APG West is coming to Bristol and Bath
Read about why we’re launching and what to expect at our first event
According to a UCL study earlier this year, if you want to start a business in 2016, then Bristol is the place.
The report measures the effect of a few factors, including the unique combination of amenities, broadband speed, and low cost central office space. Also the number and value of start-up loans accessed by new businesses.
But while the infrastructure clearly counts, the people here have an effect too.
More than 61,500 people work in digital jobs in the Bristol and Bath region, making it second only to London in scale. Its working-age population has grown by 13% in the last ten years (compared to a national average of 6.7%). 60% of that increase came from 22–33 year olds. According to Tech Nation, digital companies incorporated in the region grew by 65% between 2010 and 2013.
I recently attended a roundtable event, hosted by The Independent. There was one other agency represented — the rest were entrepreneurs, academics, creatives and business people. This sums Bristol up pretty well. If it is the entrepreneur capital of the UK, then that is partly because the worlds of enterprise, art and learning co-exist so well together. No wonder that George Ferguson, Bristol’s independent mayor, calls the city a “laboratory for change.” The default setting in both the city and the wider South West region is one of creative and technological innovation.
There’s little doubt that agencies in the South West benefit from — and in turn shape — the vibrant creative economy and the influx of young talent. Many have grown from niches or specialisms such as direct, design or UX. Digital craft is assumed, and the agencies are naturally collaborative and nimble. They are often embedded with more agile clients, and can be able to adapt clients’ changing needs more easily. These are characteristics to which many London agencies aspire.
But agencies here are different. They are smaller than their London counterparts. They are mostly independent. Teams work to tight budgets — whether that’s the client’s money or the agency’s own training pot. Relationships with clients grow from successful projects, rather than transfer wholesale via signature pitches. Clients value an agency’s expertise in the executional skills of design, copywriting and development, but it’s harder to exert an influence on their longer term strategic direction.
This is not the case for everybody, of course. But these general conditions make it difficult for strategy and planning functions to flourish. And if planning functions don’t flourish, strategic talent struggles to make its mark.
And that’s a problem.
It means the people who think bigger and better might not stay here. They might go somewhere… — well, bigger and better.
The South West is often said to be incubating the agency of the future. Its unique ecology makes that possible. But great planning and strategy is what will make it happen. Great planning brings insight, rigour and a long term perspective. It takes good training, talented people, and experts for those people to learn from.
Strategy represents the key to future success, for both brands and their agencies, regardless of size or location. Whatever your category, whatever your budget, making your brand stand out has never been harder. And crystal clear strategic thinking is what sets a brand apart from its competition.
This is what the Account Planning Group has always championed and enabled.
We are launching APG West so that the planners, agencies and creative businesses of our region can benefit from the access that London agencies have enjoyed for years. It will bring the most relevant of what’s available nationally, and deliver it locally, to you.
Our aims in the region are to:
Establish a community of like-minded planners to help attract, retain and encourage talent in agencies and beyond.
Embed a more strategic culture within agencies and businesses to improve their creative output and establish more planning-related career paths.
Foster an open and collaborative mind-set to make the most of the region’s innovative and creative ecology.
Bold aims, but why not? That’s what planners should do!
How we achieve these aims is another matter, and that’s where we need your help. We all need inspiration, we all love to learn. The APG has a lot of services to offer to help with both, but we think the best people to decide what APG West should do are the people who are going to use it.
That’s why we’ve worked closely with Bristol Media in developing what the focus of APG West might be. It’s essential the new initiative operates within the existing ecology of the region, and these are the guys who know it best. It’s why they’ve been so supportive on the initiative and are helping to promote it to their members.
And it’s why we launch night will work best if we get to hear from those of you who want to improve planning here.
The team leaders who want to help their future stars not just to stay, but to improve. The consultants who think their clients should take more risks. The agency heads who want to bolster their planning function. The clients who want to make their own brand work harder.
If that sounds like you, and you want to shape the programme of events and training that APG delivers in the South West, then make sure you come to our launch event on 21st April.
As well as hearing about APG’s services, you’ll also hear a keynote talk from the new chair of the national APG Committee, Dom Boyd. He’s going to be talking about what the new APG vision of Brand Entrepreneurs means for planners.
Here’s a quick extract from Dom’s energising manifesto for change:
There’s never been a more exciting time to be in this industry, or a better time to be a strategist. Planners and strategists are uniquely qualified to meet the demands of modern business through our human empathy, our commercial hardwiring, our problem-solving creativity, and our ability to define bold new futures that transforms organisations and their brands. APG wants to create planners that are entrepreneurial doers and smart thinkers. We want planners to experiment & create and distil and refine. To be the critical change agents for our clients & our agencies. The APG will embrace tech, innovation, digital, media and experience design. It will bring a deep focus on equipping strategists to solve modern challenges creatively.
Entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation. I think that shows that if APG was to launch in any region in 2016, then Bristol is the place.
The event is at Ovo Energy’s amazing new building, and we couldn’t have found anywhere more appropriate. Brand Entrepreneurs means taking the best of what advertising and marketing has always done — brand building — and combining it with a start-up’s urgency and restless drive for innovation. Ovo embody that hybrid mentality. A disruptive brand in a challenging category, it has nevertheless in six years grown to more than 900 people, and a year ago moved into its amazing new home at Rivergate.
Tickets are just £5 and you can book your place here.
We’ll see you on the 21st.
