The Bridge retains Blood advertising account while third director departs
The Bridge has retained its long held marketing contract to provide communications for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS), while the third director in just over a month has departed the agency.
The Glasgow advertising agency has retained the account following a tender through the Scottish Government Framework with an initial 12 month contract, which could be extended by another two years.
“This will see The Bridge continue to provide marketing communications materials to support the Give Blood proposition,” a spokesperson for NHS Scotland confirmed.
Meanwhile, director Alan Clarke (pictured bottom left) has left the business it has been confirmed, leaving David Watson as the sole shareholder and managing director of the agency.
The departure of Clarke follows those of fellow directors Frank Stubbs and Margaret Byrnes who were made redundant by the agency at the beginning of April.
Watson denied that the departure of Clarke was a redundancy issue; citing health issues as the reason behind the move but said that Clarke would work with the agency again on ‘an ad hoc’ basis should it be necessary.
“This seems like the perfect moment to clean everything up a little bit and become a bit more focused and single minded,” explained Watson.
“We’re in the midst of a slight re-engineering process at the present and agencies across the board are having to consider what it is they are doing and how they are doing it. That is part of our conversations. We need to be a little more energised and less focused on the past. We need to look at where the opportunities are going to be moving forward and continue with our joint digital venture with Jason Wagner at Ping!, which is working very well,” he added saying that he hoped for more digital work moving forward while continuing to offer advertising services.
Watson also denied rumours that he was talking about a joint venture or merger with rival Glasgow agency GRP.
Watson, Clarke, Stubbs and Byrne led the MBO of The Bridge from previous directors Brian Crook, and Jonathan d’Aguilar in 2009.