The IPA Accelerator scheme is designed to give up-and-coming agencies some guidance, help and inspiration as they grow their businesses. Here, we meet some of the newest members of the IPA Accelerator community.
Meet the agencies
@MC²
Describe your agency in a photo.
Describe your agency in five words.
Delivering ‘Senior Thinking As Standard’.
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
We’ve worked with 'Turn On The Subtitles' (TOTS) in an advisory and consultative role, and the exceptional passion for children’s education from all of the TOTS team has been contagious. With some superb momentum in the UK, the outcome of their on-going campaign will truly transform the opportunities and future lives of many children around the world. Who couldn’t be proud of that?
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
One of our clients is a tech retail company who launched during the pandemic. It’s been brilliant embedding a media test and learn mindset within a short space of time. The speed in which data has been translated, decisions made, and actions implemented has been as challenging as it has been energising.
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
Our North Star is delivering 'Senior Thinking As Standard' in all our work, whether that’s consultancy or media planning and buying. We only partner with passionate people that genuinely care about making a difference. We observe, ask questions, and listen first, and that comes from experience.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
A reflective, and dynamically creative industry that knows when, and where data should power consumer touchpoints. An industry which leads on providing conditions for ALL to be who they wish to be.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
Build bravery – as tenures of marketers have become shorter, being brave has become almost redundant. We need to create the right conditions for people to be brave, and not be frightened of making mistakes. Only then can we expect to see more leaders rather than followers.
Commercial transparency - driven primarily by the erosion of relationships between holding companies, auditors and procurement teams. We now reside in a commoditised landscape and the murky race to create hidden margins served no purpose. It’s OK to be clear that you would like to make a margin.
Come back creativity – the lack of bravery and a commoditised landscape has resulted in the marginalization of creativity. Let’s get back to understanding the value of superb creative and how a great idea can be woven throughout a business to help deliver its goals.
Advertising is…
...100% 'THE' exceptional catalyst for business growth.
Advertising can…
...Be easily ignored. So, be sure of what you stand for and ask yourself are you clearly communicating that?
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
To be associated with the IPA at the start of our journey is fantastic. We are all ex-network agency people all aware of the IPA’s professional services, insight library and CPD development programmes – it was a no brainer.
Fabbrica Media
Describe your agency in a photo.
Describe your agency in five words.
Advertising campaigns with real insight.
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
A current campaign for a regional tourism board in the UK with the objective to drive awareness and confidence at a time when the industry is suffering due to the coronavirus lockdowns. We deliver in-depth insights for every campaign but this one is unusual because it’s part advertising campaign, part research project where we are striving to understand audience perceptions of travel during Covid, audience motivations and interests in tourism experiences, and an understanding of the audience behaviour generally as media consumption habits have changed over the last 12 months.
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
All campaigns are interesting and bring with them their own challenges however, with the current pandemic negatively affecting most organisations in the travel & tourism sector, we’ve found that our work with arts and travel clients to be the most interesting. We developed our conversational listening service at this time to give an added dimension to campaign reporting and learn more about target audiences, what’s important to them, their motivations and what they talk about.
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
Help our clients achieve growth.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
End-to-end engagement across all media channels by creating relevancy in advertising through technology.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
There’s interesting things happening in the media industry with continued technological development of media channels, and changes in media consumption habits over the last year. This is all exciting but, to be fair, I sleep pretty well.
Advertising is...
...misunderstood. It’s our job to highlight the positive, advantageous aspects of advertising to brands and consumers.
Advertising can...
...change hearts and minds for the better.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
To be part of the conversation.
Hello Starling
Describe your agency in a photo.
Describe your agency in five words.
Say Hello to Results.
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
We worked with Dwr Cymru Welsh Water on 'One Last Breath' a Reservoir Safety Campaign. One Last Breath was deployed with the strategy to engage people with a hard-hitting creative to gain maximum engagement. The desired result: to save lives. By using 2D and 3D films which promoted a lot of conversation amongst the audience, a vital component of a campaign such as this, we successfully reduced the number of reported incidents of swimming in reservoirs.
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
One project we found both interesting and challenging was a campaign with Horseworld. The biggest challenge initially was thinking of a way to get people to say 'yes' to being on a mailing list for anything. We needed a reason to get people to give away their data and actively want to be kept informed. The answer was turning this mechanism of subscribing into something that made those doing so feel like they were having some impact. So, we created a landing page where people could fill in their details in order to actually send a pre-drafted letter to their local MP on a topic they cared about - horse welfare. The letters sent/subscriptions gained were around 10,000 at last count. All those letters to MPs created national interest in the campaign which eventually led to parliament and a roundtable discussion with DEFRA. It was a great campaign to work on because it evolved into so much more than the initial brief that we (and the client) had to adapt to as it developed.
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
A great brief. As an agency that's all about getting brands attention and delivering results, so much of what we do hinges on the quality of the brief and we really value it when we get a well-thought-out and insightful brief that becomes the starting point for conversations about how we commence work.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
Inclusive, personalised, sustainable.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
Misconceptions about data tracking for customised advertising.
Advertising is...
...often overcomplicated. Advertising works best when it goes back to basics.
Advertising can...
...be guilty of not standing up for itself which is why the IPA Accelerator scheme, for us, is so important.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
From being part of the Accelerator, we hope to gain access to insight reports, professional development opportunities and pitch protection.
Simplexity Consulting
Describe your agency in a photo
Describe your agency in five words
Simplexity Consulting - quality, enduring, content.
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
We’re new so we’re still working on it now but collectively in the past we have many great campaigns of work together. Recently, as in last week, we like the little ad we created in our studio for the 'agency in a photo' question.
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
Setting up an agency in the middle of a global pandemic has been slightly challenging :-o
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
We’re strong believers in quality over quantity when it comes to advertising. So while we can make content pretty fast these days, we want ours to standout through the quality of the idea and the message it conveys.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
Colourful. Inclusive. Dynamic. Transparent. Entertaining. Enjoyable (again).
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
Content. There seems to be too much ‘digital landfill’ about. Do we need more content or do we just need better content? We are always bothered about whether what we make is any good or not, or are we just making things worse? I think we have a duty to not make things worse.
Advertising is...
...the single biggest multiplier to the bottom line.
Say it well, then say it loud.
Advertising can...
...Advertising has become complicated when in fact it’s actually still quite simple.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
For us it’s an honour to be part of so firstly, thank you to the IPA for having us.
In essence, we hope it will also help us to meet other likeminded companies who we might be able to partner with as we grow, and also to possibly meet some new clients too.
Find out more about the IPA Accelerator Programme
Last updated 04 May 2021