Whether launch marketing or capital raising, and very often the two go together, our approach is ‘no-nonsense’.  Our methodology is ‘hands-on’.  Our objectives are ‘delivery’ and ‘value for money’.  This philosophy has sustained our work since 1979.  Throughout our entire history not one of our clients has ever advertised through their launch or re-positioning phase.  Everything has been driven by our own marcoms techniques, many of which we have developed ourselves and which you won’t find on the media studies or marketing curricula.

We believe there should be no advertising until your market has seen you in editorial first.

Some recent clients followed by highlights from the more distant past:

Growthwire (2007).  This global deal-flow newswiire for early-stage investors is revolutionising the way this fragmented and inefficient investment stratum operates.  Professional capital raising advisors post their deals to the wire, investors set their preferences and have deals delivered to them.  They then make contact, get on and do their business.  Deals are now being posted to the wire from as far afield as Australia, China, eastern and western Europe, SE Asia, north and south America and the USA.  Simple and brilliant.  So brilliant and simple that we took a majority stake in it on launch.

Enviroshred Ltd (2005). This start-up company developed a revolutionary process from which thousands of tons of confidential documents produced by the public and private sector every week can now be converted into a compost with outstanding growth enhancing properties.  We placed the story into relevant management magazines as well as national print and broadcast media. We arranged for the Shadow Environment Minister, Bill Wiggin MP, to host the press event held at the clients’ site.  The client has since exited through a trade sale.

World E-Commerce Forum.  Between 1998 and 2002 we worked with the UN Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the WTO, World Intellectual Property Oganisation (WIPO) and the OECD to develop the World E-Commerce Forum. Our role was to organise and promote the first three conferences. The first in 2000 in Perth, Western Australia (opened by the WA Premier) and in London in 2001 opened by the Trade Secretary (Patricia Hewitt) and the third in 2002 in Singapore, opened by the Singaporean Minister for Trade.  We organised sponsorship from Unisys, BT, Deloitte & Touche and many others as well as speakers from the FBI, British Airways, Lands’ End and other leading internet and e-commerce players.  The Forum is now an exclusively high-level IGO.

ISP Business Content.  In 1999 we were retained by BT to develop the SME business content prior to the launch of their BT Click-to-Business site designed specifically for SME and middle-market enterprises. We built content based on our extensive knowledge of the SME culture including much that does not appear on other business sites such as ft.com or economist.com. The content was eventually expanded and rolled into the BT Openworld service.

AOL 1997.  Retained by AOL to develop the small business content for their UK site. This was done although much of it was integrated into the Compuserve business-focused service acquired by AOL in 1997.

Build It.  1991.  We were retained by the Media Company Ltd to launch Build It magazine into the growing UK self-build market. We originated the title, developed the editorial content, produced advertising contacts and organised distribution to the newsstand. After two years of publication, the magazine was sold to The Mirror Group for £2m and they still publish it to this day.

Birmingham Midshires BS (1988).  We worked with Birmingham Midshires Building Society to identify opportunities for financial products in new or emerging markets.  We identified the UK self-build market which was in need of a mortgage product that would allow self-builders to use the equity in their own home to finance their builds.  The product was conceived, developed and launched by us as the Package Build mortgage.  Self-build is still sometimes referred to as ‘package build’ by industry journalists and commentators as a result of the marcoms-led branding we applied to the product.

Bank merger (1986).  Two of the biggest banks in the world, Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank, merged. The challenge was to ensure that the world’s media did not go looking for a story when there was none to be found – it was simply a merging of back office functions by two banks serving the same markets.  Although a long way down the US-based PR food chain, our advice to saturate the world’s media with a short press release and a long list of local contacts for both banks including treasury, IT, settlements and every branch worked. The multi-billion dollar merger passed off with hardly a comment in the media.

Cellnet (1984).  We were retained by the Securicor/BT mobile phone consortium, Cellnet, to handle PR and high-level awareness campaigns.  This involved a pre-launch ‘wake-up’ call to national and specialist media alerting them to the telecoms revolution that was about to happen and providing technical, strategic and costings data to ensure that the media was properly ‘backgrounded’ in order to ensure accurate reporting on launch.

IBM (1982).  IBM launched the first digital PABX system into the UK – the IBM3750. We worked closely with the launch marketing team to ensure that the IBM product took the PR lead over strong competition from Ericsson.  As part of this project we actually promoted sales into two leading City institutions, Phillips & Drew and Kuhn Loeb Lehman Brothers ensuring that these installations were well publicised in financial technology media.

Communicate. Our very first project.  In 1979 we were exploring ways in which a City of London based telecoms recruitment and systems consultancy, Protel, could make further inroads into a rapidly growing market.  We produced a newsletter for them titled ‘The Protel Report’ which reviewed the many current and rapid developments in the telecoms market and the technology that was driving it. This was sent to over 5,000 prospective customers in the City.  This delivered rapid growth for Protel but, alongside this, the second edition of ‘The Protel Report’ was re-titled ‘Communicate’ and became the first magazine launched into the liberalised UK telecoms market, in which we took a 50% stake. Communicate was subsequently sold to The Economist Intelligence Unit.