The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By Awards Analyst, writer

November 4, 2021 | 5 min read

Drum OMG shared the ‘Content agency of the year’ title at The Drum Awards for Content 2021. Here, the team behind the winning entry shares the secrets of its success...

The challenge

In a time of rapid cultural, societal and economic change, the only certainty, to quote Peter Drucker “is culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This is the story of how Drum’s culture ate COVID for breakfast: how we channelled our relentless focus on culture to create a new future-facing platform for the agency, developed new capabilities to get our clients get ever closer to their audiences, launched in new International regions, created headline-grabbing work. All while delivering the agency’s most creatively and commercially successful year on record.

The strategy

It starts with the culture of the agency: we’ve faced two significant and interrelated challenges: maintaining cohesion and togetherness in times of physical isolation, and navigating the complexities of creating a truly diverse & inclusive working environment.

Our plan has two main pillars:

Action, not just words on EDI

Our EDI task force comprises all levels of the business, with a clear remit: create an actionable plan to effect change. Together we’ve published our first EDI Charter, committing to four behavioural tenets: continuous education, elevating diverse talent, creating an inclusive environment, evolving diversity in our work.

So far this has directly resulted in:

  • Committing to better the national & industry levels of BAME representation across the business by 2020;
  • Collective unconscious bias training facilitated by the University of Bristol;
  • Establishing the Drum Studios Scholarship: covering full tuition fees for Goldsmiths MA in Screen Documentary Making, for students from diverse and under-represented backgrounds;
  • Leading the pro bono re-design of www.shesayswhosyourmomma.com/ the leading industry female/female mentoring platform and providing mentors for its cohort;
  • Engagement with industry wide EDI initiatives: joining the Conscious Advertising Network, partnering with ShowRacismTheRedCard to tackle online racial abuse on social platforms, adopting the BRiM framework in our productions, and ensuring every DRUMMER has qualified in the IPA’s D&I Essentials.

We’ve supercharged our wellbeing programme Frank You so our team are fed and watered mentally and physically with monthly external speakers, weekly cultural briefings, and fear-inducing online HIIT sessions. Despite working remotely, agency social life is still paramount. The Drummer’s Arms virtual pub is open every day for when we just need a good gossip, Thursday night movie club with refreshments from our Drummer owned low-alcohol brewery and a monthly Culture quiz.

In July, overall employee engagement was measured at 74% - the highest individual agency score across our network despite 18 months of isolation, remote-working and Teams meetings.

New capabilities

With shifts in consumer behaviours accelerating the way content is consumed we’ve invested in capabilities that overtake these trends and embrace the long-term opportunity.

This included shifting Drum from brand-commissioned to broadcaster-commissioned programming - a producer in our own right. Our first feature length documentary, ‘Queen of Speed’ - a biopic of the first female driver to break into the world of rally driving - airs this Autumn on Sky Documentaries. Further stories drawn from cultural passions are in pre-production as consumers’ appetite for high quality SVOD content continues to grow. https://drum.co.uk/studios

From setting the world’s hottest social media platform on fire to cleaning up ocean plastic, it’s safe to say we delivered.

Following our award-winning partnership with Carpool Karaoke we were appointed Porsche’s Global Partnerships agency. In August 2021 we helped them to launch Art of Drive, a new global content platform: a first-of-a-kind partnership with Conde Nast that inspires the next generation of creators with boundary-pushing ideas and storytelling. We’ve also partnered Porsche with Punchdrunk’s Burnt City immersive theatre experience, their most epic to date, including product placement woven seamlessly into the theatrical production.

It’s been a significant year of growth adding more than 20 new clients who see the value in culture-driven marketing. With the IPA’s Bellwether report forecasting 6% growth in advertising spend in 2021, DRUM has delivered 33% YoY increase in topline revenue, and 200% increase in profitability - putting us on track for our strongest ever commercial performance. This coupled with laying solid foundations for creating global demand for our expertise.

Our expansion into new markets in LATAM and APAC adds to our growing footprint across Europe, meaning that we now comprise a network of over 140 Drummer with capabilities that ensure that we remain at the forefront of how brands connect with their audiences for years to come.

This entry was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2021. Click here to find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.

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