rather than to produce any itself. The question is feedback does change the traditional relationship
whether agencies would be happier to take a punt between media agency and creative content,
when they have the backing of a machine? It can between strategy and execution. This is something
be very hard to put a number on exactly why ads that Brainlabs CEO Daniel Gilbert has written
fail – how many data sources will an AI need in about recently on the Econsultancy blog, saying
order to take account of regional dynamics in our “it would be extremely counter-productive to
society or the current geo-political situation? How pre-determine this aspect of [creative] strategy;
do you train an AI with enough data to properly making it adaptive to feedback gained during
understand nostalgia? Big PhD questions, these. execution is the way to win in the biddable era”.4
Of course, more data, along with faster and better

Media algorithms are not a silver bullet – first movers gain an
advantage, but ultimately advertisers are competing
Media bidding optimisation is probably the most with each other for media. Then there is the bigger
obvious area where machine learning has been used picture in advertising – expert targeting and bidding
in marketing for some time. For example, Google Ads cannot disguise consumer apathy to much of digital
(formerly AdWords) has Smart Bidding, with machine advertising, or the continuing issue of brand safety
learning algorithms trained to help make more (ads appearing in less-than-desirable spots).
accurate predictions of how different bid amounts
might affect conversions or conversion value.2 Ultimately, you get what you pay for in media,
even if you believe in people-based marketing.
Similar technology is used across all biddable media. Although agencies do not want to be left behind
Agencies are bringing a variety of contextual data with their tech, media buying is obviously a far
together (from weather to customer behaviour) more complicated business than simply having
and using their own algorithms plugged into a great algorithm. Indeed, Blackwood Seven
adtech platforms to increase return on ad spend. closed its UK office in December 2017 after only
a year to concentrate on the SaaS element of the
In fact, a recent report by ExchangeWire and business, with CEO Carl Erik Kjærsgaard saying
IponWeb reveals that 49% of media agencies that the plan “was never to be a traditional media
use proprietary adtech for programmatic buying, agency, but to offer advertisers direct access
which (though it won’t all be AI-powered) at to advanced AI-based comms planning”.5
least hints at how commonplace machine
learning has become within media agencies.3

Let’s not underplay the significance of machine
learning optimisation for big advertisers though.
If your business is in a competitive market
or you are a retailer with a large product
catalogue, efficiencies are a big deal.
Furthermore, it should be noted that machine

learning is being used in a similar way for owned
media, to optimise communications, whether it be
email, website content or app push notifications.
New vendors and services are popping up every
month. If you are a telco that sends out millions
of emails, for example, such optimisation is
important. Most marketers will find that their
email service providers are already offering
such machine-learning led personalisation.
Analytics
The power of machine learning

lies in data interrogation. Aside from digital tactics, larger agencies need
to ask themselves a fundamental question. If
AI in analytics now is chiefly related to media their strategic remit in some cases is straying
optimisation or content personalisation. towards rethinking business processes and
Bidding algorithms can predict the chance of reimagining business models (agencies are, after
an impression converting and bid accordingly. all, often involved in digital transformation projects),
Likewise, predictive analytics enables marketers does their data manipulation and machine
to predict the likely lifetime value of a customer, learning capability need to be beefed up?
and then message them accordingly.
Agencies often talk about technologists, strategists
However, let us consider the remit of the and creatives working together and offering a distinct
digital agency (and AI) more broadly. viewpoint on a problem. Increasingly, that view may
be blinkered if agencies cannot call on the right data.
Provided data has been collected and organised
in the right way (itself no mean feat and perhaps As an addendum – all of this applies to internal agency
the major limiting factor for businesses with processes, too. Most people in the industry have heard
legacy tech), the applications of predictive of Marcel, Publicis’ AI-powered platform designed
analytics and data mining are vast. to revolutionise how the agency group functions.
A McKinsey study6 identifies use cases such as Marcel – which delivers personalised content,
predictive maintenance using IoT data or imagery, connects employees and organises briefs – is a
logistics optimisation (delivery routing) and image tacit admission that agency groups need some
analysis in disease diagnosis. Beyond new use of this machine-led disruption themselves.
cases, however, the same report suggests that
advances in analytics through deep learning have I see AI as a way for agencies and clients to better
the potential to boost the value of traditional see the wood for the trees. Surely, in the digital
analytics by anything from 30% to 128%. era, we are all crying out for such perspective?
1 https://futurism.com/an-ad-agency-now-has-
the-worlds-first-ai-creative-director/

2 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7065882?hl=en-GB
3 https://www.exchangewire.com/agents-of-change-the-
rise-of-the-programmatic-media-agency/
4 https://econsultancy.com/blog/70241-the-division-between-
strategy-execution-is-meaningless-in-a-biddable-world/
5 https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2017/12/05/
blackwood-seven-to-close-uk-operation/
6 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-intelligence/
notes-from-the-ai-frontier-applications-and-value-of-deep-learning

THE TOP 100
How the

guide works
The Top 100 Digital Agencies Report lists the UK’s
top 100 digital marketing, design and build,
technical and creative agencies.
Agencies are ranked on their fee income from digital In addition, some of the larger agency groups have rules
activities in the UK. For the purposes of the Top 100, that prevent their agencies from disclosing financial
fee income from digital media activities is defined information. In the majority of cases, agencies that
as the money that agencies retain after any bought- could not provide all financial details requested (or
in third-party costs, such as media, production or failed to respond to enquiries) have not been listed in
hosting, have been paid. Although not a perfect metric, the guide. In the case of MullenLowe Profero, RAPP UK
we believe that this is a better indicator than overall and We Are Social, last year’s figures have been used
turnover of what an agency’s digital expertise is worth. at their request due to unavailable data or changes
in financial reporting structures. Furthermore, the fee
Agencies supplied information via an online form. income of Accenture Interactive and IBMiX has been
As with previous editions, we asked them for estimated by Econsultancy based on available data.
figures that came from their most recent full year’s
accounts. Information provided was verified using While the utmost care is taken in compiling financial
Companies House records and with each agency. figures for this guide and its corresponding rankings,
this can only be as reliable as the information supplied.
To better enable comparison of agencies,
they have been ranked by income in their All content and editorial decisions
category. Agencies chose which category best remain Econsultancy’s own.
described the largest part of their business.
Some agencies did not submit their fee income due

to policy and legislative constraints, most notably
the 2002 US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which makes
senior executives of public companies personally
liable for false or misleading financial information.

 FULL SERVICE & MARKETING  DESIGN & BUILD  TECHNICAL  CREATIVE
Top 100 We have ranked agencies on the income they

receive from digital media activities, rather than
agencies by
total turnover. Fee income is money agencies retain
from clients after rechargeable third-party costs,
such as media, production or hosting have been
fee income paid. Agencies unable to release this information
are not ranked unless the information is available
from other sources, such as Companies House.
Rank Agency name UK fee income from Year to Previous year Year Owner
digital founded
1 Accenture Interactive £351,424,177 08/17 £284,664,182 2009 Accenture
2 IBM iX £267,087,857 12/17 £195,930,000 1990 IBM
3 Atos Digital Services £181,000,000 12/17 £139,000,000 2011 Atos
4 Cognizant Interactive £170,000,000 12/17 N/A 2014 Cognizant Technology

Solutions Corp.
5 Wunderman UK Group £167,200,000 12/17 N/A 1998 WPP plc
6 EPAM Systems £124,000,000 12/17 £104,000,000 2005 Independent
7 AmazeRealise £88,000,000 07/17 £67,819,000 1997 St Ives plc
8 BAE Systems Applied Intelligence £87,723,779 12/17 £91,069,939 2002 BAE Systems
9 Tribal Worldwide £80,618,067 12/17 £70,649,333 1996 DDB
10 Kainos £78,600,000 03/18 £64,500,000 1996 Independent
11 Merkle £71,000,000 12/17 £41,000,000 2001 Dentsu Aegis Network
12 Digitas £69,298,000 01/18 £76,462,000 2006 Publicis Groupe
13 Engine Partners UK LLP £61,085,000 12/17 £59,118,000 2005 Independent
14 RMA Consulting £45,500,000 03/18 £29,700,000 2005 NTT DATA Corporation
15 MullenLowe Profero* £40,700,000 12/16 £33,300,000 1998 MullenLowe Group
16 EY-Seren Limited £38,295,707 06/18 £36,048,035 2000 EY
17 CACI £36,642,600 06/17 £37,390,000 1999 CACI Inc.
18 VCCP Group LLP £35,300,000 12/17 £33,300,000 2002 Chime Group Holdings
Limited
19 Valtech Limited £31,800,000 12/17 £25,000,000 1995 Independent
20 RAPP UK* £29,554,000 12/16 £27,393,000 1965 Omnicom
21 Jaywing £29,521,045 03/17 £26,304,000 2006 Independent
22 Forward3D £26,120,000 12/17 £21,411,000 2004 The Stagwell Group
23 Cello Signal Group Limited £25,500,000 12/17 £23,800,000 1998 Cello Health plc
24 Fetch £22,349,955 12/17 £17,862,086 2009 Dentsu Aegis Network
25 TMW Unlimited £20,400,294 03/17 £20,098,320 1987 Digital Unlimited Group

Ltd (trading as the
Unlimited Group)
26 Be Heard £19,200,000 12/17 £9,490,000 2015 Independent
27 AND Digital £17,831,276 12/17 £11,287,889 2013 Independent
28 The BIO Agency £14,638,115 04/18 £13,253,146 2006 Tech Mahindra

digital founded
29 AnalogFolk Ltd £14,468,269 12/17 £15,819,075 2008 AnalogFolk Global Ltd
30 McCann Connected £13,423,804 12/17 £12,634,995 1995 Interpublic Group of

Companies, Inc (IPG)
31 Somo £13,400,000 12/17 £11,500,000 2010 Independent
32 Mirum £13,326,000 12/17 £16,651,000 2015 WPP plc
33 We Are Social* £13,267,813 12/16* £12,243,018 2008 BlueFocus

Communication Group
34 Stickyeyes Group £13,200,000 12/17 £10,800,000 1996 Interpublic Group of

35 IDHL Group £12,909,762 12/17 £10,505,989 2000 Independent
36 SYZYGY £12,890,821 12/17 £11,429,265 1995 SYZYGY AG
37 1000heads £12,567,657 12/17 £9,136,890 2000 1000headsGroup Ltd
38 Feed £12,146,567 04/18 £8,826,715 2005 Independent
39 Amido Ltd £11,805,596 03/18 £7,862,363 2010 Independent
40 Four Communications Group £11,606,591 12/17 £8,619,421 2003 Independent
41 Visualsoft Ltd £11,054,397 06/18 £8,940,495 1998 Independent
42 Inviqa UK £10,709,767 12/17 £10,941,945 2007 Independent
43 Prophecy Unlimited £10,650,000 03/18 £10,400,000 2017 The Unlimited Group
44 Reading Room £10,626,187 10/17 £9,541,679 1996 Idox Group plc
45 Maverick Advertising & Design Ltd £10,500,000 06/18 £5,850,356 2006 Independent
46 The Big Group Holdings Ltd. £10,300,000 12/17 £9,100,000 1991 Independent
47 Red Badger £9,496,484 10/17 £7,015,064 2010 Independent
48 Poke £9,441,000 12/17 £8,845,000 2001 Publicis Worldwide
49 Equator £9,402,129 10/17 £10,004,415 1999 Independent
50 Foolproof Ltd £8,885,376 03/18 £8,364,952 2002 Zensar Technologies plc
51 twentysix £8,884,000 02/18 £9,546,000 1996 MSQ Partners
52 Dept Design & Technology Ltd £8,868,000 12/17 £7,723,000 2007 Dept UK Holding Ltd
53 Rufus Leonard £8,446,964 12/17 £8,679,297 1992 Independent
54 Croud £8,394,950 03/18 £5,319,528 2011 Independent
55 KHWS Limited £8,362,503 12/17 £7,818,576 1993 Independent
56 Redweb £8,323,000 12/17 £10,269,000 1997 Independent
57 4Ps Marketing (part of Artefact) £8,266,637 12/17 £6,015,031 2008 Independent
58 Hugo & Cat Ltd £8,240,000 12/17 £8,580,000 2004 Interpublic Group of
59 Celerity (Information Services Ltd) £8,130,438 09/17 £6,995,093 2003 Independent
60 AIA Worldwide £8,069,432 12/17 £6,838,567 1986 TMP Worldwide
61 Omobono £8,016,257 12/17 £6,831,599 2001 Independent
62 Greenlight Digital £7,737,000 08/17 £7,980,000 2001 Independent
63 Search Laboratory £7,727,939 10/17 £6,841,361 2005 Independent
64 Orange Bus £7,282,000 12/17 £4,063,000 2007 Capita plc
65 Ayima £7,251,000 12/17 £8,775,000 2007 Ayima Group AB

digital founded
66 TH_NK £7,244,500 10/17 £6,893,300 2004 Independent
67 Stink Studios £7,182,000 12/17 £4,953,000 2009 Independent
68 Cheil UK £7,141,959 12/17 £4,534,525 1989 Cheil Worldwide
69 Code Computerlove £7,000,000 12/17 £6,464,000 1999 MediaCom
70 Maginus Software Solutions £6,982,000 07/17 £5,995,000 2000 Independent
71 NMPi £6,842,887 12/17 £8,017,994 2004 incuBeta Group
72 Tangent £6,770,338 03/18 £6,350,600 2001 Independent
73 Edit Agency Limited £6,719,689 07/17 £6,125,622 2018 St Ives PLC
74 Vaimo UK Ltd £6,588,528 12/17 £6,379,322 2012 Vaimo AB
75 ORM £6,575,353 09/17 £5,736,511 1999 Independent
76 W12 Studios Limited £6,560,000 05/18 £5,700,000 2012 Independent
77 Nomensa £6,463,362 12/17 £5,769,543 2001 Independent
78 We Are Friday £6,431,695 12/17 £5,519,589 2009 Independent
79 Tryzens £6,416,000 03/18 £5,053,000 2004 Independent
80 Dare Digital Ltd £6,400,000 06/17 £5,700,000 2000 Inside Ideas Group
81 CDS Digital £6,293,343 12/17 £5,952,526 1994 The Baird Group
82 Great State £5,830,846 03/18 £5,754,187 1997 Independent
83 Answer Digital Limited £5,604,617 12/17 £3,688,344 1999 Independent
84 Threepipe £5,260,000 03/18 £4,100,000 2004 Independent
85 Beyond £5,186,503 01/18 £4,213,011 2010 Next 15 Communications

Group plc
86 Pulse £5,130,000 12/17 £3,243,000 2013 Independent
87 Affinity £4,977,426 05/18 £4,912,033 1986 Affinity Group Holdings
88 Kagool £4,879,021 03/18 £4,252,189 1999 Independent
89 Metia Group £4,841,798 09/17 £4,504,873 1990 Metia Group Ltd
90 Click Consult £4,800,000 03/18 £4,000,000 2003 Independent
91 ThirtyThree £4,796,135 12/17 £3,947,703 2008 Capita plc
92 Leighton £4,759,000 03/18 £4,093,000 1996 Independent
93 The Octopus Group Limited £4,740,000 12/17 £5,417,000 2000 Independent
94 Abacus e-Media £4,603,321 12/17 £4,180,000 1997 Urdgrup Limited
95 Dog £4,469,125 12/17 £4,502,253 1996 Independent
96 ODD London £4,321,445 01/18 £3,110,119 2004 Next 15 Communications

Group plc
97 ClearPeople £4,302,923 03/18 £3,944,332 2003 Independent
98 Fat Media £4,248,067 04/18 £3,818,106 2005 Independent
99 Your Favourite Story £4,232,153 03/18 £3,700,634 2006 Independent
100 CTI Digital £4,197,354 02/18 £3,277,986 2003 Paperhat
* Denotes where the same fee income has been published as in the Top 100 2017 report due to agency group policy changes meaning
these agencies were unable to disclose their most recent fee income figures or the information was unavailable

Top full service

and marketing
agencies
digital founded
1 Accenture Interactive £351,424,177 08/17 £284,664,182 2009 Accenture
2 IBM iX £267,087,857 12/17 £195,930,000 1990 IBM
4 Cognizant Interactive £170,000,000 12/17 N/A 2014 Cognizant Technology

Solutions Corp.
5 Wunderman UK Group £167,200,000 12/17 N/A 1998 WPP plc
9 Tribal Worldwide £80,618,067 12/17 £70,649,333 1996 DDB
11 Merkle £71,000,000 12/17 £41,000,000 2001 Dentsu Aegis Network
12 Digitas £69,298,000 01/18 £76,462,000 2006 Publicis Groupe
13 Engine Partners UK LLP £61,085,000 12/17 £59,118,000 2005 Independent
18 VCCP Group LLP £35,300,000 12/17 £33,300,000 2002 Chime Group Holdings
Limited
19 Valtech Limited £31,800,000 12/17 £25,000,000 1995 Independent
20 RAPP UK* £29,554,000 12/16 £27,393,000 1965 Omnicom
21 Jaywing £29,521,045 03/17 £26,304,000 2006 Independent
22 Forward3D £26,120,000 12/17 £21,411,000 2004 The Stagwell Group
23 Cello Signal Group Limited £25,500,000 12/17 £23,800,000 1998 Cello Health plc
25 TMW Unlimited £20,400,294 03/17 £20,098,320 1987 Digital Unlimited Group

Ltd (trading as the
Unlimited Group)
26 Be Heard £19,200,000 12/17 £9,490,000 2015 Independent
30 McCann Connected £13,423,804 12/17 £12,634,995 1995 Interpublic Group of

32 Mirum £13,326,000 12/17 £16,651,000 2015 WPP plc
33 We Are Social* £13,267,813 12/16 £12,243,018 2008 BlueFocus

Communication Group
34 Stickyeyes Group £13,200,000 12/17 £10,800,000 1996 Interpublic Group of

35 IDHL Group £12,909,762 12/17 £10,505,989 2000 Independent
36 SYZYGY £12,890,821 12/17 £11,429,265 1995 SYZYGY AG
37 1000heads £12,567,657 12/17 £9,136,890 2000 1000headsGroup Ltd
38 Feed £12,146,567 04/18 £8,826,715 2005 Independent
40 Four Communications Group £11,606,591 12/17 £8,619,421 2003 Independent

digital founded
45 Maverick Advertising & Design Ltd £10,500,000 06/18 £5,850,356 2006 Independent
46 The Big Group Holdings Ltd. £10,300,000 12/17 £9,100,000 1991 Independent
51 twentysix £8,884,000 02/18 £9,546,000 1996 MSQ Partners
53 Rufus Leonard £8,446,964 12/17 £8,679,297 1992 Independent
54 Croud £8,394,950 03/18 £5,319,528 2011 Independent
55 KHWS Limited £8,362,503 12/17 £7,818,576 1993 Independent
57 4Ps Marketing (part of Artefact) £8,266,637 12/17 £6,015,031 2008 Independent
58 Hugo & Cat Ltd £8,240,000 12/17 £8,580,000 2004 Interpublic Group of
60 AIA Worldwide £8,069,432 12/17 £6,838,567 1986 TMP Worldwide
62 Greenlight Digital £7,737,000 08/17 £7,980,000 2001 Independent
63 Search Laboratory £7,727,939 10/17 £6,841,361 2005 Independent
65 Ayima £7,251,000 12/17 £8,775,000 2007 Ayima Group AB
66 TH_NK £7,244,500 10/17 £6,893,300 2004 Independent
67 Stink Studios £7,182,000 12/17 £4,953,000 2009 Independent
68 Cheil UK £7,141,959 12/17 £4,534,525 1989 Cheil Worldwide
71 NMPi £6,842,887 12/17 £8,017,994 2004 incuBeta Group
73 Edit Agency Limited £6,719,689 07/17 £6,125,622 2018 St. Ives PLC
80 Dare Digital Ltd £6,400,000 06/17 £5,700,000 2000 Inside Ideas Group
82 Great State £5,830,846 03/18 £5,754,187 1997 Independent
84 Threepipe £5,260,000 03/18 £4,100,000 2004 Independent
86 Pulse £5,130,000 12/17 £3,243,000 2013 Independent
88 Kagool £4,879,021 03/18 £4,252,189 1999 Independent
89 Metia Group £4,841,798 09/17 £4,504,873 1990 Metia Group Ltd
90 Click Consult £4,800,000 03/18 £4,000,000 2003 Independent
91 ThirtyThree £4,796,135 12/17 £3,947,703 2008 Capita plc
93 The Octopus Group Limited £4,740,000 12/17 £5,417,000 2000 Independent
96 ODD London £4,321,445 01/18 £3,110,119 2004 Next 15 Communications

Group plc
99 Your Favourite Story £4,232,153 03/18 £3,700,634 2006 Independent
100 CTI Digital £4,197,354 02/18 £3,277,986 2003 Paperhat

Top design and

build agencies
digital founded
7 AmazeRealise £88,000,000 07/17 £67,819,000 1997 St Ives PLC
8 BAE Systems Applied Intelligence £87,723,779 12/17 £91,069,939 2002 BAE Systems
10 Kainos £78,600,000 03/18 £64,500,000 1996 Independent
14 RMA Consulting £45,500,000 03/18 £29,700,000 2005 NTT DATA Corporation
15 MullenLowe Profero* £40,700,000 12/16 £33,300,000 1998 MullenLowe Group
16 EY-Seren Limited £38,295,707 06/18 £36,048,035 2000 EY
31 Somo £13,400,000 12/17 £11,500,000 2010 Independent
47 Red Badger £9,496,484 10/17 £7,015,064 2010 Independent
49 Equator £9,402,129 10/17 £10,004,415 1999 Independent
50 Foolproof Ltd £8,885,376 03/18 £8,364,952 2002 Zensar Technologies plc
52 Dept Design & Technology Ltd £8,868,000 12/17 £7,723,000 2007 Dept UK Holding Ltd
56 Redweb £8,323,000 12/17 £10,269,000 1997 Independent
69 Code Computerlove £7,000,000 12/17 £6,464,000 1999 MediaCom
70 Maginus Software Solutions £6,982,000 07/17 £5,995,000 2000 Independent
72 Tangent £6,770,338 03/18 £6,350,600 2001 Independent
74 Vaimo UK Ltd £6,588,528 12/17 £6,379,322 2012 Vaimo AB
75 ORM £6,575,353 09/17 £5,736,511 1999 Independent
77 Nomensa £6,463,362 12/17 £5,769,543 2001 Independent
78 We Are Friday £6,431,695 12/17 £5,519,589 2009 Independent
79 Tryzens £6,416,000 03/18 £5,053,000 2004 Independent
85 Beyond £5,186,503 01/18 £4,213,011 2010 Next 15 Communications

Group plc
87 Affinity £4,977,426 05/18 £4,912,033 1986 Affinity Group Holdings
95 Dog £4,469,125 12/17 £4,502,253 1996 Independent
97 ClearPeople £4,302,923 03/18 £3,944,332 2003 Independent
98 Fat Media £4,248,067 04/18 £3,818,106 2005 Independent

Top creative
agencies
digital founded
28 The BIO Agency £14,638,115 04/18 £13,253,146 2006 Tech Mahindra
29 AnalogFolk Ltd £14,468,269 12/17 £15,819,075 2008 AnalogFolk Global Ltd
48 Poke £9,441,000 12/17 £8,845,000 2001 Publicis Worldwide
61 Omobono £8,016,257 12/17 £6,831,599 2001 Independent
76 W12 Studios Limited £6,560,000 05/18 £5,700,000 2012 Independent
94 Abacus e-Media £4,603,321 12/17 £4,180,000 1997 Urdgrup Limited
Top technical
agencies
digital founded
3 Atos Digital Services £181,000,000 12/17 £139,000,000 2011 Atos
6 EPAM Systems £124,000,000 12/17 £104,000,000 2005 Independent
17 CACI £36,642,600 06/17 £37,390,000 1999 CACI Inc
27 AND Digital £17,831,276 12/17 £11,287,889 2013 Independent
39 Amido Ltd £11,805,596 03/18 £7,862,363 2010 Independent
42 Inviqa UK £10,709,767 12/17 £10,941,945 2007 Independent
59 Celerity (Information Services Ltd) £8,130,438 09/17 £6,995,093 2003 Independent
64 Orange Bus £7,282,000 12/17 £4,063,000 2007 Capita plc
81 CDS Digital £6,293,343 12/17 £5,952,526 1994 The Baird Group
83 Answer Digital Limited £5,604,617 12/17 £3,688,344 1999 Independent
92 Leighton £4,759,000 03/18 £4,093,000 1996 Independent

Top regional The following table presents a breakdown of Top

100 agencies located in regions outside of London.
agencies
1. Scotland 6. Wales
AmazeRealise Kagool
Dog
Equator
7. South West
Edit Agency Limited

2. North West
Great State
Click Consult
Nomensa
Code Computerlove
Prophecy Unlimited
CTI Digital 1
Redweb
Dept Design &
Technology Ltd
Fat Media
8. South East
Maginus Software
Solutions Celerity (Information
Services Ltd)
McCann Connected
3
9. Northern Ireland
3. North East
9
2 Kainos
Orange Bus
Leighton
Visualsoft Ltd
4
4. Yorkshire and
Humber
Answer Digital Limited
CDS Digital
5
IDHL Group
6
Jaywing
Search Laboratory
8
Stickyeyes Group
7
twentysix
5. East England
Affinity
Omobono

Most respected Top 100 entrants were asked to nominate the
most respected agencies and influential people
agencies and in the industry under four specific categories. The
information shown here represents the agencies
influential industry and people who received the most nominations.
professionals
Most respected agency

 One to watch

Founded in 1977, R/GA has been a pioneer at the intersection ustwo is a global digital product studio, which launches products,
of technology, design and marketing, with work spanning web, services and companies that make a meaningful impact on
mobile, social, retail, product innovation, brand development the world. The agency’s team combines strategic, conceptual
and business consulting for the connected age. The agency and creative to develop interactive tools for modern media
has more than 2,000 employees globally, with offices across platforms, from smart television through to mobile devices.
the United States, Europe, South America and Asia-Pacific, Since its foundation in 2004, it has partnered with some of
and is part of The Interpublic Group of Companies. the world’s leading brands and has grown to four studios
around the world in New York, Malmö, London and Sydney.
Website:
rga.com Website:
ustwo.com
 
Most influential person Rising star
Peter Veash Steven Bartlett

Founder and CEO, Founder and CEO,
The BIO Agency Social Chain
Peter Veash founded The Bio Agency in 2006 after a previous In the last few years, Steven Bartlett has become an award-
career at Omnicom Group. With regular appearances on winning entrepreneur, speaking and investor, and now leads
the BBC and CNN as well as a role in advising the UK Social Chain, a company of more than 150 people who
Government, Peter’s rising reputation as a digital expert has are quickly disrupting the ever changing social sphere.
seen his business enjoy rapid growth in recent years.

MOST INFLUENTIAL
An Interview with
Peter Veash,
Founder and CEO
of The BIO Agency
Peter Veash has been voted the ‘most influential’ figure by

his peers in this year’s Top 100. Econsultancy Editor Ben
Davis caught up with him to find out more about his work.
Perhaps fittingly, in a year when the Top 100 report “We’ve changed our methodology,” he says. “The
tackles such disparate and complex subjects as AI, long version is we believe there’s a big industry
psychology and existentialism (what is an agency issue that everyone is very user-centric, which
to be?), Veash speaks with directness and clarity is the correct way to be, but just meeting user
about his business. The fact that he answered my needs alone doesn’t necessarily mean digital
questions for this interview whilst driving a car and transformation is going to impact digital KPIs.
placating a canine passenger was impressive, too. Nobody is addressing that in the industry, globally.
“We’ve taken the last year to work out how we

Beyond user-centric design stitch together the business case, all the way
through, to make sure before we do any work and
I asked Veash what distinguishes BIO’s approach. it goes live, we have a view on how it’s going to
His reply was that BIO makes “a prediction before shift NPS and revenue. It’s more accountable.”
the work goes live as to how it’s going to change
revenues and NPS, and I think that puts us in Veash went as far as to describe agencies
a relatively unique place in the industry.” as “an unaccountable world.”
To put this into context, BIO is a customer experience- As for how exactly BIO makes these predictions,
led digital transformation agency, so it does a wide its founder talks of analysing customer journeys
variety of work but a large part is user-centred design using “a central platform that can see what’s
of digital experiences. As with many specialisms, going on in real time, [allowing us to] start to
there can be an element of dogmatism to user- model what we’re going to do and its impact.”
centred design, something that clients have to
some extent embraced, too (how many times have It makes sense that the agency pushes this
we heard marketers talk about “putting customers accountability, given that transformation
at the heart of what we do”?). Veash explains how projects fail more often than not. Veash cites
this user-centricity is not enough on its own. a McKinsey study from 2015, which found
that three quarters of business transformation
programmes do not achieve their stated goals.

New specialisms

I asked Veash about BIO’s current
“What we believe we’re challenges, particularly about other new
doing for the first time is roles the agency has recruited for. One new
specialism he stressed was psychology.
tying together strategy
with experience design “We’ve brought a psychological approach
into the business, because we’re changing
and technology.” the way we understand customers from
doing personas to really understanding
Peter Veash psychological profiling. That’s a shift for us.
Founder and CEO, The BIO Agency
“When we think of customer experience, psychologists
don’t exist in that field today, so we’re learning from
them in all kinds of different sectors, such as health.
They’ve done seven years of training and we want
Defining the digital agency to open up this world for them for the first time.”
In the current landscape where digital agencies Veash adds that drawing on psychology is
face unprecedented competition from new for the industry and “not typically the
consultancies and marketers are increasingly in- way people operate today in our sector.”
housing some digital disciplines, I asked Veash
how BIO’s way of working stacks up against
Attraction and retention
the competition. His take was a simple one.
Discussing agency culture with Veash, he
“Strategy consultancies would typically be good
highlighted two main issues. Firstly, “a
at business casing and operational strategy, but
change in the way people want to work.”
they’re less good at actually bringing that to life. Then
design consultancies and experience consultancies
“People are less concerned about full time,
are very good at creating something that provides
and more and more people are choosing
a great customer experience but they don’t often
freelance work for flexibility. As a business, you
tie back to business metrics. Then you’ve got
have to adjust to that and understand it.”
technology agencies that can bring in the tech but
they don’t tie back to the customer experience.
Veash says he is open-minded about the workforce:
“What we believe we’re doing for the

“We’ve changed the way we offer holidays, the
first time is tying together strategy with
way we give breaks in careers, to make it the right
experience design and technology.”
place to work. A place people want to come to.”
As someone who does not have a background in

Part of attracting and retaining staff is BIO’s offer of
agency land, this is compelling in its simplicity.
a “significant learning and development budget,”
Furthermore, BIO’s two-prong proposition detailed
which Veash says is “not so common in our industry.”
on its website makes a lot of sense – digital
innovation (creating products, services, experiences) He adds, “We are 100% focused on training our
and digital transformation (looking at the whole teams. When I was growing up working in the
business, from operations to tech to culture). industry, it was more about learning on the job,
but consultancies, for example, don’t do that.”
Veash adds that length of engagement with clients is
increasing and that alongside a customer experience This is perhaps a revealing comment. Speaking
(CX) team, BIO has an employee experience (EX) team. to Veash, I got the impression of more structure
and processes in place at BIO – a maturing of
“We’re having to make changes internally to
their model, which balances product expertise
make sure the project is realised in the way
and ideas with business acumen, leading to
it should be. We’ve had a couple of examples
greater cultural embedding with clients. Digital
where we are hired not only to deliver a digital
agencies are all dealing with these changes
product and transformation, but also to agitate
in the market as businesses realise digital
the organisation so it works in a different way.
is less about the next best tech and more
about finding the right strategic partner.
“…Sometimes you need a bit of a sledgehammer to
force change. As a result, we have hired EX specialists.”


The Top 100
agency profiles

1 2
Accenture Interactive IBM iX
Accenture Interactive is a new breed of IBM iX uses design techniques to

agency. It has been custom designed solve complex business challenges.
from the ground up to help its clients It focuses on the user to help clients
create and deliver the best experiences deliver exceptional digital experiences,
on the planet. It describes itself as part leveraging the world’s best technology.
creative agency, part business consultancy
and part technology powerhouse, a The agency partners with ambitious
formula that is driving its growth. leaders to imagine the businesses of
the future, then builds them, focusing
The agency helps the world’s leading on design transformations to put
Fee income: Fee income:
brands transform their experience across businesses at the forefront of the digital
£351,424,177 (<08/17) £267,087,857 (<12/17)
the entire customer journey at speed age. Combining analytics with design
and at scale. Through its connected and development, IBM iX aims to create
Year founded: 2009 Year founded: 1990
offerings in design, marketing, content authentic interactions for business impact.
Owner: Accenture and commerce, it creates new ways to Owner: IBM
win in today’s experience-led economy. “Human beings are at the heart of
everything that we design and build,”
UK head: Joy Bhattacharya, UK head: Debbie Vavangas,
It has never been harder, or more exciting the agency says. “We make real stuff
Managing Director IBM iX Leader, UK and Ireland
to be a CMO, the agency says, before and [don’t just draw] pretty pictures;
adding that there is a well-documented [we create] real stuff that ends up in the
Contact: Joy Bhattacharya, Contact: Faye Weedon,
Managing Director, gap between brand promise and consumer IBM iX Strategy and Market hands of real people. Everything we do
j.a.bhattacharya@accenture. expectation – Accenture Interactive cares Development Lead, faye. is based on some sort of insight from
com, about helping CMOs close this gap, as weedon@uk.ibm.com, the people we are designing for.”
+44 (0) 791 700 0000 well as creating new ways to win through +44 (0) 734 150 4516
relevant and human experiences. In the last 12 months, IBM iX has won the
Website: Website: DADI Award for Best Use of AI/Machine
accenture.com/gb-en/ In the last 12 months, Accenture ibm.com/services/ibmix/ Learning and was named as Salesforce’s
interactive-index Interactive has continued to expand number 1 partner. Its personnel have also
its client value proposition – creative been recognised for their work: Debbie
innovation – by acquiring Rothco and Vavangas won the FDM everywoman in
Karmarama and opening Interactive Technology Leader of the Year, Alison Clark
Studios in London and Dublin. It has was named as one of the BIMA 100 and
also extended capabilities and service Lucy Marsden was highly commended
offerings with the launch of programmatic in the Young Consultant of the Year.
services and interactive operations and
acquired new talent with joiners such
as Nikki Mendonça and Amir Malik.
3
Atos Digital Services
Atos Digital Services provides full-scale

transformation services including digital,
customer experience strategy, application
transformation and cloud infrastructure.
Its other capabilities include automation
and AI, IoT, big data and analytics, SAP
Hana, infrastructure and hosting, cyber
security, digital payments and digital
workplace solutions. These are delivered
Fee income: either as digital project services or as part
£181,000,000 (<12/17) of broader business transformation.
Year founded: 2011 Atos is an end-to-end full scale digital

transformation partner with the depth,
Owner: Atos breadth and scale to enable clients with
their business transformation journey. The
UK head: Toby Goldblatt, agency helps drive efficiencies and deliver
SVP Atos Digital Services business growth by bringing together its
own services with those of partners, start-
Contact: Jillian Moore, ups, niche players and global delivery.
Head of Digital UK and
Ireland, jillian.moore@atos. “Atos cares about delivering excellent
net, experiences for our customer’s customer
+44 (0) 800 783 3040 via innovation and technology – simplifying
transformation through effective change
Business split: management,” it says. The agency partners
10% CRM, 2% Creative, 11% with clients, both in their working styles
Ecommerce, 22% Managed and by commercially aligning their joint
Services, 15% Marketing, success. “We make digital mainstream,
1% Social, 24% Technical
allowing clients to focus on business rather
Development, 8% User
than technology,” the agency adds.
Experience, 7% Software
In the last 12 months, Atos has struck
Website: up a partnership with Google to bring
atos.net
clients solutions encompassing hybrid
cloud, data analytics and machine
learning, digital workplace and three
global AI Labs. New large deals include
strategic digital partnerships with
Scottish Water and Northern Ireland
Electricity. Atos implemented the first
full-scale Salesforce Einstein CRM in
financial services with Ulster Bank.

4
Cognizant Interactive
Cognizant Interactive is a digital

experience agency with global
scale. It helps CMOs and CIOs
deliver end-to-end digital enterprise
transformation, helping to envision
and operate tomorrow’s products
and services. Its capabilities include
insight, innovation, experience design,
creative and content, alongside deep
Fee income: expertise in AI and data, operations,
£170,000,000 (<12/17) technology and engineering.
Year founded: 2014 As customer experience becomes

the key differentiator between
Owner: Cognizant brands, Cognizant focuses on
Technology Solutions Corp. delivering world-class experiences.
Its approach is industry-led, with a
UK head: Vivek Daga, bias to applied innovation – platform-
Country Manager, UK&I enabled, AI-driven and inspired
by insight. The agency offers the
Contact: George Porteous, creative agility of an agency, with
Head of Digital Business, the scale and end-to-end capability As a digital experience agency with content production costs for leading
UK&I, george.porteous@ of a global transformation partner. global scale, Cognizant Interactive offers pharmaceuticals, Cognizant Interactive
cognizant.com,
+44 (0) 785 010 9267 “We are dedicated to designing and both creative agility and end-to-end applies insight, design, and technology
delivering world-class experiences transformation capability of a global expertise to imagine and build
Website: for our clients,” says Cognizant. transformation partner. With strengths industry-specific solutions that help
cognizant.com/Interactive “Companies today face unprecedented that range from foresight services businesses and organizations compete
disruption – from meeting ever- to experience design, Cognizant in the digital era and drive growth.
increasing consumer expectations Interactive runs some of the largest
digital support services of its kind. In the last year, Cognizant placed as
to defending core business against the #3 Digital Agency Network globally
digitally native competitors. We help Through an international network in Ad Age’s Agency Report 2018. It
our clients rethink how value is created of digital experts across 52 offices, acquired digital agency Zone, which
for customers by taking a human- Cognizant Interactive is a pioneer in won the Marketing Society’s Best
centric view to digital transformation.” bringing a human-centred approach to New Brand for its work on Boxt, and
end-to-end experience transformation. Netcentric, which was named Adobe
Experience Cloud Partner of the Year
Whether boosting farm crop yields with 2018 EMEA. Cognizant also became
peer-to-peer mobile data share, using the FA’s Digital Transformation Partner.
blockchain to enhance availability for
a global sportswear brand, improving
the air traveller’s experience via facial
recognition, or radically reducing
6
5 Wunderman UK Group EPAM Systems
Wunderman is a modern digital agency – EPAM helps its global clients stay
powered by data, creativity, and technology competitive by providing complete
– that is helping many of the world’s services for digital transformation. As a
most demanding clients transform their Digital Orchestrator, EPAM combines its
marketing capabilities for the future. strong engineering heritage with strategy,
consulting and design capabilities to deliver
The agency brings together specialisation solutions that turn complex business
and scale in a broad range of service challenges into real business opportunities.
offerings – from communications
and customer experience to data The company calls itself the Developers’
and analytics, marketing, commerce, Developers because it started, in 1993,
£167,200,000 (<12/17) £124,000,000 (<12/17)
advertising technology and business by developing software engineering
transformation – in an integrated offering. solutions for software and hi-tech
clients. Since then, EPAM has expanded
Wunderman cares most deeply about to 26,000 people in more than 25
Owner: WPP Plc Owner: Independent
three things: 1) driving business growth countries working with customers across
for its clients; 2) making world-class industries. EPAM is a truly global partner
UK head: Stephan Pretorius, UK head: Jason Harman,
work that works; and 3) compiling the with deep expertise in local markets.
Wunderman UK Group CEO Co-Head Global Business, SVP
most talented and diverse teams in the
market and giving them the freedom EPAM is passionate about technology and
Contact: Rachel O’Rourke, Contact: Marta Vorosvaczki,
Senior Marketing Manager, to do the best work of their lives. Marketing Specialist, marta_ helping its customers stay competitive.
rachel.orourke@wunderman. vorosvaczki@epam.com, EPAM Garage is a space for teams
Wunderman won Campaign’s Customer to experiment and come up with
com, +44 (0) 207 611 6912 +36 1 327 7400 x 56970
Engagement Agency of the Year 2017 and ideas for clients. The agency invests in
its holding company WPP won Adobe’s developing the brightest minds in tech,
Business split: Business split:
8% CRM, 8% Creative, 36% Experience Partner of the Year. In the last 5% CRM, 10% Creative, 30% from employee training to its eKids
Ecommerce, 20% Marketing, 12 months, it consolidated its UK portfolio Ecommerce, 5% Managed programme, which leverages the company’s
2% Social, 15% Technical (Acceleration, Burrows, Cognifide, Fusepump, Services, 5% Marketing, 35% expertise to teach coding to kids.
Development, 11% User Salmon, POSSIBLE and Wunderman) into Technical Development, 10%
Experience one operating unit, Wunderman UK Group, User Experience In 2018, EPAM acquired Continuum
becoming one of the largest full-service Innovation, a design firm, to expand its
Website: digital agencies. It also launched Future Website: innovation, design and physical product
wunderman.com Ready research into digital transformation. epam.com development capabilities. Additionally,
EPAM recently launched its first product
InfoNgen™, an actionable insight engine
that leverages machine learning to deliver
customised content and sentiment analysis
to help clients make better decisions, faster.

7 8
AmazeRealise BAE Systems Applied Intelligence
AmazeRealise’s expertise lies in combining BAE Systems is a design and build agency
intelligent insights, creativity and technology delivering human-centred engineering.
to deliver market-leading digital experiences. It has expertise in user research, user
The agency builds strategies around experience design, visual design and full
its clients, listening to their needs and stack development. The agency advises
delivering results. AmazeRealise’s capabilities organisations on becoming more human
span from driving first-class customer centric in their digital transformation.
experience and digital transformation to
lean product design, across multiple sectors, The agency aims to be the leading
for some of the world’s leading brands. design and build solution provider
for highly secure and highly usable
£88,000,000 (<07/17) £87,723,779 (<12/17)
The agency designs and builds complex services. It is an information intelligence
digital solutions with the attitude of Year founded: 2002 company that enhances and protects its
Year founded: 1997
people first, technology second. Although clients’ online capabilities. BAE Systems
Owner: St Ives PLC technology is at its core, it understands the Owner: BAE Systems focuses on ensuring the security and
human impact of the solutions it designs robustness of digital infrastructure, while
UK head: Fiona Proudler, enables it to put a unique stamp on the UK head: Julian Cracknell, providing frictionless user experience.
CEO end results it provides for its clients. Managing Director
BAE Systems cares about protecting
“AmazeRealise cares about touching people users of online services, it says, adding
Contact: Michael Lynch, Contact: Kevin Yuen,
Sales and Marketing Director, lives and making positive change,” the Head of Practice, Creative that it helps organisations become more
michael.lynch@realise.com, agency says. “Nurturing talent and working and Digital, kevin.yuen@ human-centred and address their critical
+44 (0) 131 476 7435 with clients willing to make a difference in baesystems.com, design and build challenges, in which
the world is a great combination. Above +44 (0) 207 812 4471 the technology can be very complex. “By
Business split: all, [we are] demonstrating to clients how caring about the user, we help bring focus
15% Creative, 5% Ecommerce, important they are by continually delivering Business split: and better services,” the company adds.
21% Managed Services, 12% work that creates value and delivers results.” 10% Creative, 75% Technical
Marketing, 2% SEO, 1% Social, Development, 15% User In the past 12 months, BAE Systems
23% Technical Development, In March 2018, two agencies came together Experience has brought together its products and
21% User Experience to form AmazeRealise. Following the services teams into a single organisation
appointment of Fiona Proudler as CEO, Website: to create more integrated online services
Website: it has made some significant key hires, baesystems.com/digital for its clients. This includes the roll out
amazerealise.com including Rob Steeles as Group Executive of an Atomic Design system to ensure
Creative Director joining from AMV BBDO the agency’s services are more efficient
and Richard Neish, former MD of Dare. and more consistent for the end user.
9 10
Tribal Worldwide Kainos
Tribal describes itself as the Total Kainos delivers high quality, cost-effective,
Experience® agency, connecting brands with and user-centred services at scale. Working
technologies that solve real life problems. with UK government departments
Formed of six expert practices, each with and agencies, it helps change the way
its own specialist skillset and dedicated citizens engage with government. In
discipline and commercial lead, Tribal offers the private sector it helps organisations
deep expertise across Business Consultancy, deliver digital products and services
Data Science, Customer Experience, Tech that realise their strategic goals.
Engineering, Creative and Innovation.
Kainos aims to change the way organisations
Tribal’s creative heritage stretches back think about digital. The agency works
£80,618,067 (<12/17) £78,600,000 (<03/18)
to the pioneers of modern advertising, collaboratively with customers to deliver truly
Year founded: 1996 connecting the agency to one of the Year founded: 1996 transformative solutions. With a user-first
world’s largest creative networks. approach, its solutions are secure, accessible,
Owner: DDB Since the beginning, it was shaped Owner: Independent and cost-effective. Kainos empowers clients
by a culture of constant progress. to become more self-sufficient through
UK head: Kelly-Ann UK head: Russell Sloan, up-skilling, training and knowledge transfer.
The agency cares deeply about making
Maxwell, Chief Operations Director Digital Services
its clients’ brands uniquely, potently and “We’re driven by one clear vision: to enable
Officer
relevantly manifest across the entirety outstanding people to create digital
Contact: Nikos Karaoulanis,
Contact: Victoria Phan, of customer experience, as well as Head of Experience Design, solutions that have a positive impact on
Business Development identifying, understanding and proving the n.karaoulanis@kainos.com, people’s lives,” Kainos says. “Our people
Director, victoria.phan@ commercial contribution its work makes +44 (0) 771 749 8648 bring creativity, co-operation, honesty,
tribalworldwide.co.uk, to its clients’ businesses. It is a diverse determination and respectfulness to work
+44 (0) 779 982 2033 community, full of differences and smart Business split: every day to deliver for our customers.”
ideas that come together in a passionate, 10% Managed Services, 60%
Business split: innovative and thoughtful agency, it says. Technical Development, 30% In the last 12 months, the agency won the
25% Creative, 10% User Experience Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Award
Ecommerce, 10% Marketing, The agency has launched its new for the UK. The company was also honoured
10% Social, 30% Technical proposition as the Total Experience® Website: among a global field of top Microsoft
Development, 15% User Agency; restructuring around six expert kainos.com partners for demonstrating excellence in
Experience practices, making it easier for clients innovation and implementation of customer
to buy the specialists they need. solutions based on Microsoft technology.
Website:
tribalworldwide.co.uk

11 12
Merkle Digitas
Merkle is a data-driven, technology- Digitas blends creativity, data and

enabled performance marketing agency technology to create better experiences
specialising in the creation and delivery for customers and brands.
of unique, personalised customer
experiences that drive performance across The agency has specialists across digital
all platforms and devices and support media, content, platform design and build
clients worldwide in their transformation and CRM, underpinned by a horizontal
to customer-centric business strategies. data and mobile expertise. This means
it can help its clients better connect
Merkle’s heritage in data, technology and their marketing activities and create
analytics is the foundation on which its better experiences for their customers.
£71,000,000 (<12/17) £69,298,000 (<01/18)
people-based marketing strategies and
understanding of consumer insights is Digitas says it cares deeply about the
Year founded: 2001 Year founded: 2006 customer experience. “We believe the
built. This, combined with its expertise in
performance media, can offer clients the brands that win are those designed around
Owner: Dentsu Aegis Owner: Publicis Groupe the customer rather than the business,
Network content-driven, contextual and compelling
customer experiences that drive business leveraging every channel and touchpoint
UK head: Danielle Bassil,
growth and company transformation. to create a connected experience,” it says.
UK head: Brett Isenberg, UK Chief Executive Officer
Chief Financial Officer In the last year, Digitas became part of the
Through identity and data management,
Contact: Matt Steward, Publicis Media family, rebranded to Digitas
Contact: Jane Muirhead, Merkle helps clients understand the most Managing Director, matt.
about target audiences. In a world of proxies, and welcomed a new CEO, Dani Bassil.
Associate Director, Marketing, steward@digitas.com,
jmuirhead@merkleinc.com, Merkle uses a combination of art and +44 (0) 207 063 6465
+44 (0) 778 922 5278 science to help clients identify real people in
order to better target and more effectively Business split:
Business split: market their products and services. 5% CRM, 15% Creative, 13%
20% CRM, 6% Creative, 5% Ecommerce, 15% Managed
Ecommerce, 17% Managed In the last 12 months, the agency received Services, 35% Marketing, 7%
Services, 13% Marketing, recognition as a Global Leader from Media Planning, 3% SEO,
16% Media Planning, 5% independent research firm Forrester. Merkle 1% Social, 5% Technical
SEO, 3% Social, 8% Technical was also named Performance Agency of Development, 1% User
Development, 6% User the Year at The Drum Awards, against stiff Experience
Experience, 1% Software
competition. Its ever-increasing client list has
resulted in YOY growth (turnover) of 144%. Website:
Website: digitas.com
merkleemea.com
13 14
Engine Partners UK LLP RMA Consulting
Engine is made of 13 specialist agencies RMA specialises in designing simple,

(covering all marketing disciplines) under efficient and elegant user experiences for
one roof, who work together to provide complex tools and rich content. It embraces
transformational business outcomes user-centred design and iterative design as a
for the company’s clients. Engine was principle and has deep expertise in Lean and
born in the digital age so digital is in its Agile methodologies that ensure successful
DNA, making up 60% of its business. transition from concept to finished product.
For over a decade Engine has been The agency’s experience in user-centred
operating a different model to the big design and quality of its people means
groups – it is focused on collaboration clients engage with RMA for multiple years.
£61,085,000 (<12/17) £45,500,000 (<03/18)
rather than competition between As a small company, it can be agile and
Year founded: 2005 specialist agencies. Its goal is to be Year founded: 2005 innovative. As part of NTT DATA, it can offer
the best in the world at combining additional services and stability, as well as
Owner: Independent creativity, technology and data. Owner: NTT DATA an R&D annual investment worth $11.8bn.
Corporation
“Fostering a collaborative and RMA loves to work on large-scale, complex,
UK head: Paul Johnson,
entrepreneurial culture is of paramount digital requirements and prides itself on
Operations Director UK head: Peter Lelliott,
importance to Engine,” the agency says. delivering functional tools with intuitive
Managing Director
Engine runs a range of internal initiatives to user experiences. “We are willing to
Contact: Richard Dutton,
CMO, richard.dutton@ bring staff together and encourage cross- Contact: Maya Schulz, challenge clients and the status quo in
enginegroup.com, discipline thinking. Its office is designed with Head of Client Services & pursuit of the best imaginable digital
+44 (0) 203 128 8007 collaboration in mind, allowing staff from Client Partner, maya.schulz@ experience for all users, whether they are
multiple businesses to come together in rma-consulting.com, employees, clients or consumers,” it says.
Business split: bespoke teams, working on integrated briefs. +44 (0) 791 765 4800
3% CRM, 24% Creative, 4% The agency has won several new awards
Ecommerce, 1% Managed In the past 12 months, Engine has Business split: for UBS Neo. It has also been selected as
Services, 48% Marketing, 4% won 61 new accounts, 54 awards for 15% Creative, 15% digital strategy partner for a global bank.
Media Planning, 6% Social, digital campaigns and has opened Ecommerce, 15% Technical
6% Technical Development, new offices in Germany to service Development, 55% User
4% User Experience its biggest digital account E.ON. Experience
Website: Website:
enginegroup.com/ rma-consulting.com

15 16
MullenLowe Profero EY-Seren Limited
MullenLowe Profero digitally transforms EY-Seren is EY’s specialist customer

businesses by transforming their experience and digital innovation agency.
customer experiences, in what it calls Acquired by EY in 2015, the agency focuses
experience-led transformation. on designing, building and optimising
growth platforms for its clients.
The agency has 15 offices globally,
more than 700 employees and a world- As part of the EY network, EY-Seren
class off-shore development hub in can access deeper industry sector
Chengdu, China. It delivers experience- experience on all aspects of business
led transformation through a deep growth than other agencies.
understanding of the customer journey,
£40,700,000 (<12/16) £38,295,707 (<06/18) “Customer centricity is core to EY-
integrating fully with MullenLowe Group’s
specialisms in CRM, Media, PR and Seren’s business approach,” the agency
Year founded: 1998 Year founded: 2000 says. “While we are designers and
traditional marketing communications.
Everything is under one roof and one P&L. technologists, if you cut us we bleed
Owner: MullenLowe Group Owner: EY research. We use insights gained from
“We live in a world where more than customer research to successfully build
UK head: Peter Moody, UK head: Para Mullan,
ever a brand is defined by its customer and optimise growth platforms for
Managing Partner Operations Director
experience and service design. We strive businesses that create meaning and value
to create experiences that get our clients for the people they are designed for.”
Contact: Peter Moody, Contact: Richard Sedley,
Managing Partner, peter. an unfair share of attention by delivering CEO, richard.sedley@ey-seren.
ideas and solutions at critical points of In the last 12 months, EY-Seren has
moody@mullenloweprofero. com,
the customer journey which are both created two new practices, Business
com, +44 (0) 207 749 2549
+44 (0) 772 521 5408 emotional and functional,” the agency says. Design and Storytelling, and has grown
its consultancy practice by 40%.
Business split:
Business split: In the past 12 months, MullenLowe Profero 10% Creative, 10% Managed
5% CRM, 20% Creative, 15% has won one of its biggest pure play digital Services, 10% Marketing, 10%
Ecommerce, 10% Managed transformation projects, for the Royal Mail. Technical Development, 60%
Services, 20% Marketing, 10% The agency says that the delivery industry User Experience
Technical Development, 20% is going through tumultuous change
User Experience and ensuring to keep Royal Mail at the Website:
forefront will be its focus going forward. ey-seren.com
Website:
mullenloweprofero.com
17 18
CACI VCCP Group LLP
CACI uses data and technology to create VCCP is a full-service agency with brilliant
amazing customer experiences. It plans strategy and creative at its heart. Its
business change, shapes customer integrated teams have extensive digital
journeys, manages acquisition budgets and expertise in strategy, service design,
delivers powerful customer engagement experience design, data science, data
programmes, across all channels. This is management, technical development, digital
underpinned by its analysis and insight, advertising, CRM, social media marketing,
market-leading data and deep expertise content marketing and content production.
in technology implementation.
VCCP is the challenger agency for challenger
CACI’s core purpose is to help its brands. It creates work that populates
£36,642,600 (<06/17) £35,300,000 (<12/17)
clients drive value by doing amazing culture and believes in the power of
Year founded: 1999 things with data. Everything it does is Year founded: 2002 integration, with a mantra of: “It only works
based on rich customer and market if it all works.” Established in 2002 as an
Owner: CACI Inc insight which it uses to deliver effective Owner: Chime Group antidote to established agencies, VCCP
customer acquisition, communication Holdings Limited is agile and lean, honest and friendly.
UK head: Greg Bradford, and engagement programmes.
“As a challenger agency, we love nothing
Chief Executive Officer UK head: Adrian Coleman,
The agency says it cares about building better than taking on the status quo and
Founder & Group CEO
long-term client partnerships by making delivering work that truly differentiates our
Contact: Kandyce Tester,
Vice President, ktester@caci. sure it delivers value, continues to Contact: Roly Darby, CMO, clients’ brands,” the agency says. “At our
co.uk, innovate and always stays true to its core rolyd@vccp.com, core, we believe in putting the customer
+44 (0) 207 605 6081 value of always doing the right thing. +44 (0) 759 566 2820 first so that we can design experiences and
communications that ultimately builds
CACI has fully integrated three strategic an emotional connection with them.”
9% CRM, 10% Creative, acquisitions in the past year, which have 8% CRM, 37% Creative, 5%
34% Managed Services, strengthened its capabilities in digital Ecommerce, 9% Marketing, Last year, VCCP added Cadbury’s and
9% Marketing, 4% Media consulting, technology implementation 9% Media Planning, 2% SEO, Domino’s to its portfolio. With Domino’s
Planning, 2% SEO, 2% Social, and data provision. It was also delighted 10% Social, 10% Technical it won CRM, digital comms, content
25% Technical Development, to be awarded a major contract to build Development, 10% User marketing and ecommerce design. It also
2% User Experience, 5% the digital platform on which the Scottish Experience created VCCP iX, its experience design
Software Census will be supported in 2021. and engineering studio, to help clients
Website: improve their digital customer experience.
Website: vccp.com
caci.co.uk

19 20
Valtech Limited RAPP UK
Valtech addresses transformational RAPP UK says that its whole job is to

business challenges for clients. It uses an convince one person – to get the most
Agile methodology to deliver return on motivating message in front of them,
investment for clients based on its software at the most appropriate time. Its data
engineering heritage, data expertise, analysts know who that person is, its
and focus on user-centric design. strategists understand what they want
and its creatives and technologists
The agency has delivered data science know how to get it to them.
and engineering programmes for clients
as diverse as Audi and the Department The agency’s 50 years’ experience of
for Work and Pensions. It is in a unique first-party data helps it create work
£31,800,000 (<12/17) £29,554,000 (<12/16)
position to help its customers navigate that is fiercely individual. Its ideas are
the hype of big data, machine learning born in data and bred in digital.
and artificial intelligence and deliver
actual value in weeks, not years. RAPP UK cares about being fiercely
Owner: Independent Owner: Omnicom individual and creating work that talks
“Valtech cares deeply about helping directly to an individual. Work that makes
UK head: Mark Broad, Head UK head: Chris Freeland,
customers build their strategy faster and the individual click that button. Watch
of Operations Chief Executive Officer
helping clients avoid being stung by industry that film. Buy that thing. “We can only do
hype over terms like artificial intelligence, that with our fierce individuals who create
Contact: Jonathan Cook, Contact: Chris Freeland,
UK Sales Director, jonathan. machine learning and blockchain,” it says. CEO, chris.freeland@uk.rapp. and drive the essence of our business
cook@valtech.co.uk, com, and our culture,” the agency says.
In February 2018, Valtech acquired True
+44 (0) 774 863 8031 +44 (0) 203 443 0700
Clarity, a UK-based digital agency. This Over the past 12 months, the agency
acquisition increased Valtech’s depth of has been flexing its creative muscles,
10% Creative, 30% capabilities in ecommerce and experience 68% CRM, 1% Managed culminating in eight DMA awards, including
Ecommerce, 5% Managed platforms, particularly Sitecore, while adding Services, 6% Media Planning, a gold. Its creative flair, combined with
Services, 40% Technical a roster of brands to its existing portfolio, 6% Social, 17% Technical its unique marketing sciences, data and
Development, 10% User including EasyJet, Dyson and ASOS. Development, 2% Software technology division, Code Worldwide,
Experience has also seen RAPP UK triumphant on a
Website: number of competitive pitches, 19 to date.
Website: rapp.com
valtech.com
21 22
Jaywing Forward3D
Jaywing is a data-science led agency, Forward3D is a global digital performance

consultancy and martech business. marketing agency that specialises in
Defined by mindset, experts with deep data-driven, innovative campaigns. It works
specialist knowledge in brand, strategy, across paid search, SEO, content, display
AI, insight, data, digital, search, CRM and and social, using industry-leading linguistics,
more, it collaborates across continents data science, attribution modelling and
to create and innovate game-changing proprietary technology. The agency also
outcomes for clients from small- delivers cutting-edge activity across
scale innovators to global brands. over 100 territories and more than 50
Fee income: Fee income: languages on global and local platforms.
Trusted partnerships, progressive data
£29,521,045 (<03/17) £26,120,000 (<12/17)
science and a deep-rooted “One Jaywing” Forward3D puts data and innovation at the
Year founded: 2006 are its hallmarks. One in ten Jaywingers is Year founded: 2004 heart of everything it does and is constantly
an experienced data scientist. The agency developing its services to stay ahead in a
Owner: Independent develops patentable AI products and Owner: The Stagwell Group highly competitive landscape. The agency
tools, unearths hidden insights and builds combines bespoke processes, proprietary
UK head: Rob Shaw, CEO integrated infrastructures that underpin UK head: Martin McNulty, technology and its poly-skilled workforce to
UK & Australia and inspire creativity and innovation Chief Executive Officer provide clients with the resources to deliver
to realise boardroom aspirations. a great experience for their customers.
Contact: Olly Sowden, Contact: Supriya Dev-
Commercial Director, hello@ “Change is good. Instigating it is better,” Purkaystha, Director of Client “Our most important investment is in our
jaywing.com, says Jaywing. “The old order is and & Strategic Partnerships, people,” says Forward3D. “Encouraging an
+44 (0) 114 281 1200 should be challenged. Relationships and contact@forward3d.com, adaptable, poly-skilled workforce is key
results trump glory-hunting. Fuelling +44 (0) 203 476 4180 for staff development and the sustained
Business split: growth or keeping brands safe is as growth of the agency. We reward success
3% CRM, 11% Creative, 18% much fun as nurturing startups. Working Business split: and are constantly augmenting our
Ecommerce, 2% Managed together as one, not limited by size or 70% Media Planning, training, benefits and development
Services, 4% Marketing, 11% resource, is simply what we do.” 16% SEO, 11% Social, 3% programmes to ensure the wellbeing of our
Media Planning, 17% SEO, Technical Development employees continues to be catered for.”
3% Social, 28% Technical The agency’s new HQ was named as Prolific
Development North’s most inspired space, also winning Website: In December 2017, Forward3D joined the
a prestigious national RIBA award and a forward3d.com Stagwell Agency Group. It has embraced
Website: FRAME award. Jaywing won Prolific North’s Stagwell’s vision of creating a “new
jaywing.com best large agency for the second year model for agency networks”, maintaining
running and has expanded down under its independent spirit and agnostic
with the acquisition of Frank Digital. approach to media and working with
incumbent partners as an extension of
its clients’ marketing and brand teams.

23
Cello Signal Group Limited
Cello Signal seeks to help its clients prosper

and prevail by delivering and harnessing
audience intelligence, selecting and
implementing smart choices in technology
and delivering bold creativity and innovative
market strategies. It works across data
science, insight, software engineering, service
design and digital marketing channels.
The agency champions the shift from

Fee income:
traditional brand-agency relationships,
£25,500,000 (<12/17)
moving from providing a specific, reactive
service to helping clients transform
Year founded: 1998
and raise their game across the board.
Owner: Cello Health PLC Increasingly its focus has been to break
down traditional agency and service
UK head: John Rowley, CEO silos that obstruct and limit progress.
“We are driven to provide clarity for clients,

Contact: Barney Hosey,
from building expert teams to simpler, more
Group Managing Partner,
barney.hosey@cellosignal. easily adopted solutions for today’s complex
com, +44 (0) 779 356 1260 marketing challenges,” says the agency.
“Making sense of what the future may
Business split: bring and addressing potential disruptions
17% CRM, 21% Creative, before they become an issue, the end
10% Managed Services, goal is always to help clients do better.”
8% Marketing, 3% Media
Planning, 1% SEO, 14% In the last 12 months its proprietary SaaS,
Social, 15% Technical www.pulsarplatform.com, reached £8m
Development, 2% User turnover and established an on-the-ground
Experience, 9% Software team in the US. It has also built out a
specialist Signal Health team with briefs
Website: from EFPIA, the Innovative Medicines
cellosignal.com Initiative, Novo Nordisk, Merck, BUPA and
a number of public health campaigns.
24
Fetch
Fee income:
£22,349,955 (<12/17)
Year founded: 2009
Owner: Dentsu Aegis

Network
UK head: Patrick Affleck,

UK CEO
Contact: Kathleen
Carter, Head of Marketing,
Fetch is a mobile-first agency. Its Fetch takes a mobile-first approach
hellomarketing@wearefetch.
expertise lies in strategy, media, creative to modern communications. Mobile
com,
+44 (0) 203 675 7020 and analytics. Services include media at the core, but fully integrated with
planning and buying, full suite digital other channels, Fetch is passionate
Business split: performance (from mobile marketing about driving business outcomes. Being
10% Creative, 5% Marketing, to paid social, search and SEM) as Measurably Daring™ is core to Fetch’s
80% Media Planning, 5% SEO well as creative and analytics. Its success, culture, the way the agency
clients are high performance brands works with clients and the way it hires.
Website: who have a mobile-first mindset.
wearefetch.com In 2018, Fetch appointed Fetch
Fetch’s mindset is to be ‘Measurably appointed Dentsu Aegis veteran Patrick
Daring™’. To become the most Affleck as its new CEO. Tasked with
valuable business partner for digital furthering Fetch’s goal to attract and
economy brands, Fetch challenges the digital economy brands, he leads more
status quo to drive a better business than 100 experts from its Shoreditch
result. Fetch measures everything. HQ. Fetch added to its growing
This mantra applies to finding new presence in Asia by launching in
ways to deliver growth, measuring Tokyo, Singapore, in addition to Hong
performance or facilitating change. Kong where it already has presence.

25
TMW Unlimited
TMW Unlimited is a customer

engagement and digital experience
agency. It helps its clients form
lasting emotional connections with
its customers through a unique
‘Intelligent Influence’ approach.
This vision drives its award-winning
Strategy, Creative, Data and Interactive
teams to create rich customer
Fee income: experiences that deliver genuine
£20,400,294 (<03/17) customer engagement for clients.
Year founded: 1987 The agency has honed cross-functional

ways of thinking and works to engage
Owner: Digital Unlimited with clients on their digital journey,
Group Ltd trading as the ensuring a complete customer
Unlimited Group experience. Its ‘Intelligent Influence’
planning methodology enables
UK head: Darren Jackson, it to create the most influential
Operations Director and creative ideas, content and brand
Head of Procurement connections across the most relevant
digital channels along the journey. and beyond for clients including
The agency says: “We approach
Contact: Chris Pearce, CEO,
customer engagement through Unilever, Vodafone, Ferrero, Virgin
cpearce@tmwunlimited.com, “We collaborate with our clients
+44 (0) 207 349 5642 and their customers’ needs in order ‘Intelligent Influence’. This Trains, INFINITI, Shell Retail UK,
to create experiences that deliver allows us to combine all kinds of Nissan, HSBC UK and Dogs Trust.
Business split: results. Our knowledge of the insight, from purchase data to We have also recently added to our
25% CRM, 25% Creative, 1% marketing and technology landscapes neuroscience, to develop a genuine existing client roster with 18 new
Ecommerce, 1% Managed helps clients build balanced understanding of individual accounts wins. Our approach to
Services, 18% Marketing, 1% customers. We then transform these customer engagement is evident in
solutions,” TMW Unlimited says.
Media Planning, 5% SEO, insights into creative ideas that the work we create for our clients.
15% Social, 6% Technical The agency says it has seen its strongest genuinely change behaviour.
Development, 5% User “In the last few months, we have
year so far, with 16 account wins
Experience “Ultimately, we believe that the created a geo-targeted campaign
including Shell Retail, Clarion Housing
Group and GSMA. It spoke at several key strongest feelings result in the first that triggered a manhunt
Website: longest lasting change, and that on the streets of the UK for Lynx,
tmwunlimited.com events, judged numerous awards and
hosted its biggest Influence Session to the most creative ideas are the positioned the ultra-sophisticated,
date. Award wins included Gold at the most influential. We therefore build deliciously smooth Kinder Bueno
DMAs, Digital Impact and Creative Tech long-term value for our clients by as the ultimate adulting reward
Awards and a film shortlist at Cannes. helping them form lasting emotional and formed a unique collaboration
connections with their customers. with emerging UK artists to support
the launch of VOXI, Vodafone’s
“We are an award-winning agency new youth-oriented network.”
working across the UK, Europe
26 27
Be Heard AND Digital
Be Heard (MMT Digital and agenda21 AND Digital accelerates the development
Digital Ltd) operates at the intersection of world-class digital capabilities. It guides
of communication, technology, data clients as they navigate a changing tech
and consulting, and brings together the and business landscape, building impactful
right expertise and skillsets from across products with its clients’ people. Because
the marketing and service innovation it believes every company needs its own
spectrum. This includes strategy, data tech capability, the agency teaches
analytics, creative and content marketing, the skills required to stay ahead.
user experience, design and build
and media planning and buying. Remarkable things happen when the right
people and technology meet, AND Digital
£19,200,000 (<12/17) £17,831,276 (<12/17)
The agency says its purpose is to help says. But making that happen is hard. It aims
clients take control of their tomorrow, to to empower organisations with the ability to
embrace and thrive on the change that is build digital products and grow their internal
Owner: Independent re-inventing how they do business. It has Owner: Independent capability along the way. To achieve this, it
an agnostic approach to how it does this, blends technical craft and product expertise
UK head: Simon Pyper, because the right answer must be shaped UK head: Paramjit Uppal, with an award-winning learning programme.
Chief Executive Officer to precisely fit each and every client. CEO
Digital excellence begins, and ends, with
Be Heard says it cares deeply about helping people – not technology, the agency adds.
Contact: Richard Costa- Contact: Will Sergeant,
D’sa, Group Development its clients solve the problems of tomorrow, Client Partnerships Lead, “As organisations today adapt to meet
Director, richard@ today. It also cares about the quality of its wsargeant@and.digital the fast-paced challenges of modern
beheardgroup.com, thinking and solutions: “It’s very important business, we passionately believe that
+44 (0) 203 725 2359 to us that our own product is best-in- Business split: success depends on a deep commitment
our-market,” it says. Finally, it says it cares 80% Technical Development, to people – whether that’s developing
Business split: deeply about creating an internal culture 20% User Experience top talent or helping end users fulfil their
17% Creative, 13% for its employees which helps them to outcomes faster and more easily.”
Ecommerce, 11% Marketing, become the best they can possibly be. Website:
17% Media Planning, and.digital In the last 12 months, the agency has
13% SEO, 3% Social, 14% In November 2017, Be Heard acquired expanded into Manchester and Leeds and
Technical Development, 12% the integrated advertising agency taken new work on key products with iconic
User Experience The Corner to strengthen the group’s global businesses, including British Airways
capability in brand and creative. and The Telegraph. It has also started new
Website: technology partnerships with Amazon
beheardgroup.com
and Microsoft and welcomes Ramona
Liberoff, Philip Green, Dr Ian MacDonald
and Paul Coby to its Advisory Board.

28
The BIO Agency
Fee income:
£14,638,115 (<04/18)
Year founded: 2006
Owner: Tech Mahindra
UK head: Stephen Abram,

CCO The BIO Agency specialises in two “We care deeply about proving the
things – digital innovation and digital benefits of what we do for users, for
Contact: Charlie transformation. Its expertise is in our customers and for the wider world,”
Attenborough, Partnership bringing together the right collaborative, The BIO Agency says. “We believe that
Director, charlie. customer-focused teams to find our industry does great things, but
attenborough@thebioagency. opportunities, change businesses and it’s not always able to demonstrate
com, deliver results. It offers an end-to-end why it works. Understanding and
+44 (0) 207 079 2450 sharing the impact of digital is vital.”
service encompassing vision and strategy,
customer experience, creative innovation,
Business split: Over the last year, The BIO Agency has
delivery and technical deployment.
10% Creative, 35% developed an industry-first framework
Ecommerce, 15% Technical The agency’s new platform allows it to to make the industry more accountable
Development, 40% User and begun using it with clients. It says
forecast the performance of experience-
Experience
led projects. When this is combined with it is excited by the opportunities it
its proprietary methodologies, it is able gives the agency to extend its offering,
Website:
to offer unparalleled insight into the reduce risk and prove results. The
thebioagency.com
impact of the work it does, allowing it to agency also opened in the US.
deliver something genuinely different.
29
AnalogFolk Ltd
AnalogFolk is an independent digital

creative agency. Its mission is to use
digital to make the analogue world
better. It puts the consumer at the
heart of everything it does to create
connected brand experiences that
help people achieve their ambitions
delivered across content, data,
digital products and technology.
Fee income:
AnalogFolk is a truly independent,
£14,468,269 (<12/17)
global digital agency. This combination
Year founded: 2008 of scale and independence
generates a powerful blend of
Owner: AnalogFolk Global global insights and services, with a
Ltd challenger mentality. The agency
says it enjoys the freedom to take
UK head: Ete Davies, calculated risks, adapt its working
Managing Director ways and experiment on the edge of
technology ahead of competitors.
Contact: Grace Wright,
New Business and Marketing “Digital technology is the most
powerful force for disruption the It also carries this through in its Tech met creativity in the agency’s
Director, grace.wright@
analogue world has seen,” the behaviours as a company, helping Folk award-winning facial recognition
analogfolk.com,
+44 (0) 207 684 8444 agency says. “With great power achieve their ambitions, and in 2017 app Marmite TasteFace, while hip
comes great responsibility.” it lived up to its 2016 commitment hop and football stars used their
Business split: achieving a 53% female, 47% influence in Nike #FutureForward.
8% CRM, 25% Creative, 9% It continues: “Technology is neither male gender split and 18% BAME The agency ranked higher than ever
Ecommerce, 24% Marketing, good, nor bad. It’s what we do representation among employees. in Sunday Times Tech Track 100
2% SEO, 10% Social, 10% with it that matters. As brands, for growing 65% in three years.
Technical Development, 12% we have choices. At AnalogFolk In the last 12 months, AnalogFolk
User Experience we use digital technology to celebrated its tenth birthday, launched This year, AnalogFolk’s focus is on
add value to people’s lives.” an office in Shanghai, bolstered utilising data, AI and creativity
Website: its leadership with key hires, won to deliver uniquely engaging
analogfolk.com The agency’s mission is to use digital new clients and was crowned The experiences, useful service, and
to make the analogue world better. Drum Content Agency of the Year. meaningful communications. It
Whether it’s by giving universal Additionally, it proudly joined the bolstered its leadership team with
access to personal training with Diversity Taskforce and supports pivotal hires across the business
Nike Trainers Hub, or encouraging multiple mentoring schemes. to accelerate growth, providing
families to spend time together exceptional client service, nurturing
with PepsiCo, AnalogFolk creates 2017 was a big year for this its Folk and attracting new talent.
connected brand experiences that independent. It added BT, Nike,
help people achieve their ambition. Nando’s, and PepsiCo as clients,
and grew its Unilever portfolio.

30
McCann Connected
McCann Connected integrates digital

marketing solutions, operating from
a single P&L, that are totally aligned
to customer journeys to drive brand
and business growth for its clients.
With 140 specialists across paid,

owned and earned channels, the
agency offers true channel breadth
underpinned by class-leading strategy
Fee income:
and insight to offer true depth.
£13,423,804 (<12/17)
The agency says it cares deeply about
Year founded: 1995 helping its clients’ brands play a meaningful
role in people’s lives and humanising
Owner: Interpublic Group of the relationship between businesses,
brands, technologies and consumers.
UK head: Sue Little, Chief In the last 12 months McCann Connected
Executive has made numerous senior hires
including Matt Lalande, Digital Creative
Contact: Jim Rothnie, Group Head, Tom Cummings, Senior
New Business Director, jim.
Social Media Account Director, Paul
rothnie@mccann.com,
+44 (0) 162 582 2540 Goonoo, Digital Director and Michelle
King, Digital Director. It also won three
Business split: Euro Effies, including the Grand Prix,
8% CRM, 16% Creative, 3% for its work for Aldi and Smyths Toys.
Ecommerce, 1% Managed
Services, 18% Marketing, 15%
Media Planning, 18% SEO,
Experience
Website:
mccannmanchester.com/
connected/
31
Somo
Somo designs and builds premium

quality digital products and experiences
across every device from mobile to
desktop to mixed reality. Through its
Rapid Actionable Innovation engine,
Somo leads digital transformation
programmes by combining modern
engineering, product leadership,
and design culture to create digital
Fee income: products customers and staff love.
£13,400,000 (<12/17)
The agency partners with clients to
rapidly develop digital products and
Year founded: 2010
experiences; conceiving and validating
Owner: Independent product ideas within six weeks,
developing a Minimum Loveable
UK head: Carl Uminski, Co- Product within 12 weeks and iterating
Founder and COO and scaling the product post market
launch. It future proofs its products
Contact: Vinny Hayes, with its commitment to innovation and
Chief Client Officer, vinny@ modern development frameworks.
somoglobal.com,
Somo says it cares deeply about The agency considers that innovation
+44 (0) 203 397 3550
building customer self-serve, will remain a driving force in 2018
staff self-serve and staff and and beyond for both startups and
Business split:
5% Creative, 5% Ecommerce, customer collaboration products previous disruptors. It believes
65% Technical Development, that create real change, are loved that a heightened emphasis on
25% User Experience by their end users and generate customers and context will lead to
significant business results and end-to-end integrated experiences.
Website: create cultural change for clients. For businesses, viability, customer
somoglobal.com retention and strategic positioning
Highlights from Somo’s digital product are all on the line. Even the most
and experience delivery over the last agile businesses will feel the pressure
12 months include conceiving and to constantly evolve and keep up.
launching the new customer self-serve
adaptive site for Audi UK, delivering In its ‘2018: the Year the Disrupters
a staff/customer collaboration Self-Disrupt’ report, Somo outlines the
tablet platform for use in branch emerging business, tech and design
for a global bank and delivering a trends driving innovation this year.
staff self-serve anti-counterfeiting
solution for a luxury FMCG.

32 33
Mirum We Are Social
Mirum is an agency of strategists, We Are Social produces socially-led creative

storytellers and technologists. It creates ideas with social insights at the heart.
experiences that change the way
people buy, communicate or behave. The agency puts social thinking at the
centre of its work. It aims to deliver
Gartner calls Mirum a Visionary among world-class creative ideas with forward-
global digital agencies, while it calls thinking brands. We Are Social believes
itself a borderless agency focused in people, not platforms, and the power
on future proofing business. of social insight to drive business value.
Fee income: “We believe that change is essential Fee income: We Are Social says it cares deeply about
£13,326,000 (<12/17) to stay relevant in an accelerated and £13,267,813 (<12/16) creating amazing work, developing
increasingly fragmented world,” the its teams, its global family, helping
Year founded: 2015 agency says. “We care deeply about helping Year founded: 2008 brands navigate a constantly changing
our clients to deliver positive change. world and having fun doing it.
Owner: WPP plc Owner: BlueFocus
Change that benefits their business, their
Communication Group In the last 12 months the agency launched
customers and society in general.”
UK head: Antti Lauronen, its first two dedicated divisions – We Are
Managing Director In the last 12 months Mirum UK has hosted UK head: Jim Coleman, Social Studios and We Are Social Sport – and
two Mirum Opus innovation conferences, UK CEO has made its first move into the Middle
Contact: Antti Lauronen, launched a new Drupal Centre of Excellence East with the acquisition of Socialize. In the
Managing Director, antti. in Budapest, expanded its studio offering Contact: Lauren UK, the agency also launched a placement
lauronen@mirumagency.com, Underwood, Communications
with a new LA office and appointed a new programme focused on attracting
+44 (0) 207 656 7700 Director, lauren.underwood@
COO and CTO for the enlarged group. wearesocial.net, diversity talent, called We Are Upstarts.
Business split: +44 (0) 203 195 1700
15% Creative, 5%
Ecommerce, 30% Marketing, Business split:
30% Technical Development, 45% Creative, 10% Marketing,
20% User Experience 30% Social, 15% Technical
Development
Website:
mirumagency.com/ Website:
wearesocial.com/uk/
34
Stickyeyes Group
Stickyeyes’ expertise lies in its data-led

approach. It creates content – driven by
insights – that resonates with audiences
and achieves objectives. Its proprietary
toolset removes the guesswork and
surfaces the right strategy to deliver results.
Its distribution methodology maximises
brand awareness and engagement.
The agency helps clients build compelling

Fee income:
cases for their business needs to shift their
£13,200,000 (<12/17)
thinking to an integrated approach, and
Year founded: 1996 highlights the potential benefits of doing
so in a joined-up way. Channel specialists
Owner: Interpublic Group of remain important but it is essential to
Companies, Inc. (IPG) have an integrated strategy behind it,
supported by senior management, it says.
UK head: Phil Kissane,
“We’re all encouraged to take a step
Managing Director
back and focus on one thing: our clients’
Contact: Paul Hill, Director, audiences’ needs and wants,” Stickyeyes
paul.hill@stickyeyes.com, +44 says. It continues: “Stickyeyes’ approach
(0) 113 391 2929 puts the audience right at the heart of
the strategy and campaigns we develop,
Website: whether they want to buy business cards
stickyeyes.com or find a financial services brand to trust.”
In the last year, Stickyeyes has launched

its ‘Together’ strategy, which focuses
on ensuring that its employees feel
valued and empowered to develop
their careers and deliver for clients.
This has included working groups to
tackle issues such as gender equality,
mental health and work-life balance.

35
IDHL Group
IDHL’s expertise lies in SEO, PPC, paid

social, programmatic advertising,
content, outreach, digital PR, web
design and build, ecommerce,
UX and CRO. It meshes technical
expertise with imagination to
generate measurable and impactful
results, proven by its outstanding
retention of enviable clients.
Fee income:
The agency believes there is more
£12,909,762 (<12/17)
benefit to clients when they partner
Year founded: 2000 with specialists; it is a connected,
growing network of select agencies,
Owner: Independent each a master of its trade and choosing
to keep it focused to provide seamless,
UK head: Lisa Higham, direct access to all, as would be
Group Financial Director expected from a full-service agency.
“Front and centre to all we achieve is

Contact: Ian Lloyd, Director
of Digital Operations, ian. our people,” the agency says. “Their
lloyd@idhl.co.uk, job may be for us, but it’s our job to
take care of them. From wellbeing As the complexity of digital solutions partnership required the flexibility and
+44 (0) 142 352 9300
to work environments, benefits to grow, so too does the need to expert collaboration of its connected
training and development, we invest augment in-house marketing skills agency approach to successfully meet
Business split:
with specialist agencies. Unique in its an extremely tight seasonal deadline.
19% Creative, 3% Managed heavily to provide the support and
Services, 14% Marketing, 62% opportunities our people deserve.” connected approach, each agency
within the IDHL Group has the The project spanned everything from
SEO, 3% User Experience
The first addition since the MBO, freedom to focus on maintaining and UX to design and build, content to
Pinpoint Designs, a leading Magento developing its individual specialisms. creative, SEO to PR and CRO. The
Website:
idhlgroup.com ecommerce agency based in Leveraging experts across the group agency’s extensive UX and persona
Leeds, joined the IDHL Group in enables IDHL to craft truly bespoke research brought such clarity to
December. With significant industry digital solutions while ensuring the the vision of ADSS that it drove a
synergies, this acquisition expands full benefit of dedicated specialists. digital-first rebrand – an addition
the agency’s connected specialist to the brief – that has subsequently
approach, joining up experts in search Amongst its recent and most notable been rolled out across all marketing
marketing, ecommerce development client wins is leading global investment channels together with collateral,
and UX experience to generate company ADSS. IDHL is particularly print advertising for Bloomberg and
outstanding results for clients. proud of this win, not just because it is even the redesign of office spaces.
the agency’s largest group deal to date
totalling £1.4m, but because this client
36 37
SYZYGY 1000heads
SYZYGY is an international award- 1000heads does word of mouth marketing

winning digital agency. It helps brands with a digital focus. It works with
grow by aligning creative, media and different teams, from marketing, social
strategy across the customer journey. and content, communications, brand,
CRM, research, HR and leadership. By
It is an independent digital agency that helping brands understand conversation
has all the benefits of being part of the it develops ways to improve offerings and
world’s most powerful agency network. Its influence, amplifying positivity, inspiring
breadth of services is its true advantage. the indifferent through disruption and
SYZYGY helps brands grow by aligning reducing negativity through action.
creative, media and strategy across the
£12,890,821 (<12/17) £12,567,657 (<12/17)
customer journey. It cares most about its 1000heads is not an agency built around
people, its clients and its clients’ customers. departments but crafted around driven,
creative people blended together
In the last 12 months, SYZYGY Group to provide an alchemy of intelligent
Owner: SYZYGY AG acquired 70% of the shares in strategy Owner: 1000headsGroup
Ltd insight, imaginative ideas, exceptional
consulting firm different GmbH. It also implementation and potent impact.
UK head: Media - Phil
acquired 51% of the shares in Catbird
Stelter, Managing Director UK head: Frank Grindrod,
Seat, a digital performance marketing The agency believes in creativity without
and Chief Media Officer. UK Managing Director
Creative - Mark Ellis, provider based in Munich and Berlin. boundaries. The business is made of free
Managing Director Contact: Mike Rowe, CEO, thinkers, unburdened by what it has
In March 2017, SYZYGY Group done before. Every day it strives to bring
mike.rowe@1000heads.com,
agencies unified under a single brand, world-stopping social ideas to life inspiring
Contact: Phil Stelter, +44 (0) 203 206 2000
Managing Director and Chief SYZYGY. This culminated in moving participation, conversation and sharing.
Media Officer, P.Stelter@ to a new London office to foster richer
Business split:
syzygy.co.uk, Mark Ellis, networking and collaboration as well 40% Creative, 20% Marketing, It helps clients navigate marketing and
Managing Director, M.Ellis@ as to attract world-leading talent. 40% Social communications landscape providing
syzygy.co.uk, a coherent, effective approach to
+44 (0) 203 206 4000 Website: marketing that clients can rely on.
1000heads.com In the last 12 months, the agency
Business split: has seen significant client wins.
20% Creative, 10%
Experience
Website:
syzygy.co.uk

38
Feed
Feed is a global digital agency

scaling personalised communications
through bespoke technology. It is
one of the world’s fastest growing
independent digital agencies, with
its expertise extending across CRM,
social, AI, UI and UX design, all the
way through to the innovation of new
technology platforms and tools.
Fee income:
The agency uses technology and AI
£12,146,567 (<04/18)
to “release the human”, liberating its
Year founded: 2005 clients and team to do the valuable
tasks that humans do better than
Owner: Independent machines. Leveraging bespoke AI, Feed
makes business as usual efficient and
UK head: Dudley Wild, UK error-free so its partnership can focus
Head of Operations on strategic development and creativity.
It automates and augments the

Contact: Matt Lynch,
Global CEO, matt@feed.xyz, creative process through its unique
+44 (0)870 766 9076 creative production platform,
Native, allowing its global clients “In an uncertain and changing as well as open offices in London,
to seamlessly deliver better, faster, agency landscape Feed cares about Manchester, Berlin and Sydney.
Business split:
cheaper communications. re-inventing the agency model for
48% CRM, 25% Creative, In the past 12 months, Feed hired
2% SEO, 3% Social, 10% the world they, and their clients,
The Feed way is to take the best of are moving towards at speed,” the Steven Bennett-Day as CCO to
Technical Development, 12%
machine and the best of humans in agency says, adding that it also launch a creative division, opened
User Experience
order to deliver the best solutions cares deeply about “a world where an office in San Francisco and hired
and services for its clients. creativity is delivered with value, Tamara Hill as MD North America.
Website:
feed.xyz and at speed through automation, The agency also expanded its London
without sacrificing quality”. and Manchester offices and CEO
Matt Lynch has just been signed as
Feed is creative and unafraid to be a regular contributor to Forbes.com
experimental. The agency prides itself writing about digital transformation.
on its innovative, collaborative and
entrepreneurial nature, which has
helped turnover grow by more than
50% per annum in the last decade,
39
Amido Ltd
Amido’s expertise lies in assembling

and integrating proven cloud
technologies, often building solutions
around an existing core, enabling
clients to prioritise investment between
commodity services and those
delivering competitive advantage.
Clients ask Amido to help them
build resilience at scale, flexibility
Fee income: for the future and differentiation of
£11,805,596 (<03/18) customer experience while minimising
business risk and build cost.
Year founded: 2010
Amido prides itself on designing and
Owner: Independent implementing cloud-first solutions
that are engineered with integrity.
UK head: Alan Walsh, CEO Having gained vital and practical
expertise delivering successful cloud
Contact: Simon Hampton, transformation programmes, Amido
Commercial Director, simon. helps organisations that existed
hampton@amido.com, before the wide availability of cloud
+44 (0) 203 176 4690 and therefore juggle managing
by the agency’s placement in the Amido is proud of how its sustainable
substantial legacy infrastructure growth (256% over three years) has
Great Place to Work 2018 league
Business split: with wanting to develop new
table. It also won at the UK Cloud allowed it to give back to the third
100% Technical Development products and services, quickly.
Awards and is placed in the FT 1000 sector. By collaborating with Save the
The agency cares about how digital Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies. Children International (StC), Amido
Website:
amido.com experiences can improve everyday was able to improve its IT efficiency
Amido’s award-winning work with whilst retaining its unique global
life. Amido sees technology as a
Global is one of its highlights as brand presence worldwide and
tool to improve human experiences.
it demonstrates how the rapid national localism in the international
Technology ensures the agency
deployment of cloud technology marketplace. By building StC a market-
staff have the digital tools and
can solve real business problems leading identity solution spanning 120
knowledge they need to enjoy
and produce a tangible return on countries, it encouraged cross-border
their work and succeed. For their
investment. The solution has more collaboration, significantly reduced
clients, smarter use of technology
than halved the work required duplication of effort and created a
helps them innovate at speed.
by their teams to search and greater feeling of togetherness across
In the past 12 months, the agency compile promotional audio content the humanitarian organisation.
has seen significant client wins in examples for their clients; a massive
both the public and private sectors. improvement which allows their
This has allowed it to continue to sales teams to focus on more value-
invest in its people, as demonstrated add commercial opportunities.

40
Four Communications Group
Four Communications Group is an

integrated marketing communications
agency with digital and social at its heart.
It brings together a range of marketing
services (digital, social, media planning
and buying, advertising, branding,
creative, behaviour change, public
relations, public affairs and sponsorship)
and creates seamless campaigns
Fee income: which deliver the best possible ROI.
£11,606,591 (<12/17)
Beautiful things happen when you put the
right ingredients together, the agency says.
Year founded: 2003
It combines a broad range of integrated
Owner: Independent communications and marketing services
and unrivalled sector knowledge into one
UK head: Nan Williams, exceptional offer, which it calls the power of
Chief executive together. It is this that has made the agency
one of the most successful integrated
Contact: Paul Dalton- start-ups since the millennium, it says.
Borge, Managing Director
Creative & Digital, “Four values underpin everything we do:
paul.dalton-borge@ Expertise, Partnership, Intelligence and
fourcommunications.com, Community – EPIC,” the agency says.
+44 (0) 797 310 5282 “We are experts in our chosen sectors,
true partners to our clients, base our
Business split: campaigns on insight and intelligence
3% CRM, 22% Creative, and are a community of staff with a
9% Marketing, 18% Media strong, diverse and creative spirit.”
Planning, 5% SEO, 41%
Social, 2% User Experience In 2017, Four acquired social analytics
specialist Legend Engage and put its
Website: proprietary Mapper360 methodology
fourcommunications.com at the heart of the agency. The insights,
content and engagement it is now able
to deliver for clients is transformational
across the private and public sector.
41
Visualsoft Ltd
Visualsoft is an award-winning
ecommerce platform and digital
marketing business that was
established in 1998. The company
works with more than 1,000 clients
to provide bespoke ecommerce
solutions and helps grow businesses
online by effective implementation
of digital marketing, including
Fee income: SEO, PPC, social media, email
£11,054,397 (<06/18) marketing, affiliate marketing and
conversion rate optimisation.
Year founded: 1998
Visualsoft operates in a highly
Owner: Independent competitive and diverse market
that is changing as quickly as
UK head: David Duke, Chief new technology develops. What is
Operations Officer most unique about the business
is its all-encompassing offering of
Contact: David Duke, Chief ecommerce, digital marketing and
Operations Officer, david. support from beneath one roof.
duke@visualsoft.co.uk, Twenty years ago, Visualsoft set out This year, Visualsoft was named by
+44 (0) 164 263 3604 As an agency, Visualsoft is just as
to provide an ecommerce solution Google as a Tier 1 Agency in Europe,
passionate about its people as it is
that would deliver an outstanding showing its ongoing commitment
Business split: about innovation of products and
experience for its clients and their to developing its services for the
30% Creative, 30% services. The business houses a
Ecommerce, 40% Marketing customers alike, paving the way for benefit of its clients. The team has
dedicated R&D team and recently
better technology in the industry. worked with more than 1,200 clients
implemented a full benefits package
Website: Visualsoft’s clients have enjoyed success in the past year to continually grow
to all employees including unlimited
visualsoft.co.uk through working with the agency its online stores through Visualsoft’s
holidays and flexible working hours.
over the past year, using its expert proprietary ecommerce platform
The business recently launched Shared development and marketing teams and digital marketing services.
Success – a disruptive, all-inclusive, to grow their businesses online.
“Our consistent R&D and re-investment
commission-based solution designed to
The agency is confident in its into our offering means we have
deliver accelerated retail sales growth.
approach, investing heavily in innovated and stayed ahead of
Instead of the usual fixed fee client-
innovation and forging partnerships our clients’ expectations,” the
agency commercial model, costs are
with industry heavyweights such as agency says. “Launching strategic
based on a percentage of client sales
Google, Klarna, Amazon, Worldpay, marketing services propel our
and offer a range of services and prices
Sage, Barclaycard and Bing. clients’ growth to new heights.”
that genuinely reflect their needs.

42 43
Inviqa UK Prophecy Unlimited
Inviqa equips businesses to achieve Prophecy Unlimited builds enduring

their goals faster, accelerate growth relationships between individuals and
and drive innovation. Its digital services brands by making every interaction in
support clients across the entire digital the journey valuable. That means it has
product lifecycle, from digital strategy deep specialisms in technology, data and
and ideation through to solution- creativity, and can produce platforms,
build, implementation, and continuous campaigns and content for its clients.
improvement. Inviqa has ten years’
experience helping diverse organisations The result of a merger between a CRM
address complex business requirements. agency and retail activation agency,
Prophecy Unlimited is brilliantly placed to
£10,709,767 (<12/17) £10,650,000 (<03/18)
Inviqa can support organisations all craft journeys that run from acquisition to
the way from digital strategy into advocacy. Owned by the Unlimited Group,
digital product delivery and beyond. it is able to draw on a whole extra army of
Owner: Independent Its expert practitioners are thinkers Owner: The Unlimited experts in the impact of art and science.
that do: business strategists, software Group
developers and everything in between. Prophecy Unlimited makes work that
UK head: Yair Spitzer, CEO
is worth people’s time. It doesn’t churn
and Co-Founder UK head: Peter Brown, CEO
The agency says it cares about helping stuff out, overloading feeds and inboxes,
organisations solve complex business making it hard for clients to stand out.
Contact: Richard Jackson, Contact: Ewan Moore,
Co-Founder & Director, requirements through digital initiatives. Business Development It is about real people, not data fields.
rjackson@inviqa.com, It is invested in helping clients become Director, ewan.moore@ It produces work that is worthy of an
+44 (0) 203 1799 555 customer-centric organisations and unlimitedgroup.com, audience’s attention and of the ambition
cares about driving value in the long +44 (0) 117 244 0800 of the talented people who make it.
Business split: term through continuous improvement.
10% Creative, 40% This is underpinned by a team of Business split: Launching in May 2017, Prophecy Unlimited
Ecommerce, 40% Technical people passionate about the quality 49% CRM, 23% Creative, has focused on bringing together two
Development, 10% User and output of Inviqa’s work. 1% Managed Services, 10% long-standing agencies to deliver joined-up
Experience Marketing, 10% Social, 7% customer journeys across all touchpoints
Inviqa was recognised at the 22nd Annual User Experience and channels. In October 2017, it became
Website: Webby Awards for its work on Arsenal.com, lead agency for Barratt Developments,
inviqa.com which won the 2018 People’s Voice award Website: delivering a joined-up strategy across
in the Websites: Sports Team category. It prophecyunlimited.com CRM, digital transformation and creative.
was also shortlisted as Computing’s 2017
Digital Service Company of the year.
44
Reading Room
Reading Room believes in producing work

that is perfectly in sync with user needs, with
other systems, with business goals and client
objectives. Intuitive, beautiful and powerful.
The agency specialises in human-

centric, customer experiences
from digital product innovation to
transformative business processes.
Fee income: Reading Room says it cares deeply about

£10,626,187 (<10/17) its clients and client satisfaction, business
performance and the working environment.
Year founded: 1996 It seeks to be a financially successful agency
that clients want to hire and the best people
Owner: Idox Group PLC want to work for. It is innovative, quality-
led and a great place to work, it adds.
UK head: Jamie Griffiths,
Managing Director In the past 12 months, Reading Room
was proud to be named one of the first
Contact: Tamara Evans, UK agency partners of the PwC Tech She
Business Manager, tamara. Can initiative. It also ensured The Royal
evans@readingroom.com, Household’s online presence did not
+44 (0) 207 173 2800
creak over a rather important weekend.
Kirstie Buchanan returned to the business
Business split:
as Strategic Development Director and
25% Creative, 15%
Ecommerce, 10% Managed Jamie Griffiths was promoted to MD.
Media Planning, 5% SEO, 2%
User Experience, 3% Software
Website:
readingroom.com

45
Maverick Advertising & Design Ltd
Maverick Advertising & Design is In the past 12 months, the agency

an impact agency that delivers has delivered and launched a global
strategy and creative solutions, enterprise engagement platform used
products, services and effective by every world market. It has also
communications, for businesses, launched a standalone production
consumers and employees across company to extend its capabilities,
every market around the world. As a opened a second office by Tower
truly integrated international creative Bridge and is launching offices in
agency, Maverick does global servicing. Germany and USA. It was also awarded
Fee income: projects from clients including DHL
Pioneers of the global centralised and Coca-Cola and won business
£10,500,000 (<06/18)
agency model, Maverick delivers from Allianz, Sodexo, Lafarge, Honda,
Year founded: 2006 impact first. Its single group Sodexo, Kuoni and Ann Summers.
production model enables it to serve
Owner: Independent every world market from a central Commercially, 2017 and 2018 have
location. Utilising creative, digital been extremely busy, with the group
UK head: Chris Tedman, and content talent, it collaborates to doubling its turnover. It also increased
Chief Operating Officer deliver innovative and impactful ideas its digital and content-focused revenue
for clients, leading to meaningful by over 80% with its new business wins.
Contact: Carron Edmonds, returns and business impact.
Managing Director, carron@ Over the last 15 years Maverick has
mavad.co.uk, The agency cares deeply about grown as a naturally integrated
+44 (0) 207 378 6969 relationships – with its people, clients, business, keeping all its means In the next 12 months, Maverick will
customers and its partners. “Our of origination and production in expand its satellite office network. It has
Website: internationalist spirit, combined house. Keeping everything within already opened a new office very close
mavad.co.uk with innovation, bravery and a Maverick offers clients many benefits: to its London Bridge base to act as a
collaborative attitude enable us to they can plan clear strategies and collaboration centre for large projects.
solve the biggest challenges. As our originate creative and technology It also plans to expand its international
name suggests, we aren’t followers, we solutions, then transcreate them network with a similar satellite solution
seek what lies ahead. We care about for local markets, using the same in Germany and in the US, in late
bringing our partners aspirations and tightly knit team for everything. In 2018 and early 2019 respectively.
objectives to reality,” Maverick says. short, it gives clients a highly creative,
collaborative and flexible way to work. With a continued focus on strong
organic growth, supported by two
In 2017, the agency celebrated its 15- additional businesses launched by
year anniversary in true Maverick style, the group over the next 12 months,
running its own summer music festival. 2018 and 2019 will be very exciting.
It plans to hold another next year.
46
The Big Group Holdings Ltd
The agency provides three key pillars

of expertise built around customer
experience, marketing technology and
creative performance marketing.
It is highly skilled and experienced in

combining great creative work and
amazing execution with insightful
data analysis to ensure client ROI.
Fee income: At Big Group, the idea sits at the

£10,300,000 (<12/17) heart of every project and every
idea. “Supported by comprehensive
Year founded: 1991 research and factual data we ensure
that originality and creativity is at the
Owner: Independent heart of all we do,” the agency says.
UK head: Nick Scott, CEO In the past 12 months, the agency has
received 26 industry nominations and
Contact: Edward six industry awards. Placing in the top
Riseman, General Manager, 50 of Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital
ed.riseman@biggroup.co.uk, Agencies was a point of pride, it says.
+44 (0) 207 229 8827
Its Newbury offices moved into its farm It builds long-term client partnerships Big Group works in some of the fastest
complex. Big Group also completed by helping clients succeed through moving and most innovative industries
Business split:
the acquisition of Frontline Retail, its key disciplines – customer today like financial, automotive,
3% CRM, 53% Creative, 1%
which provides a global footprint in experience, marketing technology and technology, retail, music and fashion. It
Services, 22% Marketing, 2% retail display industry and welcomed performance marketing – partnering applies bigger thinking to everything it
Media Planning, 6% SEO, 15 new colleagues to the team. with technology companies such as does and is passionate about helping
10% Social, 1% Technical Salesforce, Sitecore and Google. brands stand out from the crowd.
Development, 1% User Big Group is an award-winning,
Experience independent, creative marketing Creativity is at the heart of what
agency. Its enthusiasm and passion are Big Group does. In the first half of
Website: borne out of its expertise in live events, 2018, Big won ten industry awards
biggroup.co.uk design, digital, social and strategic including Creative Strategy, B2B
thinking. The agency’s team is 140 Marketing, Innovation and Digital
strong, working out of offices in London, Strategy. Apart from winning the 2018
Newbury and Bath, and in 2018 its RAR Grand Prix, its most cherished
footprint extended to Amsterdam. award is for Client Services. Big takes
pride in that fact that many of its
awards have been based on client
feedback for its strategic thinking
and creativity in its execution.

47
Red Badger
Red Badger delivers high-quality Red Badger is on a mission to make

digital products to complex businesses, the technology industry a more socially
transforming practices and people conscious and inclusive one. In 2017 it
along the way. Enabling clients to established a dedicated Social Value
align around a vision, its approach to task force to make this happen.
embedding innovation and insights
into product development ensures the Long-term collaborations have been
right products are built, scaled and established with regional and national
business results are realised quickly. non-profits including Code Your
Future, Anthony Nolan Trust, You
Fee income:
The agency’s people are digital Make It, Alzheimer’s Society and Pride
£9,496,484 (<10/17)
transformation experts who innovate in London. Engagements include
and deliver. While most companies participating in local mentoring
Year founded: 2010
approach the agency for help creating schemes, providing pro bono
Owner: Independent high quality digital products, Red training, consultancy and delivering
Badger’s impact is further reaching. an innovative, open source app.
UK head: Cain Ullah, CEO Offering leadership and coaching
throughout its engagements, it helps The Red Badger Academy, a skills and
businesses from vision and strategy to knowledge platform, is the agency’s
Contact: Cain Ullah, Chief
entrepreneurial management, product proposition to facilitate culture
Executive Officer, cain.ullah@
red-badger.com, delivery through to scaling excellence. change. It enables clients to begin to
+44 (0) 203 567 0555 solve their problems for themselves,
“Red Badger are people focused and using Red Badger’s IP and ways of Adding News UK and Fidelity
clients love their cultural impact,” it working to actively build capability, not Institutional in the last year to its
Business split:
says. In 2017 the agency established a dependence, ensuring transformation ongoing engagements of large
6% Creative, 88% Technical
Social Impact team to drive focus to its continues without the agency. transformation programmes with
Experience volunteering efforts, sharing knowledge global banks and Fortnum & Mason,
with students, teaching refugees to Led by a new management structure, Red Badger is G-Cloud approved
Website: code and raising funds for charities. It Red Badger continues to grow the and looking to add government
red-badger.com also built the Pride in London app. core offer of vision, strategy and digital projects to its portfolio.
product development capability.
In 2018, Red Badger was recognised By hiring Dr Jimmy Muldoon to
as a Sunday Times 100 Best create an insights offering, it is able
Company to Work For, the result of to better optimise products with
an independent staff survey. The data-driven decision-making.
agency’s ‘Give As You Earn’ charity
contributions received a Platinum
award from the government and it
placed at number 181 in the FT 1000
Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies.
48 49
Poke Equator
Equator is a strategic digital agency

Poke’s expertise lies in branded digital
that connects worlds. It believes brand
products and services and digital brand
transformation starts with changing
communications. The agency is one of
people’s lives for the better. Its ability
the few pureplay digital creative agencies
to connect creative, marketing and
remaining in the market. It also has a
technology enables it to consistently
breadth of capabilities and human-centric
deliver joined-up, transformational thinking
approach, resulting in a strong blend of
that ultimately gives its clients the edge
creative and technology. The agency’s
in an ever-changing marketplace.
creative, UX and tech teams work hand in
hand to create hard working communication Fee income:
Fee income: Equator describes itself as a true connected
£9,402,129 (<10/17)
£9,441,000 (<12/17) solutions with the consumer at the core. agency for the digital age. Its data-driven
strategy aims to define breakthrough
As part of Publicis, Poke has access to Year founded: 1999
Year founded: 2001 customer insight and business vision
one of the world’s largest networks. By
Owner: Independent and its approach creates more effective
Owner: Publicis Worldwide accessing expertise from this network, it
brand experience ecosystems. It treats
can provide clients with seamless services
UK head: John McLeish, its clients’ financial targets as its own,
UK head: Nick Farnhill, CEO across a multitude of disciplines. The
Managing Director which is why everything we do is about
and Co-Founder agency also has joint business plans in
delivering remarkable results, it says.
place with Google and Facebook, as well
Contact: Kat MacBride,
Contact: Amber Addley, as key contacts within a number of other “We care deeply about changing
Marketing Executive, kat.
Head of New Business, Poke, platforms. These relationships enable people’s lives for the better through three
macbride@eqtr.com,
amber.addley@pokelondon. Poke to bring the latest product updates, +44 (0) 141 229 1800 principles; amazing things happen when
com, +44 (0) 737 7412 best practices, consumer insights and we make new connections; insights are
355 platform experts directly to its clients. Business split: the soul of every great brand; and that
55% Creative, 5% Managed remarkable results are the ultimate
Business split: Poke cares deeply about digital media
Services, 25% Marketing, measure of our work,” Equator says.
1% CRM, 38% Creative, 10% and its impact on our lives and culture. 15% SEO
Ecommerce, 5% Marketing, “Whether it’s about leading technology or The last 12 months have been very exciting
1% SEO, 5% Social, 20% evolving new models of communication, Website: for Equator. It has won work with prestigious,
we try to lead our clients to more lucrative, eqtr.com international brands such as Virgin Active,
User Experience
more effective, but equally culture Santander and PwC, among others. Its
making, brand building, full spectrum innovation team has been developing a
Website:
creative outings,” the agency says. variety of solutions using exciting, cutting-
pokelondon.com
edge technology for new and current clients.
In the past 12 months, Nick Farnhill took
on the additional remit of CEO, Publicis
London. Nik Roope’s role expanded to
Global Creative Digital Lead on Heineken.
Both roles provide growing digital
communication expertise across Publicis UK.

50 51
Foolproof Ltd twentysix
twentysix’s expertise lies in helping

The foundation of Foolproof’s approach
clients unravel the mass of online data
is creating a meaningful, actionable
available, to generate real insights and
understanding of the customers
more ROI; understand audiences better,
it is designing for. It applies this
as well as how they use their digital assets
understanding to make better decisions
through research and user testing; create
in product strategy, design and front-
the best online customer experience
end development to create and build
to drive ROI; and make them more
powerful, effective digital experiences.
visible than the competition online.
Foolproof creates digital products and Fee income:
Fee income: The agency’s ability to improve clients’
services that have meaning and value to the £8,884,000 (<02/18)
£8,885,376 (<03/18) ROI by unravelling the mass of online
people that use them. Through this it creates
data to understand audience behaviour
better business outcomes for its clients. Year founded: 1996
Year founded: 2002 is supported by its in-house research
It is important that the customer or Owner: MSQ Partners facilities; its technical size and breadth of
Owner: Zensar Technologies end-user is properly represented in expertise and its integrated media neutral
PLC capabilities to get clients seen online.
the process of design, the agency says. UK head: Gail Dudleston,
“The things we make should allow Global CEO
UK head: Marc Oldman, twentysix says it cares deeply about its
people to clearly understand their
Executive Director clients’ work and their satisfaction and
(Operations) choices and confidently make good Contact: Gail Dudleston,
Global CEO, gail.dudleston@ the agency’s business performance. It
decisions for themselves,” it adds.
twentysixdigital.com, also cares about its talented team and
Contact: Ed Walker, striking a work-life balance through
In the past 12 months, the agency was +44 (0) 796 609 7975
Business Development encouraging wellbeing. “We care about
Director, ed.walker@foolproof. delighted to have a new creative director,
with the internal promotion of James Reeve. Business split: being a financially successful agency
co.uk,
+44 (0)207 539 3840 2% CRM, 14% Creative, 10% that clients want to hire, the best people
Ecommerce, 1% Managed want to work for, to be innovative, quality
Services, 10% Marketing, 11% led and a great place to work,” it says.
Business split:
30% Creative, 30%
5% Social, 15% Technical In the past 12 months, the agency
Ecommerce, 10% Technical
Development, 12% User launched new Enhanced Biometric UX
Experience testing capabilities and Galvanic Skin
Experience
Response analysis, allowing clients to
Website: tap in to their customers’ emotions.
Website:
twentysixdigital.com
foolproof.co.uk Its May charity auction event for Max
Appeal raised more than £5,000 and
Joel Spence was promoted to CGO.
52
Dept Design & Technology Ltd
Dept Design & Technology Ltd is a digital

agency of 900 experienced thinkers and
makers in 10 countries across Europe
and the US. Dept merges creativity,
technology and data expertise. It
specialises in large scale digital content
management and transformation
projects bringing together experienced
Depsters from its specialist teams.
Fee income:
The agency comprises experts in strategy,
£8,868,000 (<12/17)
organisation, creative, technology, marketing,
commerce and data. Its expertise lies in
Year founded: 2007
collaboration, support and tackling problems
Owner: Dept UK Holding fast, and in guiding clients to anticipate
Ltd what others could not. It is big enough
to deliver and small enough to care.
UK head: Emma Robinson,
Deptcares is the agency’s internal initiative to
Operations Director
use the skills it has as digital experts to help
Contact: Brian Robinson, improve climate change, poverty, proper
Managing Director, brian. education and much more. This initiative has
robinson@deptagency.com, led to pro bono app development work for
+44 (0)161 441 0600 charities and non-profit organisations as well
as internal activities such as Meatless Week.
Business split:
25% Creative, 25% Managed Dept continues to grow organically and
Services, 50% Technical through acquisition. In the past 12 months,
Development more than 500 new Depsters have joined
and in April 2018 all Dept agencies
Website: came together under the Dept brand.
deptagency.com/en-gb/

53
Rufus Leonard
Rufus Leonard is an independent

brand experience agency with a
heritage in digital and design. It has
expertise in brand optimisation, service
design and build, organisational
engagement and technology.
In an increasingly complex world, it

can be challenging for businesses
to deliver consistent, connected and
Fee income:
meaningful brand experiences. As
£8,446,964 (<12/17)
Brand Experience Engineers, the
agency takes a forensic approach to
Year founded: 1992
design, build and fine-tune the engines
Owner: Independent of brand experience. This engineering
mindset makes for more visionary
UK head: Will Rowe, Chief thinking and greater attention to detail.
Operating Officer
“As an agency, we care deeply
about creating extraordinary brand
Contact: Annemari
Koppinen, New Business experiences because they have the
Manager, annemari. power to improve people’s lives,”
it says. “Our mission is to make a The agency says: “[As] Brand Experience “That’s why we developed the Brand
koppinen@rufusleonard.com,
Engineers, we understand the Experience Index, to fill this gap. It
+44 (0) 207 404 4490 genuine difference through our
clients to every person in the UK.” importance of basing strategies on finally gives us an overall measurement
clear insight and measurement. For for brand experience, something that
Business split:
20% Creative, 15% The agency restructured the business to years, we used many of the traditional has been to date virtually impossible
Ecommerce, 10% Managed become Brand Experience Engineers, measurement tools such as brand to extract. The 2018 Brand Experience
Services, 10% Marketing, 30% applying its full service offering to tracking, CSAT and NPS. However, Index gives you some examples of the
Technical Development, 15% deliver brand strategy through to we constantly found it frustrating insight and measurement this tool
User Experience digital design and build for Lloyd’s that no overall measurement delivers, allowing brands to create
Register, British Red Cross and The existed for brand experience. even more robust brand strategies
Website: Gym Group. It also used its own Brand for this fast-changing world.”
rufusleonard.com Experience Index to win business with “We knew that understanding this
Reckitt Benckiser without a pitch. would help us identify moments
across the entire journey where it’s
most important for a brand to exceed
customer expectations. It would
allow brands to create roadmaps
for where to concentrate their effort,
as part of the journey to constantly
improve experience across the board.
54 55
Croud KHWS Limited
Croud is a global digital marketing agency, KHWS Limited is the Brand Commerce
offering services that include PPC, SEO, agency. It creates behavioural-led
content, programmatic, paid social, creative, marketing that triggers sales across
and analytics. Founded in 2011, Croud works the full-digital mix. It is equally happy
with some of the world’s leading brands, designing and building a stunning website,
including Victoria’s Secret, Regus, DKNY, and producing powerful interactive content,
Virgin Trains, across more than 100 markets. developing engaging social campaigns,
implementing effective eCRM/ecommerce
Croud’s unique model is powered by or creating in-store activations.
exceptional talent, custom-built tech, and
the world’s first crowd-sourced network We all use heuristics (hardwired mental
£8,394,950 (<03/18) £8,362,503 (<12/17)
of digital experts. Croud’s unique ‘Croud shortcuts) to make decisions. KHWS Limited
Control’ technology platform and network of reframed nine of the most relevant to
1,600 ‘Croudies’ mean it can automate what purchase decisions, which it calls Sales
Owner: Independent slows other agencies down and delivers Owner: Independent Triggers. Using its behavioural-led insight
clients truly impactful and efficient results. tools it creates digital strategies and
UK head: Jon Ditchburn, UK head: Andrew Watts/ creative marketing which has a positive
With a fast-growing team of developers, impact on people’s buying decisions.
Chief of Global Operations Nick Hawkes/Mark Skelton,
Croud drives efficiency by building bespoke
Founding Partner
technology and tools, freeing up the internal By 2021, it is estimated the UK will
Contact: Carly Price, Head
of Marketing, carly.price@ team to focus on client strategy. Maintaining Contact: Andrew Watts, spend more than £20 billion through
croud.co.uk, a great working culture is also fundamental, Founding Partner, andreww@ grocery ecommerce alone. To ensure
+44 (0) 208 017 7723 with Croud being recognised as one of the khws.co.uk, brands prosper in the future, the agency
Best Small Companies to Work For in 2018. +44 (0) 207 324 3346 is focused on understanding shopper
Business split: behaviour online. Its behavioural-led
1% Creative, 20% Marketing, Croud has continued to deliver year-on-year Business split: proprietary planning model helps inform
51% Media Planning, 28% revenue growth in excess of 40%, thanks to 1% CRM, 16% Creative, 11% more effective creative ideas that enable
SEO a growing client base and rapidly expanding Managed Services, 52% brands to secure a place in the cart.
service areas such as programmatic, paid Marketing, 17% Technical
Website: social, and SEO. Recognised as The Drum’s Development, 4% User It was the agency’s 25th birthday in May,
croud.com Organic Team of the Year, Croud has Experience which presented a moment of celebration,
also been listed in the Tech Track 100. but also a moment of reflection. Digital
Website: has transformed the world we live in.
khws.co.uk But while technology has evolved, our
brains make purchase decisions in the
same way. It’s why brand commerce
is proving so attractive to clients.

56 57
Redweb 4Ps Marketing (part of Artefact)
Redweb’s expertise lies in its deep 4Ps is a Digital Performance agency, built
understanding of existing platforms and from the ground up on AI consultancy
emerging technologies and how to harness projects. Developing client-customised
these to drive transformation. Redweb’s algorithms that fuel unparalleled efficiency
in-house digital experts in strategy, user and value into the activation channels (PPC,
experience, content and marketing combine SEO, display, affiliates and UX), and creation
this knowledge with a clear strategic (design, editorial and creative). 4Ps also has
vision, enabling clients to form lasting key vertical expertise in retail, travel and auto.
connections with their target audiences.
4Ps are Marketing Engineers. With 15% of
Redweb’s independent status leaves its human resources in technology roles,
£8,323,000 (<12/17) £8,266,637 (<12/17)
it free to explore, innovate and adapt 10% of its annual net revenue invested
quickly. Its specialists act as an extension in R&D, combined with the international
of clients’ in-house teams, complementing Artefact network of nearly 1,000 employees,
Owner: Independent their businesses with a blend of insight Owner: Independent it blends marketing solutions with
and experience that empowers them data and technology to deliver local or
UK head: Luke Platt, CEO to realise their ambitions, overcome UK head: Paul Smith, global efficiency and performance.
challenges and delight their customers. Managing Director
“Our mantra is: personal, client and
Contact: Luke Platt, CEO,
Nurturing talent is key to Redweb’s values. agency growth. Everything starts with
lukeplatt@redweb.com, Contact: Liz Partridge,
+44 (0) 120 277 9944 It’s why the agency hosts Digital Wave, a Head of Client Engagement, people,” the agency says. “We know that
conference about digital careers for young liz.partridge@4psmarketing. if we invest in our people, our people will
Business split: people, each year. It’s also why Redweb com, grow and invest themselves in the work
20% Creative, 5% cultivates a culture that encourages staff +44 (0) 770 374 4657 they deliver for our clients. Because of
Ecommerce, 20% Managed development, creativity and innovation – that, our clients’ growth and success
Services, 5% Marketing, 5% something that benefits its roster of clients. Business split: will make our agency successful.”
Media Planning, 5% SEO, 30% 9% Marketing, 47% Media
Technical Development, 10% Last year, Redweb celebrated its 20th Planning, 36% SEO, 7% In the last six months, the agency has
User Experience year as an agency. Changes to the C-Suite Technical Development, 1% added three prestigious, international
included appointing James Watts as User Experience clients to its portfolio, each of which is a
Website: CFO, Luke Platt as CEO, and Redweb’s great addition to its three core business
redweb.com Founder, Andrew Henning, becoming Website: verticals of retail, automotive and travel:
Chief Strategy Officer from CEO. These 4psmarketing.com M&S, international SEO; Nissan, international
changes will help the agency capitalise SEO and Melia Hotels, international PPC.
on opportunities and push forward.
58 59
Hugo & Cat Ltd Celerity (Information Services Ltd)
Hugo & Cat brings tightly-focused strategic, Celerity uses data and insights to maximise
UX, brand, design and tech capabilities marketing technology investment and
together under one roof. The agency works accelerate business growth. It provides
hard to maintain customer centricity consulting, implementation and managed
across each of these disciplines, liaising service solutions for digital marketing and
closely with clients to solve complex data. It works with leading brands including
challenges. Hugo & Cat takes pride in Nissan, Paco Rabanne and William Hill and
its long-term client relationships. combines data and technology to achieve
more profitable customer relationships.
The agency helps clients imagine their
future by bringing together consulting, The agency’s unique position in the market
£8,240,000 (<12/17) £8,130,438 (<09/17)
branding, experience design and technology. lies in its data heritage and marketing
Its clients often look for rapid innovation cloud technical skills, particularly with
to take new digital experiences to market Adobe and Salesforce. It also has the
Owner: Interpublic Group of fast. The agency’s ‘Agile Accelerator’ enjoys Owner: Independent ability to scale and be agile and flexible.
Companies, Inc (IPG) success, allowing end customers to trial
new services in a matter of weeks. “We passionately believe the future
UK head: Bill McGeorge,
belongs to brands that can move quickly,
UK head: Johannes Smith, COO
Hugo & Cat prioritises continual and agencies need to be more agile and
CEO
improvement – both within the agency flexible to support them to do so,” Celerity
Contact: Bill McGeorge,
Contact: Johannes Smith, and for its clients. It balances this with a COO, bill.mcgeorge@celerity- says. “We are also passionate about the
CEO, jsmith@hugoandcat. deep appreciation, and commitment to, is.com, use of data to drive ROI and are continually
com, the power of brand. Strong brands are the +44 (0) 746 915 0087 measuring and reporting against KPIs.”
+44 (0) 207 375 0909 ones that can drive emotional connections
and create long-term value for companies. Celerity won large contracts with William
Business split:
Business split: 30% CRM, 5% Creative, 5% Hill Group and Pizza Hut Delivery in the
3% CRM, 25% Creative, 10% In the past 12 months, Hugo & Cat has been Managed Services, 10% past 12 months, as well as new projects
Ecommerce, 2% Managed expanding its presence in New York and is Marketing, 45% Technical with Nissan globally. It also hired a new
Services, 10% Marketing, working on digital transformation projects Development, 5% Software COO from AKQA, Bill McGeorge.
3% SEO, 2% Social, 20% with major clients across real estate, food
Technical Development, 25% services, ecommerce and healthcare in the Website:
User Experience US market. The London team has grown celerity-is.com
to meet increasing demand for experience
Website: design, data insight and consulting.
hugoandcat.com

60 61
AIA Worldwide Omobono
AIA is a talent marketing company Omobono has deep expertise in tackling

connecting organisations with people the key challenges faced by global
they want to hire and retain. Its creative business brands. Its expertise lies in
brand storytelling, targeted digital driving corporate brands forward in new
distribution and meaningful metrics markets and for new initiatives, in aligning
and insight is delivered through its core the organisation’s people and platforms
services in brand activation, candidate to deliver an outstanding customer,
engagement and performance analytics. employee or candidate experience and
in managing senior stakeholders.
At the heart of its offering is its unique
technology platform, TalentBrew, which Omobono is the creative and technology
£8,069,432 (<12/17) £8,016,257 (<12/17)
connects organisations’ employer brands agency for global business brands. It
with job seekers in a way that is personalised works across the three areas which affect
and meaningful throughout the whole how an organisation is perceived and
Owner: TMP Worldwide candidate journey, with contextually Owner: Independent experienced: brand, people and technology
relevant and connected messaging that platforms. By looking at the way these
UK head: Gareth Edwards, enriches the candidate experience. UK head: Sarah Pettinger, three connect it drives both cultural and
Executive Vice President - Chief Operations Officer commercial impact for its clients.
The decisions organisations make about
Europe
talent and the decisions people make about The agency believes that business is a force
Contact: Ellie Jones,
Contact: Kathryn work are consequential. Organisational Business Development for good. Business brands drive over half the
Kempster, Regional Vice effectiveness and personal happiness are Director, ellie.jones@ global economy but most business brands
President, kathryn.kempster@ impacted by these choices. AIA combines omobono.com, lack the recognition they deserve, it says.
aia.co.uk, creativity and technology to tell the story of +44 (0) 207 430 1557 “Omobono set up in 2001 to champion them,
+44 (0) 207 993 1300 work, help organisations find the right talent to do outstanding work for business brands.
and help people find their best future. Business split: They are still committed to it in 2018.”
Business split: 4% CRM, 68% Creative, 1%
15% Creative, 15% Over the last 12 months AIA has been Marketing, 3% Social, 19% Omobono has experienced major
Ecommerce, 19% Managed delighted to add BMW, Co-op, IKEA, and Technical Development, 5% international growth in the last 12 months,
Services, 22% Marketing, 22% Jaguar Land Rover to its client base while User Experience tripling the size of its US office, including
Media Planning, 2% SEO, retaining 100% of the clients using its setting up a dedicated team to help its
6% Social, 11% Technical TalentBrew recruitment marketing platform. Website: biggest clients close multimillion dollar
Development, 4% User omobono.com
It has also won industry awards with its bids. Its Dubai office has doubled in size
Experience
clients at the RADs, NUEs and IACs. and now has an annex in Saudi Arabia.
Website:
aia.co.uk
62 63
Greenlight Digital Search Laboratory
Greenlight Digital is an award-winning Search Laboratory is an integrated digital

digital and commerce agency that designs, agency with more than 140 staff across
builds, consults, trains and implements offices in Leeds, London and New York.
transformational strategies across: paid Search Laboratory helps clients maximise
search and shopping, programmatic profit from their websites through search,
display, SEO, content marketing, digital PR, social and display campaigns in more
creative, site design and build, analytics, than 25 languages, underpinned by
ecommerce systems integration, conversion strategy, analytics and data science.
rate optimisation, user experience, affiliate
marketing, and data and audience insights. Search Laboratory is an official Google
Analytics 360 Reseller, having been
£7,737,000 (<08/17) £7,727,939 (<10/17)
Its nimble approach to digital allows it to accredited by Google to sell, implement
be the full-service agency that bridges the and provide ongoing support for the
gap between consultancies and networks, premium analytics software. This, coupled
Owner: Independent the agency says. Its data-led and audience- Owner: Independent with its digital strategy team, allows Search
focused approach has enabled it to create Laboratory to effectively manage large
UK head: Andreas Pouros, daring, award-winning work for 17 years. It UK head: Ian Harris, CEO international digital campaigns that work
CEO says it is the agency that marries data with together to produce profitable results.
creativity, backed by bulletproof technology. Contact: Chris Attewell,
The agency cares deeply about attribution
Contact: Katrina Makins, Global Sales Director, chris.
Head of Marketing, katrina. “We exist to truly make a difference to attewell@searchlaboratory. and being able to give its clients a true
makins@greenlightdigital. our clients by emphasising excellence com, picture of their digital marketing ROI.
com, and developing daring, data-led +44 (0) 113 212 1211 With a scientific ethos at the heart of
+44 (0) 207 253 7000 digital strategies,” Greenlight Digital Search Laboratory, being able to back
says. “Through our audience-driven Business split: up recommendations with data is key to
Business split: approach and focus on technology and 35% Marketing, 60% SEO, the success of its clients’ campaigns.
5% Creative, 10% innovation, we strive to deliver true value 5% Social
Ecommerce, 30% Media while also taking the time to know and Search Laboratory was honoured to
Planning, 40% SEO, 10% understand the brands we work with.” Website: receive the accolade of Best Large PPC
Social, 5% User Experience searchlaboratory.com Agency at the US Search Awards this year,
In the last 12 months, the agency has having doubled the size of the US team.
Website: received 25 award nominations and
greenlightdigital.com wins, spoken at events such as Festival
of Marketing, Marketing Week Live and
PerformanceIN Live and has completed an
ambitious rebrand to cement its position
in the market. Andreas Pouros, CEO,
appointed Matt Garbutt as Creative Director
and appointed Katrina Butler as CFO.

64 65
Orange Bus Ayima
Orange Bus’ expertise lies in digital Ayima is an award-winning Digital Marketing

strategy and consultancy, service Agency specialising in SEO, PPC, paid social,
design, design and build, user research, programmatic display, content marketing
UX testing and optimisation. and design and development. With offices
in London, New York, San Francisco, Raleigh,
The agency helps global organisations, Vancouver and Stockholm, Ayima’s team
brands and governments deliver continues to achieve spectacular results
authentic, profitable and engaging for some of the world’s biggest brands.
user interactions to transform their
customers’ digital experiences. The agency’s staff are truly proactive
and passionate about developing
£7,282,000 (<12/17) It cares deeply about putting users at the £7,251,000 (<12/17)
Ayima’s own in-house tools. Creating
heart of its solutions and creating products and focusing artificial intelligence and
Year founded: 2007 and services that are informed from true Year founded: 2007
machine learning efforts to develop
user insight, research and validated testing. strategies across its services allows Ayima
Owner: Capita plc Owner: Ayima Group AB
to uncover new insights and, ultimately,
In the last 12 months, Orange Bus
UK head: Kris Kennedy, UK head: Nicky Applegarth, optimise its digital marketing activity.
secured a large contract to transform BBC
COO Audience Services websites and renewed Managing Director
“At Ayima, our main drivers are
its contract with HMRC as agile delivery collaboration, innovation and passion,”
Contact: Kris Kennedy, partner in Newcastle and Shiplet. It is Contact: Nicky Applegarth,
COO, kris.kennedy@ Managing Director, nicky@ the agency says. “Our tools, technical
F1 team Force India’s digital partner. solutions and data insight, teamed with
orangebus.co.uk, ayima.com,
+44 (0) 191 241 3703 +44 (0) 207 148 5970 our creativity, make us who we are. Put
simply, we care about doing our best and
Business split: Business split: building strong relationships with our
3% Creative, 11% Managed 10% Creative, 13% Media clients to deliver exceptional results.”
Services, 0% Marketing, 24% Planning, 77% SEO
Technical Development, 62% Ayima continues to grow all elements of
User Experience Website: the business year on year. In the past 12
ayima.com months, it has opened a third US office,
Website: added CRO and performance analytics to
orangebus.co.uk its service offering and continues to develop
its own proprietary tools. Revenue also
increased YoY and continues to do so.
66 67
TH_NK Stink Studios
Think is a digital agency with consultancy Stink Studios is a global creative studio. It
at its core. It works with clients like Vue, solves its clients’ business problems by fusing
Liverpool Victoria, Adecco, Very and creativity, innovation, strategy and craft.
Liverpool FC to help them define their
future opportunity, and design and The agency is one of the world’s leading
build award-winning digital products independent creative companies
and services that enable them to take working at a global scale.
the future into their own hands.
Stink Studios cares deeply about making
For Think, a successful client relationship a meaningful impact on its clients’
Fee income: Fee income: business, using smart design, intuitive
is one where the business is no longer
£7,244,500 (<10/17) £7,182,000 (<12/17) technology, and purposeful content.
reliant on the agency. That is why its
Year founded: 2004 consulting, design and delivery methods Year founded: 2009 It was recently voted by Campaign
have been created with collaboration
magazine as a Top 50 place to work. In
Owner: Independent at their heart. Think takes clients on a Owner: Independent the past 12 months, it has continued to
journey that truly builds their own teams’
build strong direct-to-brand relationships,
UK head: Natalie Gross, independence and in-house capability. UK head: James Britton, with a healthy blend of repeat business
Managing Partner Global Managing Director and new engagements. Its work continues
“The next ten years will bring incredible
technological change,” Think says. “To to be recognised by Industry awards,
Contact: Victoria Morrison, Contact: James Britton, and as a top destination for talent.
Marketing & New Business embrace this exciting future, we need Global Managing Director,
Director, victoria@wearethink. broader and deeper expertise, even james.britton@stinkstudios.
com, greater diversity in mindsets and skills com,
+44 (0) 207 504 6000 that don’t exist yet. That’s why we +44 (0) 780 861 2542
believe in fierce collaboration… with our
Business split: ambitious clients and our network of Business split:
15% Creative, 10% Managed specialists, pioneers and inventors.” 30% Creative, 30% Marketing,
Services, 25% Marketing, 5% Social, 15% Technical
5% Social, 30% Technical In the last 12 months, the agency Development, 5% User
Development, 15% User launched Think Live, a practice in Liverpool Experience
Experience dedicated to unlocking efficiencies and
value from clients’ current digital estates. Website:
Website: As well as optimisation and support, the stinkstudios.com
wearethink.com agency collaborates with client teams
to develop processes and in-house
capability that enable organisational
change and international growth.

68
Cheil UK
Cheil UK is a full-service agency

that helps redefine the ways people
connect with brands through data-
driven creativity. Its agency model has
data-driven customer experience at its
heart, offering clients a single strategic
partnership that delivers services across
the entire consumer decision journey.
Its expertise includes: strategy, data

Fee income:
and insights, retail innovation and
£7,141,959 (<12/17)
commerce (including ecommerce),
events and experiential, social and
Year founded: 1989
content, personalisation through digital
platforms and new technologies.
Owner: Cheil Worldwide
The agency’s services include customer
UK head: Peter Zillig, CEO intelligence (a new centralised analytics,
insight and planning division based in
Contact: Victoria Sinclair,
London and Bucharest that analyses
Client Engagement Director,
web, retail and mobile behavioural
v.sinclair@cheil.com,
+44 (0) 207 593 9300 data), consumer and retail innovation
and planning, out-of-home advertising, The agency’s 40+ year relationship with In the past 12 months, the agency has
TV, social and content, events and Samsung has given it the ability to won NIVEA and Beirsdorf Northern
Business split:
experiential, and personalisation and deliver creative solutions by combining Europe Digital and is also working
10% CRM, 15% Creative, 15%
contextualisation through digital technology and data for all its clients. on digital projects for Global.
Ecommerce, 15% Marketing,
10% SEO, 10% Social, 10% platforms and partnerships like Adobe. Its UK office has a tech department
that works with the agency’s data Cheil includes 53 offices and more
User Experience As part of its mission to help its and insights team to identify where than 6,000 people worldwide. It
clients and the industry adapt to new new technologies can be best connects people to leading brands
Website: advertising models and technologies, placed within a customer journey. including Samsung, Beiersdorf, General
cheil.uk it set up a new initiative called DRIVE. Motors, Lufthansa and Absolut.
Cheil’s first DRIVE session on voice Cheil UK cares deeply about culture:
and AI was created entirely by Alexa. “Without a good culture we won’t
attract and maintain the levels of
talent we have and need,” the agency
says. “It’s not always easy being part of
such a fast moving and demanding
client base, so ensuring our teams are
fully supported is very important.”
69 70
Code Computerlove Maginus Software Solutions
Code Computerlove helps brands and The expertise of Maginus lies in its ability to
businesses to get the most out of their realise a concept, however big or small, and
digital products by taking a ‘Product taking acute attention in understanding
Thinking’ approach. The agency creates the needs of a client. Maginus is able to
digital products that best meet the business drive a project with clarity and purpose,
challenges they’re trying to solve, continually fully utilising the exceptional skillset of
improves them and it helps businesses its team to deliver brilliant projects.
go faster in their digital transformation.
The team has more than 20 years’
As an established agency, Code experience in the B2B and B2C ecommerce
Computerlove has created its own approach markets. It has worked with a wide range
£7,000,000 (<12/17) £6,982,000 (<07/17)
to supporting brands in their digital of online businesses and has played a
development and transformation. It focuses major part in delivering designs that not
on outcomes and value, not a set cost only look good, but make a demonstrable
Owner: MediaCom project fee ticking off a list of deliverables. Owner: Independent difference to the client’s bottom line.
The agency cares about digital effectiveness Every single piece of coding and
UK head: Tony Foggett, UK head: Simon Weeks,
and the value of outcomes, delivered design that the team engineers make
CEO CEO
through: doing the right thing; doing is created to ensure that the agency’s
the thing right; and doing it efficiently – customers have a platform that does
Contact: Steve Peters, Contact: Janice
Business Development, steve. removing the silos of an organisation for Mawhinney, Marketing what it needs to, when it needs to, with
peters@codecomputerlove. speed and effectiveness. It also cares about Executive, janice. unyielding excellence, the agency says.
com, aligning the entire culture towards shared mawhinney@maginus.com, “We want to implement platforms of
+44 (0) 161 276 2080 goals and metrics, and autonomy in teams. +44 (0) 161 946 0000 distinction, to create partnerships and
collaborations that last,” it adds.
Business split: The agency has been working with Business split:
20% Creative, 5% sister agency MediaCom North to offer 15% CRM, 10% Creative, 30% In the past 12 months, Maginus added
Ecommerce, 10% Marketing, an end-to-end service. Its focus has Ecommerce, 10% Managed the Magento ecommerce platform to its
7% SEO, 3% Social, 40% been on performance and helping Services, 25% Technical portfolio to satisfy a requirement within its
Technical Development, 15% clients achieve brilliant work. Development, 10% Software customer base for a mid-market solution.
User Experience It also won the Episerver Commerce
Website: Partner of the Year award for achieving
Website: maginus.com impressive business results and its ability
codecomputerlove.com to meet customers’ ecommerce needs.

71 72
NMPi Tangent
NMPi’s extensive experience in digital Tangent is an independent customer

media expands across paid search – experience studio with offices in London
including award-winning solutions for and Newcastle. It helps its clients
Google Shopping – display, paid social and navigate the digital landscape and better
analytics, with both traditional agency and serve their customers. The agency has
performance solutions. Having worked three core pillars of service: customer
across a wide range of industries including journey insight and strategy; lean digital
retail, entertainment and travel, it offers its product design and development; and
clients rich data and valuable insights. data intelligence and optimisation.
With its acquisition of creative agency The agency understands its clients’
£6,842,887 (<12/17) £6,770,338 (<03/18)
Joystick and its work with technology customers’ behaviours, wants, needs,
experts, DQ&A, it is able to integrate media, likes, frustrations and fears when using
technology and creative to deliver high the services and products they provide.
Owner: incuBeta Group quality and engaging end-to-end customer Owner: Independent It prototypes and tests new design and
experiences, breaking down the silos tech solutions so that its clients can be
UK head: Luke Judge, CEO that often hinder advertising success. UK head: Oliver Green, confident they will work, which lowers risk.
Managing Partner
“We are passionate about helping Tangent cares deeply about having an
Contact: Andrew Turner,
ambitious brands grow and realise their impact on its clients’ businesses and
Commercial Director, Contact: Oli Green,
aturner@nmpidigital.com, full potential,” the agency says. “It is our Managing Partner, oliver. improving the customer experience.
+44 (0) 207 186 2110 belief that the perfect blend of technology, green@tangent.co.uk,
data and artistry makes every execution In the past 12 months, it won a number of
+44 (0) 751 590 8482
smarter, more dynamic and more effective.” new clients including UK Power Networks,
Business split:
Freesat and Missfits Nutrition. It also moved
96% Media Planning, 4% Business split:
Software This year, NMPi announced the acquisition 20% CRM, 25% Creative, into new offices in Newcastle’s city centre.
of creative specialist, Joystick, and paid 10% Managed Services, 20%
Website: social specialist, MediaPact. This follows its Technical Development, 25%
nmpidigital.com 2017 global expansion which concluded User Experience
with the launch of two new offices in the US
last November. Its recent acquisitions have Website:
only served to strengthen its international tangent.co.uk
presence and localised expertise.
73 74
Edit Agency Limited Vaimo UK Ltd
Edit offers CRM and media, underpinned Vaimo started its UK operations in 2012
by brilliant technology and data science. It but is globally celebrating its ten-year
helps its clients keep their best customers; anniversary as operations started in
grow more customers into best customers; Sweden in 2008. Having grown to a global
and get new best customers, wherever they omnichannel provider working across 12
are. Through the intelligent application of different countries, its offering and expertise
data, it can make this efficient – and prove it. include ecommerce strategy, design,
development, cloud services, optimisation
Merging two CRM-focused agencies with a and product information management.
digital agency and a media agency uniquely
positions Edit to process and activate data With an international presence through
£6,719,689 (<07/17) £6,588,528 (<12/17)
safely and effectively on a huge scale. Edit 16 offices in 12 countries and a full
focuses on turning data into people and service offering in the omnichannel
helping its clients put that customer at the space, the agency has local relationships
Owner: St Ives plc heart of all marketing and advertising. Owner: Vaimo AB with global knowledge, with more than
400 launched sites launched to date.
Edit believes that marketing is about
UK head: Damian UK head: Steve Dashwood,
consistent messaging and joined up insights Vaimo cares about establishing long-
Coverdale, CEO Country Manager UK &
from acquisition to advocacy, but that term relationships and driving success
Ireland
is not easy in the face of overwhelming in digital commerce for its clients. “We
Contact: Charlie Harris,
Group Head of Marketing, channel choice and complexity. “We Edit Contact: Emilia Swiecicka, care about our employees as they are
charlie.harris@edit.co.uk, out the noise to help our clients have Marketing Coordinator, key to success and deliver our work
+44 (0) 738 702 3831 one conversation with their customers emilia.swiecicka@vaimo.com, through our core values: excellence,
at an individual level,” it says. +44 (0) 738 917 9814 teamwork, openness and fun,” it says.
Business split:
15% CRM, 10% Creative, St Ives’ data agencies Response One, Business split: In 2017, Vaimo opened a new office in
5% Managed Services, 10% Amaze One and Occam merged with 5% Creative, 70% Belgium to cater for the existing Benelux
Marketing, 20% Media digital agency Branded3 to form Edit Ecommerce, 10% Managed market and increased its offering further
Planning, 15% SEO, 20% in 2018, moving 150 staff into a new Services, 5% SEO, 5% by acquiring an agency specialising
Technical Development, 5% HQ in Bath (retaining 70 more in Leeds Technical Development, 5% in product information management
Software and London). Edit’s SearchLeeds event User Experience to open its own PIM department.
became the biggest digital event in
Website: the north, with 1,500 attendees. Website:
edit.co.uk vaimo.co.uk

75 76
ORM W12 Studios Limited
ORM’s expertise is in digital business W12 Studios translates business challenges

transformation, technology consultancy and into visionary brand strategies and
the design and build of digital products innovative digital product design for global
and services. It provides managed services clients across the UK and Europe, North
including technical support, continuous America and Asia Pacific. It delivers impact
improvement and performance optimisation. for their clients, setting design and UI
benchmarks for the industry, and inspires
The agency helps organisations create and exceptional work from its 40-strong team.
own their digital future. It works with its
clients to define their vision and a digital The studio’s core capabilities span the
roadmap for change. ORM then executes the full digital service journey, from brand
£6,575,353 (<09/17) £6,560,000 (<05/18)
plan with the delivery of new products and development, innovative product strategy,
services through data, content, experience visionary design, and go-to-market
design and connected technology. support. It delivers innovative, actionable
Owner: Independent Owner: Independent designs with speed and agility. Its
ORM is passionate about how new designers, strategists and technologists
technologies are forcing businesses to work directly with the client, delivering
UK head: Bill McGeorge, UK head: Fabian Birgfeld,
change and transform. “With the right digital results in real time and on budget.
Group Operations Director CEO and Co-Founder
vision strategies in place, we are supporting
organisations to make it easier for them to W12 Studios is passionate about making
Contact: Peter Gough, Contact: Lucie Dutton,
Managing Partner & Founder, do business with their customers,” it says. Business Development a difference to the wider world. It also says
peter.gough@ormlondon. Director, lucie.dutton@ it cares about designing products and
This year, ORM created a game-changing experiences that connect brand, strategy and
com, w12studios.com,
+44 (0) 208 239 5080 retail platform for Arriva UK Trains and Bus +44 (0) 781 774 6254 product, reaching millions of people globally.
– a programme rollout across their brands Not afraid to challenge the status quo, it
Business split: with expansions into Europe, empowering Business split: believes that “together we are stronger” and
5% CRM, 10% Creative, 25% them to own their digital future. It has also 50% Creative, 50% User practices a collaborative approach to design.
Ecommerce, 10% Managed grown in this last year and recently moved Experience
Services, 5% SEO, 25% to a new location in London’s West End. This year, the studio relocates to a new
Technical Development, 20% Website: owned office space. The move signifies
User Experience w12studios.com an investment in the future of W12
Studios and ongoing commitment to
Website: its clients. In the last 12 months it has
ormlondon.com received a Red Dot Design Award for
Vodafone, the F1 Connectivity Prize and
an Excellence in Design from Verizon.
77 78
Nomensa We Are Friday
Nomensa is an independent strategic UX Friday work at the core of their clients’

design agency that combines expertise businesses, improving the customer
in psychology, user-centred design and experience where it matters most,
accessibility to transform digital experiences. and where digital development
Humans are at the heart of every endeavour, can deliver the most value.
working alongside the agency’s clients
to generate sustainable and powerful Clients partner with them to re-imagine
technology creations that drive commercial and design their customer experience,
with customer experience at the core. improve the technology that powers it and
develop capabilities to better manage it.
Now one of Europe’s leading UX agencies
£6,463,362 (<12/17) £6,431,695 (<12/17) The agency’s clients are mostly senior
operating internationally across London,
Bristol and Amsterdam, Nomensa blends customer-proposition owners in
Year founded: 2001 Year founded: 2009 high-touch service organisations that
state-of-the-art thinking, innovation and
creativity to build experiences that delight need to keep pace with customer
Owner: Independent Owner: Independent expectation while dealing with legacy.
and engage. Nomensa’s more than
UK head: Sally Lincoln, 100-strong team is made up of some of UK head: Chris Walker, Friday believes in the internet as a
Managing Director the most talented minds in the industry. Chief Operating Officer force for good. Friday says: “It creates
‘Humanising Technology’ is Nomensa’s transparency and meritocracy, and
Contact: Sally Lincoln, Contact: Corinne Powers, places power, knowledge and agency
Managing Director, hello@ founding and guiding principle. By Business Development
capitalising on psychology to drive into the hands of people, encouraging
nomensa.com, Manager, corinne.powers@
designs and shape strategies, Nomensa organisations to be useful and relevant.
+44 (0) 117 929 7333 wearefriday.com,
creates meaningful digital experiences +44 (0) 203 217 7950 Bringing digital into the core of businesses
that are moulded around those who re-orients them around the customer,
Business split:
18% Creative, 2% Managed truly matter: the users. This human-heavy Business split: which creates value for society.”
Services, 80% User purpose is present in its collaborative 5% CRM, 30% Creative, 5%
Friday has been growing over the past
Experience internal management style, UX events Ecommerce, 30% Technical
Development, 30% User 12 months. It moved into new offices on
and partnerships with clients.
Website: Experience Farringdon Road and started working with
nomensa.com Employee fulfilment and cross-sector a raft of new clients including Jackson
collaboration are better signifiers of Website: Hewitt, ERM, Anglia Ruskin and BMI.
success than just tangibles or financial wearefriday.com It has also sharpened its proposition –
stats. However, 2018 has been quite a Core Business Digital – and launched a
year; its employee count surpassed 100, new website: www.wearefriday.com.
UX events Collaborate and Interact are on
the horizon, while co-chair of WCAG and
Nomensa founder Alastair Campbell co-
authored the newly-released WCAG-2.1.

79 80
Tryzens Dare Digital Ltd
Tryzens specialises in helping retailers and Dare is an experience, design and

brands optimise sales online. Whether technology company. Dare balances human
new to ecommerce or already trading behaviour, the customer experience and
online, Tryzens offers independent, how we can use technology to ensure its
authoritative, expert advice with design clients realise their commercial ambition.
and technical delivery services that enable
clients to enhance their business results The agency’s unique Dare Inside model
across all trading channels through places bespoke teams at the heart of
exceptional customer experience and its clients’ business. It operates inside
high-performing ecommerce systems. its clients’ worlds to create long-term
business value and efficiencies.
£6,416,000 (<03/18) £6,400,000 (<06/17)
The agency lives ecommerce, employing
unique dedicated teams of user experience, Dare cares deeply about being human. In its
Year founded: 2004 Year founded: 2000 agency, in the way it works, in its solutions.
design, technical integration and CRO
Owner: Independent specialists, who are passionate about online. Owner: Inside Ideas Group In the past 12 months, Dare has grown
Tryzens’ senior team, which includes former
its digital base by 13%, won significant
UK head: Andy Burton, CEO retailers, has a deep understanding of the UK head: Michael Olaye, digital transformation work from Wesleyan,
online challenges faced by retailers and Chief Executive Officer BMW and Aetna and continued to deliver
Contact: Paul Green, Sales brands. Tryzens provides actionable insights
for Nike, Vision Express and Barclays. Dare
Director UK&I, london@ to help clients grow their businesses. Contact: Caroline Sparkes, has bolstered its senior leadership team
tryzens.com, Managing Partner, caroline. with hires of Caroline Sparkes, Managing
+44 (0) 207 264 5900 “Tryzens cares about its clients’ success,” sparkes@thisisdare,com,
says the agency. “Whether re-platforming Partner and Ben Long, Creative Director.
+44 (0) 203 142 3508
Business split: or helping retailers improve specific
10% Creative, 80% business KPIs, Tryzens’ goal is to optimise Business split:
Ecommerce, 10% Managed the outcome for their clients ensuring 5% CRM, 20% Creative, 5%
Services investment is against clear shared targets. Ecommerce, 20% Marketing,
This results-focused approach drives double- 5% SEO, 5% Social, 20%
Website: digit growth; client Joseph Joseph for Technical Development, 20%
tryzens.com User Experience
example grew mobile transactions by 71%.”
Focus on customer satisfaction and delivery Website:

quality is paramount, with Tryzens named thisisdare.com
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Delivery Partner
of the Year 2017, achieving Gold Consulting
Partner status and Magento Professional
Solution Partner. This commitment to quality
and success has powered Tryzens significant
growth to its client base in the last year.
81 82
CDS Digital Great State
CDS is a multi-award-winning Great State is a new agency, which

communications company with market formed in 2018 following a merger
leading technical capability. It is trusted between digital agency e3 and strategy
to deliver and support business-critical consultancy London Strategy Unit. Great
solutions to both private and public sectors, State is a new breed of agency: a brand
used by millions of people every day. technology agency combining business
and brand strategy, digital product
In a digitally transforming world, CDS and service innovation, and enterprise
is changing the way government talks technology services under one roof.
to citizens, employers to employees,
authorities to their communities and Great State helps its clients stay relevant.
£6,293,343 (<12/17) £5,830,846 (<03/18)
businesses to their customers. Staying relevant is today’s biggest business
challenge. Driven by rapid changes in
Year founded: 1994 “We transform communications, change Year founded: 1997
technology and fierce competition in
behaviours and make a positive difference,” every sector, consumers have higher
Owner: The Baird Group Owner: Independent
says CDS. “We offer a broad range of on expectations than ever before. Great State
and offline services. These are designed helps businesses to transform themselves in
UK head: Fergus Bailie, UK head: Nairn Robertson,
to help clients communicate and engage response to these ever-higher expectations.
Chief Executive Operations Director
more effectively with their customers
and staff. We provide the solutions “At Great State, we believe in the positive
Contact: Paul Meersman, Contact: Neil Collard,
Head of Marketing, paul. that help clients design, implement Managing Director, neil. impact technology can have for both
meersman@cds.co.uk, and deliver their digital roadmap.” collard@greatstate.co, brands and consumers,” the agency says.
+44 (0) 113 399 4000 +44 (0) 203 008 4411 “We believe that brands stay relevant
In the last 12 months, CDS won six by offering experiences that continue to
awards, and was recently named winner consistently delight their users. Great State
10% CRM, 10% Creative, 5% of the ideasUK competition for Idea of 3% CRM, 15% Creative, 5% uses technology in new and innovative
Ecommerce, 10% Managed the Year. It also won Best Large Digital Ecommerce, 1% Managed ways to enable our clients to do this.”
Services, 5% Marketing, Agency at the Prolific North Awards; the Services, 20% Marketing,
5% SEO, 5% Social, 40% first of several awards for work delivered 2% SEO, 4% Social, 30% Launching in 2018 has made for a busy
Technical Development, 5% to clients, including Metropolitan Technical Development, 20% few months. There have been major
User Experience, 5% Software Police, Cabinet Office, Royal Mail, User Experience new client wins such as Deliveroo and
South West Water and British Army. Barclays, significant existing client growth
Website: Website: including Honda Europe and innovative
cds.co.uk greatstate.co AI work for Arthritis UK using IBM Watson.
The first of its own digital products, Okey
Dokey, also launched to the market.

83
Answer Digital Limited
Answer Digital provides software

engineering and technical consultancy
to the retail, health and financial
services sectors. It provides end-to-
end research, design and technical
delivery services. Answer employs
more than 60 substantive techies
from junior and graduate up to
senior and principal consultants.
Fee income:
The agency’s proposition spans
£5,604,617 (<12/17)
multiple sectors; it combines health,
finance, retail and payments domain
Year founded: 1999
expertise with 18 years working in
the technology industry. Its people,
Owner: Independent
culture and values are at the heart
UK head: Gary Parlett, of every single engagement.
Managing Director
Founded in 1999, Answer Digital’s
expertise lies its ability to collaborate
Contact: Gary Parlett,
with customers to develop their
Managing Director, gary.
parlett@answerdigital.com, own in-house digital capabilities
while delivering large-scale digital Supporting the finance industry The growth and development of
+44 (0) 113 201 0600
transformation projects. platform giant Bravura, Answer led leading digital talent is Answer
and delivered the web development Digital’s underlying mission.
Business split:
Answer Digital has developed programme for Nucleus. This
20% Ecommerce, 1% In August 2017, Answer Digital was
Managed Services, 75% customer-centric delivery practices undertaking was a major success
using a collaborative and agile and years later the agency is recognised in Public’s The State of the
User Experience methodology called TIDE. In addition proud to be associated with the UK GovTech Market report as one of
to technical project delivery, it uses Nucleus story and helping a startup the Top 10 fastest growing companies
Website: its unique delivery practices to equip grow to a value of £140m. and as revolutionising user experience
answerdigital.com customers’ in-house teams with the in the health and social care market.
skills and processes to help them In retail, Answer has worked with
continue their digital transformation Costcutter Supermarkets Group
aspirations on an ongoing basis. since 2012, collaborating with its IT
and business functions to deliver
It has worked with the NHS to bespoke retail management and
shape the future vision of national retailer order capture systems.
healthcare systems, introducing new
systems which enable clinicians to In payments, it is helping define
access accurate and pertinent health and implement payment strategies
data in real time to save lives. and is actively involved in industry
initiatives around Open Banking
and Real Time payments.
84
Threepipe
Threepipe is a performance marketing

agency that runs acquisition and
branding strategies across channels
for some of the best known and
fastest growing retailers.
The agency has created integrated

client teams across search, display
and social so that clients have
one point of contact across their
Fee income:
campaigns and not multiple client
£5,260,000 (<03/18)
teams working in isolation.
Year founded: 2004 “Data and insight powers everything
that we do,” says Threepipe. “We are
Owner: Independent constantly testing and improving
our campaign strategies to deliver
UK head: Farhad
incremental performance benefits.”
Koodoruth, Managing
Director The agency has developed a lot of
its own IP this year to improve client
Contact: Jim Hawker, reporting and campaign management
Co-Founder, jim@threepipe.
and drive improved accuracy and Internal teams were reorganised to Threepipe was picked as the media
co.uk,
efficiency. It has also acquired a create client-focused teams, rather agency for the 2019 ICC Cricket World
+44 (0) 207 632 4800
creative agency to further improve its than to spread the integrated work Cup and won business from brands
content capability across channels. across multiple teams, as well as to including Oracle, Warehouse, Soho
Business split:
20% Creative, 5% give clients one point of contact and a Home and Jet Airways. The agency also
2018 was the biggest year yet for more holistic view of their campaigns. picked up a number of high-profile
Services, 30% Media Threepipe as it added new 30 people awards for its integrated campaigns for
Planning, 20% SEO, 10% to bring its total to 100, moved offices Threepipe acquired the creative agency the England and Wales Cricket Board,
Social and won some of the biggest media Earnie to boost the its content and for which it is the lead digital agency.
pitches in town. The agency invested branding capability across performance
Website: in its own technology to build out and brand channels, which has already
threepipe.co.uk four new software programmes to led to some impressive campaigns for
improve campaign management and the likes of Oracle and Panasonic.
client reporting efficiency to free up
time for more strategic thinking.

85
Beyond
Beyond is a design, technology, and

ideas company. It creates solutions
through design, experiences,
and digital products. It works
with ambitious brands to build
technology-led products and
strategies, and prepares businesses
for the pace of a digital world.
Beyond designs for people while

Fee income:
analysing the business and ecosystem
£5,186,503 (<01/18)
the product will exist in, creating
Year founded: 2010 solutions that fit into current processes,
thrive and drive value. Its size enables
Owner: Next 15 it to work alongside teammates and
Communications Group plc clients, embedding itself into the
work, share early and often and test
UK head: Kate Rand, ideas without systemic blockers.
Director, People
“As an agency overall, we care
Contact: Charlie Lyons, immensely about our people and
General Manager, london@ creating an environment that fosters
the very best creativity,” says Beyond. It strengthened the team with the Beyond takes special pride in the
bynd.com,
addition of new CCO Karyn Pascoe and co-creation and launch of Flipside, a
+44 (0)20 7908 6555 “This in turn allows us to create the best
and most valuable digital experiences an expanded creative division, with London-based programme focused
the appointment of Apple veteran on finding, recruiting and training
Business split: for the brands that we work with.”
33% Creative, 33% Technical and product marketing visionary Judy young people from various socio-
Development, 34% User Over the past year, Beyond has Gibbons as chair, as well as the hires of economic backgrounds. Created in
Experience experienced a period of exciting and CTO Jenai Marinkovic, CMO Francesca tandem with several government
rapid growth. It has developed new Kimbell, and CFO Randy Rubino. organisations, including the Mayor
Website: products and services for clients of London’s office and six other
bynd.com including Google, Just Eat, Warner Beyond’s HR department has prominent studios, Flipside prepares
Bros, Facebook, Samsung, Novartis, received industry recognition for young and diverse talent for work in
Virgin and Gap, significantly growing creating a model diverse and agile the digital sector through a 12-week
its partnerships with these brands. work environment. The agency experiential training programme.
opened its fourth office in Austin, Flipside has exceeded initial goals, and
TX to support that city’s burgeoning Beyond has so far successfully hired
design and technology community. two Flipside graduates to work in its
design and content departments.
86 87
Pulse Affinity
Pulse is a data-driven full-service marketing Affinity specialises in design and

agency for B2B technology brands. Data development of ecommerce sites and has
sits at the heart of the business. It powers particular expertise in the Magento platform
the agency’s insights across all work, in Community, Magento 2 and Magento
honing its approach across everything it Enterprise versions. The Affinity Insights team
does. It combines this intelligence with consequently look after many of the agency’s
creativity and expert programme activation ecommerce clients, undertaking conversion
to solve clients’ marketing challenges. rate optimisation and UX contracts
specifically allied to Magento installations.
The agency is a market leader in end-
to-end account-based marketing and It uses client retention as an accurate
£5,130,000 (<12/17) £4,977,426 (<05/18)
integrated digital programme delivery for yardstick against which to measure success
tech businesses. Strategy and planning, and knows it is doing things right because it
creative and content and omni-channel retains clients. On the rare occasion when a
Owner: Independent activation all operate in unison, under Owner: Affinity Group client does swap provider, it more often than
one agency roof. All as one company. Holdings not sees them return a few months later.
UK head: Chris Bagnall,
“Pulse exists to elevate the quality and Affinity invests heavily in its client services
Managing Director UK head: Karl Izzard, Head
performance of marketing within B2B team to deliver outstanding customer service
of Digital
technology businesses,” it says. 24/7/365. “We have found that by making
Contact: Chris Bagnall,
Managing Director, chrisb@ Contact: Max Edwards, sure client expectations are exceeded that
In 2017, the agency doubled its staff project management benefits enormously
pulsecomms.com, Director, max@affinityagency.
levels and grew 90% in billings. – our passion for delivering a high-quality
+44 (0) 796 818 2315 co.uk,
+44 (0) 160 366 3093 service is linked to our bottom line,” it says.
Business split:
10% Creative, 34% Marketing, Business split: Affinity’s clients are increasingly looking
48% Media Planning, 8% 5% CRM, 5% Creative, 30% for new ways to achieve year-on-year
Social Ecommerce, 5% Managed growth outside of the normal search
Services, 5% Marketing, 10% disciplines. This tends to manifest itself
Website: Media Planning, 10% SEO, in the agency providing deep-dive data
pulsecomms.com 20% Technical Development, insights which in turn informs both UX and
10% User Experience CRO activity to achieve client objectives.
Website:
affinityagency.co.uk

88 89
Kagool Metia Group
Kagool is a full-service digital agency. It Metia’s people are experts at understanding

does digital strategy, design, build, UX, IA its clients’ audiences. They speak their
and digital marketing. Kagool specialises language. The agency understands
in Sitecore’s customer experience platform their motivations and decision-making
and is one of only 10 UK Sitecore Platinum processes. Its clients are often global.
Partners. It is also the only UK agency Metia supports them worldwide, having
to have six staff named Sitecore MVPs deployed campaigns in 88 countries and
(Most Valuable Professionals) for 2018. 39 languages in the last two years.
The agency is one of a select few Sitecore The agency connects insight, content
Platinum Partners in the UK and the only and demand generation methodologies
£4,879,021 (<03/18) £4,841,798 (<09/17)
Platinum Partner to focus solely on Sitecore. for specific audiences, using its
This allows the agency to concentrate its unique Content Resonance System
skills. Because of this, it now has more and Performance Benchmark Index
Owner: Independent than 250 Sitecore projects under its belts Owner: Metia Group Ltd technology to provide a data-driven
for UK, European and global clients. approach and create high-performing
UK head: Dan Berry, UK head: Steve Ellis, customer engagement campaigns.
Kagool cares deeply about making the
Managing Director Founder
agency a great workplace, where staff can Metia cares deeply about understanding
hone existing skills and learn new ones. everything about its clients’ customers.
Contact: Craig Johnson, Contact: Steve Ellis,
Manchester Director, craig. It also cares about providing value and Founder, steve@metia.com, “Our goal is to provide customer-focused
johnson@bekagool.com, exceptional service to clients. “Kagool gets +44 (0) 203 100 3500 marketing that is authentic, innovative
+44 (0) 161 210 2424 a kick out of taking complex problems and and measurable,” it says. “We use data
finding simple human answers,” it says. Business split: to create customer insight, inform
Business split: “Kagool’s brand values are to be witty, proud, 10% CRM, 10% Creative, 20% strategies and measure performance.
10% Creative, 5% challenging, smart, reliable and human.” Ecommerce, 20% Marketing, We measure everything, ignore vanity
Ecommerce, 5% Managed 10% Media Planning, 10% metrics and pay attention to the
Services, 5% Marketing, 5% In the past 12 months, the agency won Social, 10% Technical numbers that matter the most.”
Media Planning, 8% SEO, new business from Inchcape, Telligent, Development, 10% User
2% Social, 50% Technical Biffa, Smith and Williamson and Scenic Experience In the past 12 months, Metia won the
Development, 10% User Waterways. Kagool, which has been BMW Innovation Lab programme,
Experience traditionally known as a technical Website: demonstrating that its expertise, skills
development company, has also metia.com and systems – largely developed for tech
Website: grown its digital marketing and search and digital native businesses – are now
bekagool.com
services from nothing to £750,000. relevant to many mainstream brands
as they seek to redefine and transform
themselves to prosper in a digital age.
90 91
Click Consult ThirtyThree
Click Consult is a specialist search ThirtyThree is a creative, full-service

marketing agency with a focus on organic employer branding and marketing agency.
search and paid search. The agency With a global footprint, the company was
also provides a range of other services, founded to fundamentally transform the
including content marketing, outreach, way organisations recruit, retain and help
social media marketing and conversion reward their people. Including their own.
rate optimisation, as well as international
and multilingual search marketing. This agency has a strong record of delivering
award-winning, insights-driven work for its
Click Consult is positioned as a dedicated clients. As part of the Capita Group, it is able
search marketing agency and its to leverage not only the knowledge and
£4,800,000 (<03/18) £4,796,135 (<12/17)
commitment to continually investing in resources of the parent company, but also
research and development, combined its digital insight and tech thinking to give
with industry expertise and a drive to customers complete, end-to-end solutions.
Owner: Independent lead, places the agency in a unique Owner: Capita plc
position to deliver search marketing ThirtyThree cares deeply about finding
excellence for its client base. innovative new ways to engage emotionally
UK head: Matt Bullas, UK head: Gavin Anderson,
with candidates, harnessing the latest
Founder & CEO Group Managing Director
“Click Consult believe that at the heart platforms to help them achieve their
successful client-agency relationships is ambitions. It applies this approach to all
Contact: Anna Dunbar, Contact: Martin Rimmer,
Head of Business transparency through the setting of realistic Chief Creative Director, clients big and small, making sure they get
Development, anna.dunbar@ expectations from the word go, along martin.rimmer@thirtythree. the same level of client service, creativity
click.co.uk, with clear, concise communication,” the co.uk, and quality thinking whoever they are.
+44 (0) 845 205 0292 agency says. “Unlike many agencies, Click +44 (0) 207 336 4533
are open about their methodologies and, Over the past year, the agency has brought
Business split: rather than baffling with technical jargon, Business split: in a number of new clients, such as the
13% Media Planning, 85% provide clients with open transparency.” 45% Creative, 26% home improvement giant Kingfisher;
SEO, 1% Social, 1% Technical Ecommerce, 2% Managed a number of awards, such as a Webby
Development In the last 12 months, Click Consult was Services, 1% Marketing, 1% nomination for National Grid; and a
named both Search Agency of the Year Media Planning, 1% SEO, number of new and exciting people who
Website: at the Northern Digital Awards and Most 16% Social, 8% Technical all offer something different and exciting.
click.co.uk Effective Agency 2018 at the Performance Development
Marketing Awards, and won nine other
awards. It grew and developed its service Website:
thirtythree.co.uk
offering to include paid social, affiliate
marketing, marketplaces, video production,
training and in-house support. It also
launched Benchmark Search Magazine
and held a third annual conference.
It saw multiple brand client wins.

92 93
Leighton The Octopus Group Limited
Leighton creates exceptional solutions for Octopus Group has been working with
big problems with its amazing team. It B2B brands for 17 years. Six years ago,
can develop and project manage complex it became the Brand to Sales agency,
IT transformation concepts, working from offering full a service marketing and
design to a fully tested solution. With communications package to clients –
25 years’ experience, it understands the through specialist demand generation,
challenges of the changing tech landscape digital and creative teams – while keeping
and will deliver on time and on budget. PR at the heart of what it does.
The agency is highly established and The agency’s trademarked Brand to

skilled with an incredible team, history and Sales approach sets it apart. Octopus
£4,759,000 (<03/18) £4,740,000 (<12/17)
client base. Digital is in its DNA, having Group helps brands arrive at sales faster
been around for as long as the web. It by bringing research, PR, social, content,
works with the third most popular .com creative services, digital and demand
Owner: Independent in the UK – British Airways – delivering Owner: Independent generation together into focused campaigns.
exceptional service and solutions. Everything it does is delivered by one
UK head: James Bunting, UK head: B Holden, highly skilled team, under one roof.
“We care deeply about our customers
CEO Finance Director
and making a real difference to them “We want to help our clients win their
as organisations and as individuals,” markets through creative and strategic
Contact: James Bunting, Contact: Pete Hendrick,
CEO, james.bunting@ the agency says. “We strive to improve. Director, pete@octopusgrp. campaigns,” the agency says. “Whether
leighton.com, We love to innovate and listen. We care com, the end goal is leads, awareness or
+44 (0) 191 305 5140 about the role digital transformation can +44 (0) 203 772 8899 insight, we provide the platform to hit
play in the workplace and the lives of our targets and speed up sales cycles, all
Business split: customers – and our team,” it adds. Business split: at the same time as making Octopus
20% Creative, 20% Marketing, 25% Creative, 45% Marketing, Group a fun, friendly place to work.”
40% Technical Development, In the last 12 months, Leighton introduced 30% Social
20% User Experience a new leadership team, led by CEO James 2018 saw the introduction of Octopus
Bunting. He says that the agency has created Website: Group’s Brand to Sales Academy, a unique
Website: new values, direction and energy with a octopusgrp.com training programme that will upskill staff
leighton.com view to creating success in the coming years. on all elements of digital marketing.
More than 30 people joined the team, he The agency was also recognised as one
adds, to help the agency deliver its solutions. of PR Week’s Best Places to Work and
celebrated milestone new business wins
in Xerox PARC, Red Hat and Travelex.
94 95
Abacus e-Media Dog
Abacus helps brands and communities Dog solves marketing problems by

improve engagement and revenue with blending technology, marketing and
personalised digital experiences. Abacus’ creative design expertise, bonded by a
core offerings are: Digital eXperience communications planning team with
Platform SaaS (proprietary flexible CMS and experience across technology, marketing,
CDP); customer insights bureau; and digital media and brand strategy. Dog’s strengths
transformation consultancy (with cloud lie in creating customer experiences and
technology, UX, branding, data analytics digital solutions that help clients achieve
and subscription marketing experts). their marketing ambitions and competitive
Fee income: Fee income: advantage within their industries.
With more than 20 years of digital
£4,603,321 (<12/17) £4,469,125 (<12/17)
transformation experience, Abacus The agency’s unique position lies in its
manages websites, digital content, blend of individuals across multiple
gatekeeping and subscription bureaux marketing, creative, technical and strategic
Owner: Urdgrup Limited for major organisations and also provides Owner: Independent planning disciplines that work together
sophisticated single customer view, to create solutions for clients’ specific
UK head: Al Bird, Managing ecommerce and membership engagement UK head: Gerry McCusker, challenges. While services may be similar
Director solutions for a wide range of well-known Chief Executive to others in market, it’s Dog’s blend
brands and professional institutions. of people’s perspectives, personalities
Contact: Daniel Murphy, Contact: David Hamilton, and capabilities that is unique.
Commercial Director, daniel. Abacus cares about customer success, Commercial Director, david.
murphy@abacusemedia.com, data, insight and engagement. “We care hamilton@dogdigital.com, Dog cares about solving marketing
+44 (0) 207 766 9810 deeply about the business outcomes that +44 (0) 141 572 0730 problems and business challenges. The
our clients generate with our platforms agency works to create genuine solutions,
Business split: and services: better conversions in Business split: underpinned by intelligent strategy
5% CRM, 10% Creative, registered users, increase in ad yield 1% CRM, 31% Creative, and enabled by technology, that have a
10% Ecommerce, 50% in native advertising and sponsored 4% Managed Services, 9% positive impact on clients’ marketing and
Managed Services, 20% User content sales, and subscription growth Marketing, 15% Media commercial performance. In addition, Dog
Experience, 5% Software and renewal through insight-driven Planning, 6% SEO, 3% Social, cares about talent, and recognises that
26% Technical Development,
personalised web experiences,” it says. empowered, valued people do great work.
Website: 5% User Experience
abacusemedia.com The new Webvision Cloud platform enabled Over the past 12 months, a new Silver
Abacus to achieve 30% ARR growth for Website: Partnership with Microsoft strengthened
SaaS/managed services in 2017 driving dogdigital.com Dog’s commitment to innovation. Its CEO
more consistent digital engagement Gerry McCusker’s elected role as BIMA
campaigns for its clients. It also started Scotland Chair further drove the agency’s
a new programme of channel partner belief in developing industry talent. Also,
enablement to introduce its SaaS and the agency was appointed lead social
services to new markets and geographies. media agency to support The Macallan’s
ambitious global marketing strategy
following the unveiling of its new distillery.

96
ODD London
ODD is a creative agency that “As a truly media neutral, consumer-

builds aspirational lifestyles around centric creative agency, ODD has
brands, informed by real-time purposely never siloed digital,
cultural insight and data. innovation, technology or mobile as
standalone offerings. Rather, we deeply
Using its insight platform, ODD puts integrate these areas into our culture
the voice of the consumer at the heart and all our people, from strategists
of its thinking and creates desirable to producers. We work with clients to
worlds that customers want to be part understand the health, ambition and
of. It calls this marriage of creativity and challenges facing their brands, whilst
Fee income:
data ‘Beautiful Effectiveness’, which fully immersing ourselves into both
£4,321,445 (<01/18)
is what the agency aims to deliver for the online and offline worlds that their
some of the world’s best-loved brands. fans and potential customers live in.
Year founded: 2004
The agency cares most deeply about “This journey is a never-ending loop,
Owner: Next 15 insight, craft and collaboration.
Communications Group plc where we test, learn and optimise
to grow key brand and commercial
Having won the Perry Ellis account
UK head: Simon Glover, metrics. Our insight and data-driven
in the USA, ODD opened its first
Founder & MD process helps us navigate our clients
international office in New York last
through the ever-evolving world
year. It also won industry awards
Contact: Simon Glover, of consumer-centric marketing,
including the MAA’s #DoDifferent
Founder & MD, simon.glover@ making us a well-balanced operation
Effectiveness and Best Retail
oddlondon.com, to effectively plan, concept and
+44 (0) 207 490 7900 Campaign awards, along with
execute truly engaging local and
Best Marketing Campaign in the
global work for tomorrow’s world.”
Business split: Drapers Footwear Awards.
35% Creative, 10%
The agency says: “Today, no longer
Ecommerce, 30% Marketing,
3% Media Planning, 20% can digital be seen as an island,
Social, 3% User Experience owned by specialist departments,
lumbering agencies, or fragmented
Website: across pure-play specialists.
oddlondon.com
97 98
ClearPeople Fat Media
ClearPeople is a Consultagency™ – a Fat Media specialises in high-end

hybrid breed of business offering design and build projects along with
technical consulting with digital agency providing exemplary ongoing advice,
services. It works with its clients to create marketing and technical support to
beautifully designed digital experiences ensure ongoing success for all clients.
that optimise customer and employee
engagement by connecting people, With most clients now having some
processes, systems and information functions in-house and defined ways
in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. of working, flexibility in practices and
processes to match what a client is
Together with modern approaches looking for allows the agency to win
£4,302,923 (<03/18) £4,248,067 (<04/18)
and cutting-edge AI and automation and retain clients. As an independent
technologies like cognitive services, graph agency it is easier to be adaptable, which
and bots, ClearPeople is making the becomes a real competitive advantage.
Owner: Independent future digital workspace a reality today. Owner: Independent
It calls this the Intelligent Workspace, The agency cares deeply about generating
which allows businesses to work in ROI in everything it delivers for clients
UK head: Katya Linossi, UK head: John French,
the faster, smarter and more dynamic and tailoring its customer and delivery
Co-Founder and Managing Managing Director
way that today’s market demands. services to suit what each key client is
Director
looking for. “This allows us to have excellent
Contact: John French,
Contact: Katya Linossi, Focused on transforming clients’ businesses Managing Director, info@ client retention rates and grow our fee
Co-Founder and Managing through technology, ClearPeople cares about fatmedia.co.uk, income year on year,” Fat Media says.
Director, klinossi@ innovation – challenging the norm, thinking +44 (0) 152 454 8948
clearpeople.com, creatively and pioneering new technologies In the past 12 months, Fat Media has
+44 (0) 203 376 9500 that help its clients save money, it says. expanded its Bristol operations. Its new
Business split:
“ClearPeople believe that all digital projects 2% CRM, 21% Creative, 32% 6,000sqft office in central Bristol is hoped
Business split: should put humans at their core, defining Ecommerce, 9% Managed to expand the marketing services offered.
20% Creative, 10% Managed beautiful and engaging experiences online Services, 6% Marketing, It also won Adestra’s email Campaign
Services, 50% Technical based on deep user experience research.” 10% SEO, 1% Social, 13% of the Year, Best Digital Marketing
Development, 20% User Technical Development, 6% Campaign (Third Sector) at the Northern
Experience ClearPeople recently launched its new User Experience Digital Awards and Digital Project of the
product division, Think-5, which aims Year at the UK IT Industry Awards.
Website: specifically to bring new products Website:
clearpeople.com and micro-apps to the market that fatmedia.co.uk
help organisations maximise their
investment in Microsoft Office 365.

99 100
Your Favourite Story CTI Digital
Your Favourite Story is a London-based CTI Digital is an award-winning full-service

independent agency specialising in the digital agency. Through agile practices,
marketing behind product launches. it builds, improves and supports world-
class websites using Drupal, Magento,
Your Favourite Story helps its clients find Umbraco, and Shopify. CTI also houses
an early competitive advantage by using experts in quality assurance, design, user
a range of research techniques to plan, experience, digital consultancy, strategy and
build and deliver all digital elements – both marketing services, all aiming to enhance
online and in-store – across the full three users’ experience of the end product.
critical phases of any product launch.
With 15 years of experience, CTI has
£4,232,153 (<03/18) The agency cares most deeply that it £4,197,354 (<02/18)
attracted a large onsite development
produces original and well-planned team capable of creating websites to
Year founded: 2006 work that results in business growth Year founded: 2003
serve iconic brands, particularly in the
for its clients. It outsources little of its public, third sector, and ecommerce.
Owner: Independent work so that its clients can work with Owner: Paperhat
Clients can also expect ISO 9001:2015
and learn from the digital specialists accredited processes, with nationally
UK head: Julian Mitchell, UK head: Nick Rhind, CEO
crafting each of their solutions. recognised levels of service delivery.
CEO
The agency had a number of client wins Contact: Steve Gale, Sales
The agency cares deeply about creativity,
Contact: Julian Mitchell, over the last 12 months, which included Director, s.gale@ctidigital.
CEO, julian.mitchell@ com, +44 (0) 161 713 2434 technology, and innovation. CTI invests
interesting new projects within the retail heavily in fostering positive professional
yourfavouritestory.com,
and entertainment sectors. It also saw relationships. Its unique Discovery process
+44 (0) 845 456 6042 Business split:
growth from its international clients, garners insights for the agency to become
10% Creative, 25%
mainly in Australia and New Zealand. a digital extension of clients’ brands.
Business split: Ecommerce, 10% Managed
30% Creative, 35% Marketing, Services, 5% Marketing, From this researched perspective, CTI
5% Media Planning, 10% 5% SEO, 40% Technical can match each client with their ideal
SEO, 20% Social Development, 5% User digital solution, willingly embracing new
Experience technologies wherever necessary.
Website:
yourfavouritestory.com Website: In the past 12 months, CTI has been
ctidigital.com shortlisted at national awards, including
The Drum Search Awards, Big Chip, and
the RAR Digital Awards, where it won for
Web Development and Service Delivery. It
also continues to impress clients, acquiring
and renewing contracts with prestigious
brands, like Wildlife Trusts, Chatham
House and Merlin Entertainments.


Ones to watch
Agencies were invited to enter a Factors taken into consideration for the
‘Ones to Watch’ category, which selection include year-on-year growth in
puts a spotlight on smaller agencies fee income, headcount and/or client list,
growing in the industry. Agencies were an impressive client roster and stories
selected as ‘Ones to Watch’ based on a of successful and innovative work.
combination of the entry submissions
that were received from companies
entering this category, the agency
nominations made by those entering
the main Top 100 Digital Agencies
category as well as research conducted
by Econsultancy team members.

 Cyber-Duck
 Lab
Established in 2005, Cyber-Duck is an Lab believes that combining a thorough

award-winning independent digital agency understanding of technology and
that is trusted by global organisations such human behaviour is a true superpower.
as the Bank of England, Mitsubishi Electric It works with clients to help them make
and Cancer Research. Our team delivers the right decisions on where to invest
digital transformation, powered by an ISO to drive growth, whether that be in
accredited user-centred design process, consultancy, research, strategy, branding,
data-driven marketing and technology. design, development and marketing.
Cyber-Duck’s process uniquely draws on Lab is a digital agency led by human

Year founded: 2005 expertise from investment in user experience Year founded: 2003 behaviour, which it studies to inform
and creative R&D around conversational the digital experiences and campaigns
UK head: Danny Bluestone, UK head: Jonny Tooze, it creates. This understanding of what
user interface (UI), blockchain, voice
Chief Executive Officer and Founder and Managing
assistants and artificial intelligence (AI). people do and why they make decisions
Founder Director
Excitingly, the agency is in the process means it can design experiences
of producing a blockchain concept that tap into the emotional and
Contact: Siji Onabanjo, Contact: Tom Head, Joint
Growth Director, siji@cyber- around electronic health records (EHR). Founder and Director, tom@ intrinsic motivation of the user.
duck.co.uk, lab.co.uk,
Cyber-Duck’s projects explore connections The agency is driven by a desire to create
+44 (0) 208 953 0070 +44 (0) 207 183 6668
between the human psyche, design and a world where people are free to do
Website: technology. Its mission is to bind these Website: what they love. The Lab team’s expertise
cyber-duck.co.uk together to create experiences that are lab.co.uk in human behaviour, psychology and
memorable, elegant and achieve important neuromarketing is at the centre of all
goals for users and organisations. An decisions in terms of how they bring
example of this is Jim.Care, a proof of this vision to life – with enhancing the
concept to assist elderly people living human experience as the ultimate goal.
alone taking a multimodal approach.
After seeing a period of growth, Lab has
This year, the agency celebrates its 13th moved the team into a new five-floor
anniversary with strong 19% growth Soho office. Lab offers all its employees
year-on-year and launches for the the option to work a four-day week,
Bank of England and Thomas Cook to promote wellbeing, creativity and
Money. The agency has announced the productivity levels in the team.
appointment of Justin Cooke as a NED
and expanded on its 44-strong team with
the opening of a third office in Leeds.
 ToyFight
 Flying Object
ToyFight partners with ambitious brands Today’s audiences are in control like never
and organisations looking to build before. Flying Object believe brands need
memorable experiences for consumers to earn attention outside of traditional
through the use of design and technology. channels, with ideas that forge emotional
connections. The agency delivers strategy,
The agency is small and independent, and is creative and production for content,
comprised of strategists, directors, designers, social, influencer, and physical brand
developers and technologists, working activation ideas that audiences love.
seamlessly across disciplines to build
powerful brands that thrive in a digital age. Flying Object connects brands to the
Year founded: 2015 Year founded: 2013 adblocking generation. Founded by
ToyFight believes that everything starts former Googlers, Flying Object has
UK head: Jonny Lander and with an idea, which then leads to great UK head: Tim Partridge never had to change in order to adapt
Leigh Whipday (Co-Founders) design. It says that design facilitates utility, and Tom Pursey, Founders
to the new realities of media and
usability, maintainability, and desirability. marketing. The agency understands how
Contact: Contact: Tom Pursey,
people spend their attention on- and
hello@toyfight.co In the last 12 months, ToyFight has tom@weareflyingobject.com,
+44 (0)7455 079307 offline, and work to genuinely engage
produced work for the likes of Google, Beats
Website: audiences on their own terms.
by Dre, Manchester City, WeWork, Salomon
toyfight.co Snowboards, Arts Council England, Well+, Website:
Flying Object is a small agency and intends
Candid, Toggl, Omega Watches, and more. weareflyingobject.com
to stay that way; it means it can work
closely and nimbly with clients to produce
The agency has more than doubled
great ideas, and scale them to become
in size over the last year, attracting
global campaigns with genuine impact.
talent from overseas, as well as moving
into a new studio space in the heart This year, the agency picked up one of
of Manchester’s creative district. most ambitious projects yet – producing
the 2018 Stand Up To Cancer YouTube
livestream for Cancer Research UK, a
multi-hour live show with 50+ influencers.
The agency also won its first One Show
Pencil, awarding its #MoreThanARefugee
campaign for YouTube and the IRC.

 Wigwam
 Uncommon Creative Studio
Wigwam’s roots are in search marketing Uncommon Creative Studio launched

and website development. In the past year, in September 2017, with three people,
the agency has evolved to focus more on three borrowed desks and no clients. A
branding and digital strategy (in the realms year later, the agency employs 32 people,
of digital design, search and social media) as has 12 clients and three brands of its
its network of staff and clients has expanded. own, and nearly £2.75m in turnover.
Wigwam was founded on the idea that Uncommon is a creative studio and builds
an agency could do great work while brands that people in the real world
remaining flexible and mobile, creating wish existed by working with clients or
Year founded: 2016 a balanced work-life environment for all Year founded: 2017 by creating its own brands. These brands
those involved. It has a tight-knit core are valuable, rare and uncommon.
UK head: Janis Brix, UK head: Natalie Graeme,
team and operates on a model that
Managing Director Lucy Jameson and Nils Since launch, the agency has developed
involves freelancers from project to project,
Leonard (Founders) three of its own brands. Halo coffee was
ensuring the needs of its clients and
Contact: Janis Brix, the first brand – the world’s first fully
staff can be satisfied as best possible.
Managing Director, janis@ Contact: Natalie compostable, Nespresso-compatible
wigwam.digital, Graeme, Founder, natalie@
The agency cares about going beyond coffee capsules. Within 100 days of
+44 (0)7913 313 591 uncommon.london
conventional business practices and strives launch, Halo had a valuation of £6m and
+44 (0) 7912 781 088
to support causes that focus on bringing it received £5.5m of B2B orders in 2017.
Website:
wigwam.digital about positive change. The team’s love Website:
of travel and desire to do great work Alongside its own brands, Uncommon
uncommon.london
brought about the agency ethos. If these now has 12 clients, ranging from Ovo to
can be combined and allow the agency ITV, WWF, YouTube Music, Clos 19 (LVMH),
to do something that helps the world, Watches of Switzerland, ASOS and Habito.
then Wigwam is more than happy.
Uncommon’s first live project for
Continued growth also allowed Wigwam Ovo Energy has already won a D&AD
to host its first event “Do Good”, which pencil and has been shortlisted for the
focused on bringing together individuals Marketing Week Masters Awards.
and organisations that shares the
Uncommon has also launched disruptive
agency’s vision of facilitating positive
work for online mortgage broker Habito.
social and environmental change
Most recently, the agency co-created
through business practices. Wigwam
a new fashion brand – Collusion – with
is shifting towards being a 100%
ASOS, which is a brand created for and
freelancer-based agency. Additionally, it
by Gen Z and launches in October 2018.
is developing its own CRM and reporting
tools that allow closer collaboration
and a more transparent workflow.


Case studies
This section showcases a collection of
case studies submitted by a number
of the Top 100 agencies. These stories
highlight examples of successful work
that demonstrate digital excellence.
Each case study outlines a summary of
the agency’s work, objectives, strategy
and key tactics, results and awards won.


CASE STUDY Summary
Cognizant The Football Association (FA) is responsible

for overseeing all aspects of amateur and
Interactive
professional football in England. As the oldest
association of its kind in the world (formed in
1863), it is continuing to transform to remain
a highly engaged sports organisation. The
majority of participants are young and tech-
savvy, accustomed to 24/7 availability and ease
of use. The FA appointed Cognizant Interactive
The Digital Football Experience: as an end-to-end digital transformation partner
to modernise its participant’s journey, digitally.
Inspiring and supporting every
kick and click Cognizant Interactive created a world-leading
digital platform to enhance The FA’s engagement
with all football participants – fans, players,
coaches and commercial partner organisations.
Using integrated data analytics and information
systems, Cognizant developed new content-
based experiences, ways to personalise content
and simplified the use of web content.
Participants now develop more enduring,

meaningful relationships with the FA and
each other, while the FA inspires and supports
every kick and click along the way.

Objectives content simple and easy; a mobile version of the
FA’s Full Time digital service to help young players,
The ambition was to reach and engage new their families and volunteers to effortlessly follow
and more diverse audiences – 5 million active their local team’s fixtures and results; and a mobile
fans, players and enablers – by 2020. events solution to help the coordination of individuals
as part of FA participation programmes such as
The FA’s top-line strategy is simple: to help players, The FA People’s Cup and Girls’ Football Week.
fans and all enablers get the most out of their football
experiences. Russell James, The FA’s Director of Digital
Engagement, strives “to match how people use mobile Results
devices as part of their everyday life”, thus providing
“meaningful benefits to the game, our partners and As testimony to the proven methodology
the role that The FA and County Football Associations adopted, one of the delivered products has
have with the people we are here to serve and inspire”. clocked around 34,300 players across 6,877 teams,
engaging through the platform in a relatively
Cognizant is now central to The FA’s digital short timeframe. As more products are launched,
engagement programme. The new digital Cognizant will expand on this success.
solutions, developed and managed by Cognizant,
make it easier for all to get involved in the sport, The benefits delivered through four digital
improve themselves, and feel rewarded. products, thus far, include the following:
Ultimately, the goal is to motivate participants For Girls: the strategy contributed to doubling
to expand the network, nurturing more Women’s Game Growth by supporting
football communities across the nation. more than 10,000 girls find football locally
while helping participant girls increase their
confidence and get more involved.
Strategy and key tactics
Follow Football: Engagement in football
Cognizant Interactive developed the digital increased and grassroots fans can now enjoy
strategy with The FA and deployed features across near real-time information across all devices,
digital channels to improve engagement. with 50m page views since launch.
Using insights gleaned from key stakeholders, England Men’s Seniors & Travel Club: a mobile
Cognizant set out to create a digital transformation product released before the World Cup to increase
programme including: a focus on the engagement of engagement with England Supporters drove
girls, encouraging more of them to take up football; a sign ups to the England Supporters and Travel
programme to provide specialised content based on Club, thus increasing England ticket sales.
the customer’s interests; an analytics tool to capture
customers’ likes/dislikes; intuitive tools to make the
process of creating, reviewing and deploying web

As testimony to the
proven methodology
adopted, one of the
delivered products
has clocked around
34,300 players
across 6,877 teams,
engaging through
the platform in
a relatively short
timeframe.


CASE STUDY Summary
Somo Audi Beta is a complete redesign, crafted

to deliver the best website experience of
any premium automotive business.
The site seeks to break the tradition of how

automotive brands show their products online.
Instead of displaying pages upon pages of
Somo boosts key page visits in confusing material, the Beta site is thoughtfully
Audi site redesign stripped back, leading users effortlessly through
their journey. Beautiful content immerses users in
the Audi brand, and native device features deliver
experiences that are both delightful and relevant.
Important objectives were to drive more

visitors to the key areas of the site to compare
models, view used cars and prepare a quote.
This modern, premium, adaptive site delivers an

exceptional user experience and creates radical
differentiation. It is a quintessential example
of Audi’s lasting commitment to Vorsprung
durch Technik – progress through technology.


The Beta site initially
launched to 20% of audi.
co.uk visitors in October
2017, which was ramped
up to 80% over the
course of eight months.
Since launch, nearly
5 million visitors have
been directed to Beta.
Objectives The agency analysed customer flows and

traffic to understand where pages could be
Audi’s objective was to provide the best decommissioned or consolidated to create an
website experience of any premium automotive easier user experience across the site. User research
business. It wanted to deliver a customer-first, was continual and integrated into every sprint
responsive site that makes it easier for visitors to ensure a 100% customer-first approach.
to research, configure and buy an Audi.
Adobe Experience Manager 6.2 and React were
Audi knew that customers were finding three things employed to power cross-device adaptive experiences
difficult, which were: understanding the differences and bring efficiency. An emphasis on modern
between models in a range, understanding the DevOps processes and a close partnership with
differences between trim options and seeing Audi’s back-end partner and internal IT team meant
how the various combinations of models and technical challenges could be overcome quickly.
trims would affect the price they pay.
Meanwhile, the design team focused
Somo’s goal was to direct a greater percentage of on solving the core customer needs by
visitor traffic to the model pages, the configurator making comparison of models, trim options
and the Quote My Audi page, which would and prices simple, quick and easy.
indicate an improvement in these site journeys.
Audi was struggling to maintain two separate
sites (its desktop/tablet site and its mobile site), Results
which were managed by two different agencies,
and wanted to find a way of maximising The Beta site initially launched to 20% of audi.co.uk
efficiency by creating a single, responsive site. visitors in October 2017, which was ramped up to
80% over the course of eight months. Since launch,
nearly 5 million visitors have been directed to Beta.
Results show that compared to the existing site,
Somo built a dedicated Agile team of Audi and Beta has been successful in driving visitors to the key
Somo members, co-located to enable collaboration areas and tools that are most important to Audi and
and the greatest productivity. This combined team its customers, including an 81% increase in visits to
embarked on a ‘Sprint Zero’ together to define the model pages, a 109% increase in visits to used cars, a
site’s requirements and flesh out early concepts. 117% increase in visits to Quote My Audi and an 88%
increase in visits to the Audi owners’ area of the site.


CASE STUDY Summary
Amido Ltd Amido began working with a global media and

entertainment brand that was struggling to
monitor the broadcast of clients’ promotional
campaigns across multiple platforms and stations.
As an innovative media company, the

entertainment brand wanted to digitally
Broadcaster gains efficiencies with transform its processes from manually
searching, recording and logging campaigns
innovative audio search solution on each broadcasted show to a more search-
friendly platform that is easily managed, uses
less storage and is cost- and time-effective.
However, given the myriad software solutions

available, the company needed to ensure that
it was not being tied to one specific vendor.
After consulting with the platform and vendor
agnostic cloud consultancy Amido, the radio
station used its in-house talents and married
them with the specialist knowhow of the Amido
team to build a new software solution, which
stitched together a number of software products
and was hosted on its chosen cloud platform.


Amido’s work on
project ‘FreQ’ won in
the Most Innovative
Emerging Technology
category at the 2018
UK Cloud Awards.
Objectives Each show could be transcribed by VoiceBase before

Elasticsearch let users query the converted audio-
Before working with Amido, the commercial team to-text and refer them back to the audio snippets.
at this global media and entertainment company The simple front-end design allowed users to search
had to manually listen back to every radio show for audio, verify by listening and reading the text
to record how many times a client’s brand was transcript and then download it to send to the client.
mentioned, a process that could take hours. Once all
the mentions were logged, they would cut and pull
each of these clips into an audio file for the client. Results
The commercial team would also need to offset From idea to actuality, Amido delivered a
these mentions against other factors, such as peak solution fit for purpose in eight weeks.
hour listening numbers, ensuring that the client’s
promotional targets were hit to demonstrate The rapidly deployed solution, termed ‘FreQ’ (short
return on investment. This painstaking task was for ‘frequency’), has reduced the amount of work
vital to the commercial arm of the business required by the company’s teams to search and
for maintaining client relations and securing compile promotional audio content examples for
further business ventures, but it proved to be their clients by more than half, cutting the process
a financial burden within the organisation. from a few hours down to only a few minutes.
Amido’s goal was to build a solution that reduced the This was an improvement that enabled their
time taken to achieve the task from hours to minutes. sales teams to focus on more value-add
commercial opportunities. An immediate result
was seen in reducing the amount of time spent
Strategy and key tactics on administrative tasks, allowing the team to
focus on the broader business strategy.
To maintain business agility and technical flexibility,
Amido collaborated with in-house teams to build Presenters and producers are now using the service to
a new software solution that stitched together a review what has been said on air and in its discussion
number of proven SaaS and FaaS products and of show performance and content, demonstrating that
hosted it on their chosen cloud platform. the solution is transferable to other business problems.
Amido advised using VoiceBase, an innovative

speech-to-text service. It uses its own proprietary Awards
speech engine technology to deliver industry-
leading accuracy with the fastest turnaround Amido’s work on project ‘FreQ’ won in the
time and at a low price. Coupling that with Most Innovative Emerging Technology
the AWS Elasticsearch Service made it easy to category at the 2018 UK Cloud Awards.1
deploy, operate, and scale for log analytics, full
1 https://amido.com/news-events/news/amido-wins-most-innovative-
text search, application monitoring, and more. emerging-technology-with-project-freq-at-uk-cloud-awards-2018/


CASE STUDY Summary
Red Badger
Red Badger has been working with one
of the world’s largest banks since 2016.
With products going live in the last year,
the agency’s work is contributing to a
global efficiency target of £1.2bn.
The bank’s Originations and Utilities team

Digital transformation at one of identified that conversion rates on retail
products were less than 5%. For the eligible
the world’s largest banks customers, there were two key reasons. First, the
bank’s customer-facing websites were limited
in functionality due to inflexible technology
and a lack of agility in the mainframe systems.
The process required them to visit their
local branch to complete a transaction.
The bank was working with dated technology,

legacy systems and complex back office
processes. It approached Red Badger to deliver
a technology transformation programme.
However, the scale of what was needed was
far larger. It needed to change its processes,
build internal capability and put the customer
at the heart of its digital strategy.


The conversion rate on
retail products increased
from 5% to 72% following
the implementation
of the programme.
Objectives means that teams can deliver continuously, whilst

reducing the risk of failure and the mean time to
The programme had to hit four key objectives, which recovery when failures occur, dramatically increasing
were to deliver quality digital products to the bank’s velocity and speed of products to customers.
customers quickly, improve the customer experience
of opening a new current account and applying for
a loan or credit card, help the team build internal Results
capability and change the culture and reduce
operational costs by increasing business efficiency. The conversion rate on retail products increased
There was a need to change the way the bank worked. from 5% to 72% following the implementation
of the programme. It enabled the first straight-
Red Badger’s objective was to help the business through processed credit card product ever in
move faster by creating more autonomy the launch country, with the bank seeing 17,000
within the teams. It set about reducing their credit card applications (66% of which could be
dependencies on shared platforms and pipelines, approved immediately). It also allowed digital
so that it could first create, and then scale. customers to open an account with the bank in 10
minutes, and the bank could process 2,000 loan
applications a week without manual intervention.
The bank has now expanded from one team
Red Badger helped create the delivery plans for in London to 26 teams in 10 countries. All
three product roadmaps that could be delivered teams were onboarded by Red Badger’s
by agile, cross-functional teams from start to finish. design, delivery and technical consultants.
Each team consisting of UX, Design, Engineering,
QA and an Agile Delivery Lead became accountable It could reduce its operational costs and increase
for the on time launch of the product. business efficiency with straight-through banking, a
method that lets customers open an account online
The agency reduced each team’s dependencies on without having to visit a branch. The products used by
shared platforms and pipelines, so that they could branch staff reduced account opening time by 46%.
be autonomous. By starting small and building live
products, they could continuously test for accessibility.
Red Badger also created a solution that enables Awards
teams to deploy their microservice-based applications
onto cloud provider agnostic ‘microplatforms’. Red Badger was a BIMA Awards 2018 Finalist in the
Transformation and Consultancy Impact Category1
Teams can now create and destroy identical
environments in minutes and manage their own 1 http://bimaawards.com/shortlist-2018/
deployments for testing and production. This


CASE STUDY Summary
Rufus When The Gym Group launched in 2008, it

had a mission – to make quality fitness facilities
Leonard
accessible and affordable for everyone. Digital
was central to this strategy. Using a mix of
ecommerce, automated access, process
digitisation and targeted eCRM, it created a gym
that was contract-free, open 24/7, and less than
half the price of mass-market competitors.
Defining The Gym Group’s brand The Gym Group selected Rufus Leonard
to build and implement an upgrade to
strategy in a crowded market their platform – one that would not only
scale to match their long-term expansion
plans, but also be a foundation for future
enhancements – with digital innovation being
the heart of their business and brand.
It also asked Rufus Leonard to define its brand

strategy and help launch its new membership
offering. The goal was to increase its appeal
through two distinctive new product brands,
building and launching them across this new
digital platform within a short timeframe.


Through the launch of two new
membership products, Rufus
Leonard created a clear, distinct
brand identity, allowing The
Gym Group to stand out within
the market. It also redesigned
major elements of the site to
feature the new products.
Objectives The agency adopted agile working principles to

deliver the work quickly, working closely with
One of the main challenges The Gym Group faced client teams and third parties to smooth out
was differentiating itself within a crowded market. potential setbacks and bugs during build.
Rufus Leonard had to make sure that The Gym It is now conducting a phase of continuous
Group’s products offered a clear, distinctive identity enhancement to the website, providing new features
with a powerful message that would attract new and functionality for both members and in-gym staff.
customers, engage brand enthusiasts and motivate
them to act. With a short launch deadline ahead,
everything had to happen fast, with open collaboration Results
between in-house and third-party suppliers.
The agency delivered an outstanding product suite
As Britain’s next-generation gym company, it also that gives The Gym Group real brand distinction
needed to transform itself digitally for the future, within the market. The brand has expanded its
with a pioneering new platform. This included customer base, and the web platform has been
a unique, purpose-built API layer, ready for any enhanced to link in with multiple third parties to
device and any update – taking its web-centric offer the new premium features via a web API.
business beyond ‘digital-first’ to digital pace-
setter and integrating all its data to enhance In just six months following the launch, the new
strategy, sales and a personalised, 24/7 service. platform exceeded all its objectives. In January, the
company announced a trading update to the City
including total year-end membership numbers in
Strategy and key tactics 2017 up by 35.5% to 607,000, total revenue growth of
24.3% for the year (compared with 2016) and a 44%
The agency’s service encompassed three growth in gym estate to 128 sites over the year. The
of its four ‘brand experience engines’, so it Gym Group’s estimated share of the low-cost gym
brought a broad range of expertise to the market also increased to 22.4% (from 17.7% in 2016).
project while managing it end-to-end.
This included: brand strategy, product naming Awards

and brand creation, UX, digital service design and
build, content creation, development and build, In November 2017, the new website won Best
as well as ongoing third-party integration and Website for Ecommerce at the annual Episerver
management of the brand’s interactive platform. Website Awards, with the panel commenting that
“personalisation for different audience groups
Through the launch of two new membership products, through the customer journey, dependent on previous
Rufus Leonard created a clear, distinct brand identity, interactions, was a strong feature, with a redesign that
allowing The Gym Group to stand out exceptionally had delivered impressive uplifts in conversion metrics”.
within the market. It also redesigned major
elements of the site to feature the new products. The website has since been shortlisted for a
Computing Magazine Digital Technology Leaders
Award and a Marketing Week Masters.


CASE STUDY Summary
Answer
Ramsden International is a wholesale exporter
with a complex international business model
and diverse customer base. It has more
Digital than 500 customers across 140 countries

and a range of over 23,000 SKUs across
frozen, ambient and chilled categories.
Ramsden International approached Answer

Digital to look at improving its current order
capture system (ROCS). The existing processes
New order capture system drives for customers to place orders was process
up basket size and revenue heavy and relied on a system that was past its
prime, having developed over time to comply
with numerous changes in legislation and
to accommodate a growing customer base.
It was slow and no longer fit for purpose.
Ramsden International wanted to reduce
administrative burden to focus on servicing their
customers better and helping them grow.
After evaluating ecommerce solutions

including Magento and Hybris, it was decided
that Answer Digital’s approach to bespoke
retail development and experience in B2B
systems was the right fit for this project.

Objectives
Ramsden International and Answer Digital defined

four critical success factors at the outset of the ROCS
project. The first was to drive sales revenue growth
through the provision of automated quotation and
order capture functionality, enabling easy access to
the whole range. This would be supplemented with
system capability to drive up-selling and cross-selling.
The second was to deliver operational cost

savings in customer service advisor (CSA)
activity by enabling customer self-sufficiency,
including removing the dependency on CSA
support in quote and order processes.
The brand also wished to enable supplier income

stream through provision of a system that can
surface customer, supplier and context specific
information in response to given user profiles.
Finally, the campaign needed to drive

customer acquisition through digital offering
in quotation and ordering process.
Results
After the solution was implemented, the

Strategy and key tactics quality and accuracy of orders improved, as
did the range accessibility for customers, who
ROCS was delivered using TIDE, Answer’s could access live information about product
agile delivery framework. This incorporates availability, substitutes and alternatives.
UX, incremental development and testing,
frequent releases and customer validation. There were significant advances in product
search speed and accuracy, with the
A four-week discovery phase delivered a structured introduction of intelligent search tooling.
view of delivery, including; scope, solution design, Ramsden also reported a 67% time reduction
key UX artefacts, testing strategy, delivery roadmap in internal order line replacement process.
and a defined minimum viable product.
Ninety-five of Ramsden’s approximately 500 customers
Structured into prototype, alpha and beta phases have now been migrated and are using ROCS.
of delivery, the strategy was to deliver working There was an average basket size uplift of 307 new
software as quickly as possible to facilitate SKUs per migrated customer, and 29,000 new SKUs
customer testing and validate benefits delivery. ordered in total across all migrated customers.
A cross-functional business team offered product Ramsden also reported an average sales uplift of
ownership, working with Answer to iteratively shape £31k per customer, equivalent to £2.95m in the
UX prototypes to bring user story requirements to first 12 months. After completing migration, the
life. Working in advance of development cycles, platform is expected to drive up to £12m increased
this ensured development activity was completed sales each year. With continued development,
without ambiguity, improving delivery cadence. Ramsden expects to build more value by creating
further efficiencies and increasing revenue.
Periodic end customer testing was completed in
order to assess and validate application intuitiveness, A UX case study1 was created to illustrate how
accessibility and user journeys. This offered valuable the UX lead approach shaped the platform.
insight into design decisions throughout the project.
Awards
Ramsden International won the Exporter of

the Year at the Grocer Gold Awards 2018.2
1 https://2erxyr.axshare.com/about_the_project.html
2 https://www.thegrocergoldawards.co.uk/the-grocer-awards-2018-winners/


CASE STUDY Summary
ODD Supermarket Woman is a 360-degree

omnichannel campaign that has helped exceed
London
key metrics, including the highest rate of ad
recall in F&F’s history; an 86% increase in sales;
positive cost efficiencies across paid-for media
and an increase of 135% in organic engagement
on Instagram alone. The campaign lives on
into 2018 following its success last year.
Establishing supermarket Tesco as Objectives

a stylish fashion retailer
The core ambition was to deliver a measurable
step change that would differentiate the
brand from the competition and drive
consumer engagement, while elevating
F&F’s fashion credentials. The campaign
also aimed to deliver growth via existing
customers and new customer acquisition,
increase brand awareness and consideration
and improve key brand perception metrics.


The campaign achieved
the highest recall of any
previous F&F ad (40%
recognition vs 25% in
SS16). Compared with
the SS16 campaign,
Supermarket Woman was
found to be 16% more
attention-grabbing.
Strategy and key tactics Results
To drive an emotional connection with consumers The campaign achieved the highest recall of
new and old and to deliver a step change for the any previous F&F ad (40% recognition vs 25%
brand, ODD created a platform which embraced in SS16). Compared with the SS16 campaign,
something that competitors have shied away from Supermarket Woman was found to be 16% more
but is at the heart of F&F’s offering – the supermarket. attention-grabbing. While 6% more consumers
wanted to find out more about F&F, 7% more
F&F represents the fun part of the supermarket said it was the ‘brand for me’ and 8% more
shop. The aisle is the place where kaftans and flip- said that they enjoyed watching the ad.
flops break up the humdrum of the shopping
list. It is where ‘accidental’ dresses get bought Fifteen percent more said that they thought the
when customers had only popped out for milk. items in the ad represented ‘good value for money’.
F&F also saw more traffic to its site and an increase
Acknowledging this behaviour and bringing in sales following the campaign. Site visits to F&F
it to life in a stylish way to make a virtue of were up by 31% compared with the SS16 campaign,
F&F’s location gave birth to the new global while womenswear sales increased by 86%, after
campaign platform ‘Supermarket Woman’. visits to the womenswear page rose by 23%. Sales
of the lines shown in the TV ad saw a 93% boost.
Designed to appeal to women who love fashion,
are confident in their taste and have not forgotten
fashion’s fun side, the campaign comprises TV, digital, Awards
print, out of home and an always-on social strategy.
The campaign won in the Effectiveness and Retail
categories at the 2018 MAA #DoDifferent Awards
and was shortlisted as a Best Fashion Marketing
Campaign at the 2018 Drapers Awards.


CASE STUDY Summary
The BIO In this campaign, The BIO Agency focused

on future proofing global real estate provider
Agency
Savills. It sought to do this by leveraging
the global scale and wealth of localised
knowledge, building a business that seamlessly
joins physical and digital for holistic service
excellence. In simple terms, the digital tools it
built had to work for, and reflect, the specialist
knowledge held throughout the business.
Future proofing a trusted
heritage brand Objectives
Savills is a market-leading global real estate

provider and FTSE 250 company, established in
1855. Built on relationships, it is a trusted heritage
brand and has a very strong market position.
The BIO Agency was appointed to deliver a
customer-centric transformation programme,
including creative direction for the new Savills
digital platform, to help achieve revenue growth
over the next five years and proactively meet
the challenge of property market disruptors.


Savills’ online platform
is now a modern and
innovative property
service, with fresh,
responsive creative and
personalised, curated
customer experiences.
Strategy and key tactics Results
The first phase of work involved redefining The creation of detailed service blueprints gave an
what customer experience means for the in-depth view of Savills’ as-is service across all physical
property market, to inform a new creative and digital touchpoints, identifying and developing
direction for Savills’ digital platform. responses to unfulfilled customer needs. This
foundational work has set up Savills for future success.
Using its Change Today, Change Tomorrow framework,
The BIO Agency built a transformation programme Savills’ online platform is now a modern and
that runs across two independent streams. Change innovative property service, with fresh, responsive
Today means working to do the basics brilliantly, creative and personalised, curated customer
and Change Tomorrow is a long-term programme experiences. It has been very positively received, and
to help define the digital future for Savills. the work continues to drive generational loyalty with
the integration of data and digital technology.
From the start, the agency worked to ensure that
smart, data-driven valuations flowed through to
personalised experiences that can help Savills lead the
property industry. Its transformation map integrated
both customer and business journeys, giving it a
view of prioritised opportunities and projects that
drive towards Savills’ vision. Bringing together both
customer and business journeys in this way allowed
for the integration of all key service delivery layers
– marketing, digital, operations, and culture.

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Top 100 Digital

The definitive listing of the

Editorial The Top 100

p4. State of the industry

Research Analyst Leonie Mercedes explores Danyon Billings

p29. A User’s Guide to Interesting Upstarts No part of this publication

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 3

Agencies are undergoing a period of business transformation,

4 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 5

Technical development 24%

Marketing (planning, strategy or consultancy) 15%

Media planning/buying 12%

CRM and email 8%

6 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 7

The disruption of media buying

Transparency issues and changes to programmatic

Concerns about non-transparent practices such as

Accenture Interactive launched a programmatic Agency holding groups refine their

The threat of consultancy disruptors, of course,

Let us take a closer look at some of the main

8 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

1. The third phase of Controversy aside, Sorrell’s exit from WPP

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 9

10 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

“Clients, too, are conflicted. Is marketing a commodity

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 11

Yet heightened interest and concern about

12 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 13

BIMA Co-President and TH_NK Managing Partner

14 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

We see the same speed of change and diversity

Why such diversity? Emerging tech is no longer at the

As emerging tech and digital becomes more

As Jon Davie, Chief Customer Officer at Zone (part

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 15

16 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

to software in development, meaning digital Marrying business needs to an agency’s clearly

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 17

Finding the Right

In an increasingly complex political landscape, UK

Talent supply remains one of the A report by Deloitte backs up this

18 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 19

“Technology is fundamental to the future success

20 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

In this section, Research Analyst Leonie Mercedes explores the

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 21

In an industry that depends on engaging

“It is absolutely vital that a range of perspectives and

Rogerson agrees: “Marketing is all about people,”

“Diversity has to be a deliberate effort before it’s

22 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Taking action diverse backgrounds with those working in the

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 23

The Power of Data

Surging demand for the study of consumer behaviour is

Neuromarketing – the use of Fast forward to 2018 and one might

24 Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018

Other agencies such as Collective create human-

Nomensa combines expertise in psychology,

Top 100 Digital Agencies 2018 25