Time is continuing to fly by...

So... another 3 weeks down the line, what has been happening that's made the time pass so quickly?...

Numbers, numbers, numbers...

Well, I've been very tied up in discussions with our Finance Director, various people from the bank, and our senior management team - it's Year End, and what with looking at how our 6th year in business has gone, managing the intricacies of the cashflow with a couple of our clients slowing payments down to a halt and planning for next year, it's been a bit on the busy side! I never thought, when I graduated with a degree in English literature that I'd need to get to grips with the intricacies of accounting. The terminology has been a whole task in itself ('nominal ledgers', 'balancing journals', 'WIP accounts'...)and as I'm in the process of trying to sort out the technical blips in our accounting package for year end, I'm on a steep and mind bending learning curve.

Taking stock of our 6th year in business

Once again, Year 6 has seen us grow again - we've now increased our turnover every year since start up which has been great although the Year on Year growth hasn't reached the heady percentages of our first few years. Our difficulty is maintaining the profit margins we want when we have a pretty big office to upkeep and that ongoing issue of keeping staff here happy and motivated while keeping costs as tight as possible! Business: it's just a big juggling act and although it's a fun environment here, ultimately people always want higher salaries and bigger bonuses - if only we could be as generous as we'd like to be!


Supporting our very own in house singer

Speaking of motivation and people, I do think getting as involved in outside of work activities as much as possible is a good thing for directors of businesses - to keep in touch with what's going on. So last week I had great fun going along to a gig performed by our receptionist/office manager. Leila's background is in drama and music and she's desperate to break into the big time with her singing so often performs after work. A group of about 8 of us from the office went along to a little venue just off Regent's Street to cheer her on, support her and have a few drinks.

It was a good chance to get a bit of a feel for how people are responding to us having brought in a new Chairman (which has had quite a bit of press coverage in the marketing media) - although there's lots of positivity, there's definitely also a bit of suspicion regarding what value he'll add, ('is he all talk and no action?') but I think over the past few weeks Matthew has demonstrated that he really knows what he's doing and will be a big contributor to the business.


Discovering a completely different business environment

I had another new experience last week - having recently been invited to sit on the governing Council of University College London (my old uni) I attended my first Council meeting. It was a really interesting, stimulating and educational (unsurprisingly!) experience and made all the more enjoyable as my 3rd year tutor is still there, going strong and made a presentation for the council members on The Bloomsbury Project. I enjoy the opportunity to input into the university's strategic direction although I'm on a steep learning curve here too as while there are similarities with running a business like Intelligent Marketing, there are plenty of differences too - scale for one! But it's all part of my ongoing quest to ensure that I learn from other experiences - what I learn at UCL, can also be brought to bear at IM, and vice versa.


Away day Inspiration

Now a quick request for brilliant ideas please - we have our bi-annual Away Day scheduled for 1st May and I'm looking to get everyone out of the office and doing something fun. It needs to be a team-based activity that will get everyone excited and buzzing - and we're quite a competitive bunch, but - and here's the big but - we're 'credit crunching' it this time, so need to keep costs tight. There'll be about 25 of us in total - if you have any suggestions (and have made it this far down one of my epic blogs), let me know!



And finally...

...we bagged another award for our Lufthansa Breakfast campaign, winning the Direct Marketing category in the Travel Marketing Awards. Now we just need to make sure we leverage the wins and don't hide our successes 'under a bushel' as we so often end up doing! It's an opportunity to target the travel sector for new business, so I must just get on to that now....


Tar-ra for now...

We are Winners!

Our Big News - hot off the press

This month, I've got 2 exciting pieces of news that will make a difference to IM over the coming months, and maybe even years...

Firstly we won a big industry award last Thursday night. The MCCA is our key trade association and runs the annual 'Best' awards for marketing agencies. We submitted one of our Lufthansa campaigns and were shortlisted in the 'Creme of the Best' award for strategic planning. It was great to be able to take the team who had worked on the campaign, and also a couple of the Lufthansa marketing team, to the awards do, and even better to win the Best Award for our category (beating big name agencies Arc Worldwide, Ogilvy Action and The Lounge Group). Winners of other categories included well known agencies like Saatchi and Saatchi X, Elvis and Euro RSCG and campaigns for Virgin Holidays, O2 and Barcardi, so we're in excellent company and it's a great one for our 'trophy cabinet'. What's really good about it is that it positions us as strategists (which is a core business objective for us) to other agencies and clients (existing and potential). Last year we won the B2B Direct Marketing category for an HSBC campaign, so we're demonstrating our breadth of skills.


Our other exciting piece of news is that we have brought on board a new chairman who has started with us today (we've not even released this news to the press yet). His experience is spot on for what we need as he set up the UK's first integrated marketing agency, grew it to a £multi-million turnover before selling it a few years ago. His experience and network of contacts means he'll be a great asset in our plans to raise our game to a new level. He's already had suggestions on how we can look at doing certain things differently, and potentially introducing some key new people into the business. It's a big step for us, as it's likely to mean that Trish and I will no longer be the sole share holders in the business that we set up and have grown together. Bringing in another member to the director team is going to be an interesting, challenging dynamic which I have great faith will shake us up in a positive way and move us forward. It's also going to change the way that I work. There'll be loads I can learn from him, and I'm going to make sure that I'm in a strong position, in conjunction with the other directors, to drive the business forward in a really positive way - structurally, as well as income-generating.


What else is new this month?

Other business news is that we've won Orange Business Services as a client - a brilliant one with huge potential, and also TaylorMade Golf. Client work for Isklar (a water brand we've been launching in the UK - look out for it in Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Harrods, and various other independents) is picking up, as has our new account with Timberland, so business is looking much stronger for the next few months. That's not to say we haven't had to make cut backs - we have, and we may not be replacing a couple of people who have resigned in the past couple of weeks depending on how the work pans out. But my view on this is that it's those businesses that keep a tight eye on their cost base and are pragmatic about what's coming up, as well as on pushing for income, that will be the ones that do best out of the recession.


Inspirational Entrepreneurial Women

I saw Karen last week (as well as Kresse - who I did manage to have a quick chat with - and Karen Darby - who was on the speakers panel) at the Real Business 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women event that we were all invited to. As the 3 of them (and Caroline Plumb from the MAD Mentor programme) were included on the list, I was very much a 'groupie' at the event - I was invited along by virtue of having been shortlisted for an entrepreneurial award last year. It was an inspirational session with incredibly impressive women entrepreneurs providing great examples and useful insights to the likes of me, and it was also great to catch up, albeit briefly, with Karen and Kresse.

I think that's it for the moment - it seems like it's been a successful and productive February, and with quite a few more bigger business picture plans in the pipeline, I am feeling pretty excited about the next few weeks and months.

Our Year End is this month, so April's going to be a fresh start for us in terms of our annual income and profitability objectives. Right now I'm focusing on how we can drive the business forward, and the starting point will be this year's business plan which I'm working on, in conjunction with our Account Directors. I'm hoping to chat it through with Karen (I'll be using some of my learnings from the day at Top Table) in the next couple of weeks before launching it to the business in April.