Large-scale marketing accounts to return to regions predicts Crown Paints marketing director
Regional agencies are likely to see large-scale marketing accounts return, says the marketing director of Crown Paints, Liz Hickson.
Speaking to The Drum, Hickson predicted that business were beginning to look outside of London for expansion and that agencies in the largest regional cities would benefit from that as a result.
“At this moment in time there is a big move into businesses expanding out of London and into the key cities such as Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds. Corresponding with businesses moving, we also start seeing a rise of agencies, and strong agencies, in regional pockets as well,” said Hickson.
“I think there’s definitely a trend to companies looking outside of London for options. That’s no disrespect to those fantastic agencies in London as well but they do carry extensive overheads as well. There’s that consideration, but I also believe that there is a really good regional talent pool and there I’d be first as a regional company to try and support the local region, where feesable and so far it’s worked very well for us.
“I am a strong believer in that. I know cash is tight everywhere but we are starting to see a lot of regeneration programmes as well as even when you look at a lot of the architect practices, you could say that the top practices are all based in London, but if you look around, you start seeing big business units. The finance industry has big regional pockets also.”
Darwin headquartered Crown Paints appointed Manchester-based BJL as its creative agency last May, after a year with TBWA, and then handed BJL its consumer PR account last month.
Meanwhile, The Leith Agency was named the new advertising agency for Baxters, which returned to Scotland having moved its creative account to London with JWT two years ago.