The IPA Accelerator scheme is designed to give up-and-coming agencies whose 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
Comms8
Describe your agency in a photo.
This is a company sign of our early days. It is Comms8 logo made by lego bricks and we think it represents our spirit. "Change is constant. We must break things completely in order to rebuild fully." We embrace change and we embrace it with fun.
Describe your agency in no more than five words?
Fueling Your Brand Beyond Borders
Which piece of work are you most proud of? What's been the most challenging or interesting campaign you have worked on?
The most exciting campaign that we have worked on is for Nestle SMA Nutrition for strengthening brand preference amongst the Chinese ethnic new parents across UK. We are very proud of this campaign because it is not merely a campaign that sells products; it is a campaign that makes a meaningful change to people's life.
We identified the Chinese new parents in the UK struggled with being away from their family during pregnancy and early stage of parenthood, and found it difficult to follow the traditional postnatal practices overseas. Hence, we teamed up with experts, local Chinese community centres and media partner, and held a series of parenting workshop to provide practical tips for Chinese parents living in the UK about how to do traditional Chinese postnatal practices and provide them with community support. We also published a whitepaper for local mainstream healthcare professionals to raise awareness of the Chinese postnatal practice in the UK.
The campaign not only delivered an outstanding reach and sales targeting Chinese ethnic parents but also increased brand sentiments significantly amongst the major Chinese communities and local healthcare groups in the UK.
What's the most important thing to your agency?
Integrity, Respect, and don't forget to have fun.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
The challenge from AI/machine learning will become unavoidable, and we see it (has already) started to take over the supply chain in adland, from research, campaign planning, creative, set-up to optimisation. The transformation is even more significant and rapid in China than the rest of the world.
With the transformation, advertising will become more powerful and effective in steering message/sentiment in societies, and that is the time human's integrity matters more than ever in the adland.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
Ethnic diversity. Diversity is not a mere slogan or sharing an Instagram post with different skin colour. The adland needs to embrace the differences and internalise true diversity from top to bottom in agency, media and client sides.
Advertising is...
...the most fun you can have with clothes on.
Advertising can...
...divide society, but it can also heal a generation.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
Comms8, is the only independent agency specialised in Chinese/Asian ethnic marketing in the UK led by directors from China with a solid 4As agency background. Combining both professional and ethnic background, we established the first professional group called IOCMP, to provide a platform for marketing practitioners to connect, share and support the Asian ethnic practitioners in the adland. We hope through IPA Accelerator; together, we can join hands to drive diversity in the adland.
Hell Yeah
Describe your agency in no more than five words.
Advertising for the underdog
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
Our Food Euphoria campaign for Farmdrop. We wanted to highlight the euphoric feeling food can give you when it’s done the right way so landed on a raving farmer (naturally). With the campaign we creatively moved Farmdrop into a different space with bold and distinctive creative that you’d struggle not to take notice of. Aside from the work itself, we really believe in what Farmdrop are doing as a business, they really fit with our mission of spreading positivity through advertising.
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
Every campaign has their challenges. We work with emerging challenger brands, for them to get noticed and compete with the bigger players our ideas need to disrupt and make media budgets go further. This is never easy.
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
Only working with companies that are having a positive impact on the world in some way.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
A more conscious process. Caring about the products and services being advertised and making sure the worlds we create within our agencies reflect the kind of world we’d like to live in. More diversity in every sense; gender, race, background in order to make truly creative work that resonates.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
The unbelievable lack of diversity throughout the creative industry, especially at senior levels.
Advertising is…
... powerful. But too often it makes us feel lacking in some way or that what we have isn’t enough. We believe in using advertising as a positive, uplifting force to promote products and services making a good impact.
Advertising can…
... can be a force for spreading positivity.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
To be part of a community. To learn. To have inspiring chats. To become more known.
MCH London
Describe your agency in no more than five words.
Responsible Advertising - More Can Happen!
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
The Virtual Boat Race - In June this year we brought together 5 amazing companies to execute the world's first ever virtual boat race with Power2Inspire - a race between Olympic, Para and Oxford and Cambridge University rowers taking part at home on ERG rowing machines.
Power2Inspire is a truly inspirational charity that promotes inclusivity in sport. It was a very quick turnaround, in the midst of a global pandemic, for an amazing cause . It hit BBC Sport and BBC News, was seen by 700 million people worldwide and we raised £25,000 in total.
We are all deeply proud to have been a part of it. You can still catch it all at http://give.as/virtualboatrace
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
Working on Varsity Rugby is the most challenging and interesting - their expectations have helped us raise our bar - and especially in the current 2020 environment, we’re very excited to be bringing a new approach to their work and have a fairly substantial change in messaging just around the corner!
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
Doing the right thing in everything we do. Whether it’s in planning a successful communications strategy, opening up a supply chain, ensuring financial transparency or making more responsible advertising solutions, we put people and the planet over profit and this is what, ultimately, gives us all a good night's sleep.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
Responsibly created, bought and sold. We think customers will be empowered as the heroes and sound, honest advertising far outweighs the methods of those brands that are hard selling their own purpose-based values. Cleaner, healthier, deeply bespoke, even more creative and fundamentally transparent when it comes to where the money for a campaign ends up, what it has really been spent on and who profits. All whilst driving ROI for the client.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
The lack of action around supply chain transparency. It beggars belief that some clients appear not to care about who is taking a cut of their cash and what that money is actually funding. Our take on it can be found here: https://mch.london/playbook
Advertising can...
...be better! More Can Happen: it's our reason for doing what we do.
Platonic
Describe your agency in a photo
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
I'm most proud of our way of working. Coming from the film industry, our experience ensures that we’re used to bringing together all the techniques and equipment necessary to display stories on the big screen. Introducing this into feature documentaries and branded content for sustainable and socially responsible companies is something I’m very enthusiastic of.
What’s been the most challenging/interesting campaign you have worked on?
We’re so driven and excited to hit the ground running as soon as COVID restrictions allow us to implement the plans we’ve been formulating during the lockdown period.
What’s the most important thing to your agency?
I’m personally very passionate about sustainability, while my colleague has tremendous expertise in the social sciences. Combining this makes for unique perspectives that can truly change the world, and we can't wait to help sustainable and socially responsible companies reach more people.
What does the future of advertising look like to you?
I hope for less quantity and more quality. There seems to be a rise in awareness of both the positive, and the negative effects of constant advertising. With increased attention on stats and ROI, the days when top directors made truly creative and innovative commercials seem largely to be over. I hope the advertising industry will reignite this creativity, and use it for positive purposes.
What industry issue is keeping you up at night?
We want to be at the forefront of the ethics of advertising. Walking for 5 minutes in Soho exposes you to countless ads, many of which are optimised to work unconsciously. This is something nobody passing by signed up for. I think neuromarketing using billboards is fulfilling its short term goals of making more people reach for that particular item (fizzy drinks instead of water etc.), but what seems to be less looked into are the long term effects on both individuals and society. What I hope is that the ad industry will look more into these issues going forward.
Advertising is…
... an exceedingly powerful tool to promote responsible messages, reach and inform people, bring up emotions and create art that can encourage its creators in a sustainable manner.
Advertising can…
... be used to shape, reflect and ultimately change the world. That’s what we’re in this for.
What do you hope to get out of being an Accelerator?
We aim to use our diverse experiences, and our burning ambition to make the most of this opportunity. Being part of the IPA Accelerator will undoubtedly help us on our way towards making an impact.
Find out more about the IPA Accelerator Programme
Last updated 01 May 2024