Intermarketing agency talks growth, tech and the evolution of the agency/client relationship

I joined in April 2004, almost 15 years ago, so I’ve spent the bulk of my career with Intermarketing. Prior to that, I had worked in London for a couple of years in the direct response agency sector and had become a little disillusioned with the industry, so I spent quite a while looking for my next role. Back then, Intermarketing was a small direct response agency of five people, but I could see right away that there was a drive to evolve into something else. There were people in the business ready to fight our way out of the ‘Northern direct marketing agency’ scene.

You ultimately co-led a buyout of the agency in 2011, what motivated that?

When I joined the business, the founders were already thinking about handing it over some day and were looking to bring in the right talent to help carry the agency forward in the future. When Jamie Allan joined the business in 2009, I knew very quickly that he was someone I wanted to work with as a business partner, so we decided to buy the business together.

Looking back now, one thing that was crucial to our future success was a decision taken by the previous owners to buy a small design business of 4 or 5 people. Despite their size, they had Adidas on their books as a client and that would prove absolutely pivotal to us.

It wasn’t overnight, but ultimately it was hugely important to us to have a global brand on our books. Clients like Adidas are hard to come by so it pays to do everything you can to develop the relationships you have and that’s exactly what we did. There are lots of opportunities to grow when you are working with a global business. We grew our capabilities and skill-sets as a result of looking at Adidas’ needs and broadening the range of services we supplied to them. That one client relationship really helped us to learn, improve and define our offering and go out and attract other clients with our new skills.

What have been the key changes to the industry over the past 30 years?

The obvious one is ‘technology’. Technological changes have dramatically altered the way we operate as a business. Tech is a driver for those changes, making everything quicker and more transparent. Clients always want to react to new tech and new platforms as quickly as possible but that’s not always the best idea in practice. Thinking time is valuable.

Things always go in a cycle, with the next big thing grabbing more than its fair share of attention at first but ultimately finding its rightful place in a marketing strategy. Tech will continue to have a big impact on how we deliver our work, but humans deal with humans and our core skills and talents as marketers and communicators will remain as relevant as ever.

Given the challenge presented by the in-house agency model, do you think the integrated agency model can stay relevant?

It’s true that a lot of clients have ripped up the rulebook with their efforts to in-house creative, digital and media-focused talent, but I wonder about the lifespan of the current enthusiasm for in-housing. As an agency, we are agile and flexible enough to roll with it, but I do wonder how it might impact on some of the larger networks.

I think the ‘full service integrated agency’ is still the preferred model for clients, but both clients and agencies should be asking themselves what exactly does that mean? What is it that clients actually want to buy? These days we’re acutely aware of the impact of procurement on the effectiveness of an agency/client relationship and driving the right actions. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to work best with clients’ procurement teams.

Obviously, the integrated model allows us to upsell and cross-sell more easily as we know our clients and know what they need. It removes the need for the hard sell as the clients know you already and what you are capable of. The reality is that even when a small specialist agency makes a name for itself in the marketplace, it’s almost inevitably acquired by a larger ‘full service’ agency. I think that says a lot about the natural inclination of clients.

At 30, what sort of shape is Intermarketing in?

We’re in great shape. We’re now much more of a national and international agency than ever before. We have a team of around 225, based mainly at our Leeds head office, a big base in London, offices in Amsterdam, Sydney and more to come. We own all of our offices, as environment is very important to us.

We’ve achieved strong growth over the past 10 years which has been really important for us as a business; not just in terms of commercial gain – I think you need to be growing to keep your best people.

As for what we’ll look like in another 30 years or what further impacts technology might have on the business and the sector generally, I don’t know, but as long as we continue to understand humans, I think we’ll be OK.