Success keeps growing!

As our Let’s Grow campaign for Morrisons enters it’s 2^nd year, we were delighted to hear that it has been shortlisted in the 2009 IPA Effectiveness Awards. To hear more about this campaign, give Adrian Thomas – our Head of Retail – a call on 020 7471 1900.

BCL is a multiple ISP award winner…again!

 

We are pleased to announce that BCL won 5 ISP awards at last week’s awards ceremony.  Our ‘Spinning Fork’ and ‘Food Fight’ campaigns for Pot Noodle both won gold, while we also took home silver awards for our ‘Lets Grow’ campaign for Morrisons, ‘Cooking for Schools’ for Flora, and our Colgate ‘Max White’ work.

To hear more about these campaigns and how our award winning thinking can help your business, why not give Marc Rigby or Vanessa Fawcett a call on 020 7471 1900.

BCL Group climbs 28 places in Campaign Top 100 Advertising Agencies

Our advertising billings for 2008 (as measured by Nielsen) have grown by 50%, up to £11.7m from £7.8m in 2007 (the second biggest rise in the whole top 100).  This is thanks to the continued growth of our advertising clients within our Broadcast division Brave, with advertising campaigns for Panasonic, Ecover, John Frieda, Triodos Bank, Kerry Foods and Green & Blacks.  In addition, BCL created national campaigns for Ribena, Carlsberg and Nestle Purina.

Neil Davidson joins Billington Cartmell

Billington Cartmell has hired Neil Davidson to head and develop its planning department. 

Neil will have a strong client-facing role, while leading the strategic planning department and developing solutions right across the agency’s business. 

Neil previously worked at the The Farm as the strategic planning director and spent several years in direct marketing, as well as working for numerous ad agencies.

 

January/February 2009  Incentive and Motivation

BILLINGTON CARTMELL SECURES TOP AWARD FROM MARKETING MAGAZINE

We are delighted to announce that Marketing magazine has voted us Sales Promotion Agency of the Year 2008.  And we would like to take this opportunity to thank our clients for allowing us to create innovative, award-winning work that delivered significant results for brands in all sectors.

2008 has been a strong year for Billington Cartmell.  We secured ISP Gold and MCCA awards for our Lucozade, Persil and LTSB work. We have futher strengthened our creative, CRM and strategic offering by investing in the best creative, planning, account handling, digital and data talent.  Plus we’ve had great new business successes, with the likes of LG, Nestle Purina, TFL, Cancer Research UK, WIlliam Hill, Orange, Colgate and First Choice awarding us pitch wins.

We’ve continued to broaden our offering, producing powerful integrated campaigns for major brands, embracing ‘green’ opportunities (including our CSR ‘Today’ campaign for Morrisons) and consistently demonstrating how marketing disciplines can work together.

But as we enter one of the most challenging trading periods in decades, it’s our 18 years’ experience of proven results and continued growth that’s perhaps most encouraging to our clients.  Because having been born in the heart of the last recession, we know exactly what it takes not just to survive, but to thrive.

So to see the very real difference we can make to your brand in 2009, call Marc Rigby on 0207 4711900 or email marc_rigby@bcl.co.uk

Billington Cartmell creates summer promo for Ribena

Billington Cartmell has created a promotions-led integrated campaign for Ribena, positioning it as part of the British summer and offering consumers the chance to win £1,000 a day.

By highlighting taste and targeting young adults, the new “Grand taste of summer” campaign marks a change in direction from previous campaigns, which have revolved around the provenance and quality of the blackcurrants that make Ribena.

Running for three months from July 1st, the campaign includes radio and poster advertising as well as the on-pack offer, extensive in-store support and experiential work.

Billington Cartmell developed the core brand proposition and created the launch six-sheet posters and in-store materials.  The agency co-ordinated the campaign, working with M&C Saatchi (radio), MediaCom (media) and Exentio (experiential).

The on-pack offer, running across both the brand’s squash and ready-to-drink products, gives consumers a chance to win “a grand a day”.

IAN CRUICKSHANK JOINS BILLINGTON CARTMELL AS HEAD OF DIGITAL AND DIRECT

Billington Cartmell has hired Ian Cruickshank, former managing partner at Draft FCB, as our new Head of Digital and Direct.

The appointment, which took effect at the beginning of June, reflects the importance that we place on the integration of direct and digital channels.

Cruickshank, 34, will help us build on our success in direct and digital over the past few years. Ian will head our data planning, direct marketing and digital marketing teams, ensuring that we maintain our leading edge in integrating direct and digital disciplines.

The move follows last summer’s appointment of Craig Lawrie from MRM Worldwide who continues as head of the digital department.

Founding partner Paul Cartmell explained: “Ian’s remit is to create and improve acquisition and retention for our clients, through specific CRM programmes in direct and digital channels. With increasing convergence between direct marketing and digital work, we need to make sure we have the top players on our team – and Ian is unquestionably one of the industry’s real stars.”

Before joining Draft in 2005, Cruickshank worked at Proximity and GGT. He said: “Billington Cartmell is not just incredibly successful, it has also built a genuinely open and receptive culture. That open-mindedness underscores the agency’s acknowledgement of the importance of digital and direct which is a serious principle, rather than the sort of bandwagon-jumping that is so evident in many of its competitors.

The integration of direct and digital is about getting a better cumulative effect by using multiple channels in an appropriate and engaging way. Billington Cartmell’s insights into today’s consumer give the agency an inbuilt understanding of the media people consume and the way we can use those media to get our message across.”

BCL sets up entertainment unit

Billington Cartmell (BCL), the independent marketing communications agency, has appointed Denzil Thomas as business development manager to establish a specialist music and entertainment unit which will work across the whole BCL group.  Thomas, former business development manager for IPC Media, Channelfly and The Student Broadcast Network, has spent the past three years running his own consultancy, Eat Your Greens.  The consultancy specialised in devising and building successful business relationships between brands and music/entertainment for clients including O2, Nokia and Toyota.  Thomas has more than 15 years’ experience in marketing, music and media.  His core expertise, which includes finding and linking brand marketing and promotional objectives with artists, events and venues, will be used for clients at both BCL and the Closer live marketing agency.  While at IPC Media, Thomas created a string of successful projects for NME, Uncut and Muzik, including IPC’s first-ever corporate entertainment deal with Toyota.

Source: DM Weekly

Billington Cartmell lands double Gold at The 2008 ISP Awards!

In addition to giving 10,000,000 Britons their edge back, our campaign for Lucozade had the edge on the night…taking Gold in the Drinks Category.

Our Mr Men promotion for Persil delivered a Mr Marvellous sales uplift for Unilever and won the Healthcare & Well-being Gold Award!

Billington Cartmell creates CSR Positioning for Morrisons

On Monday 19th May, consumers were introduced to ‘Today’ when Morrisons began giving away over 10 million reusable carrier bags printed with the line ‘Today, I’m doing my bit for tomorrow with this reusable bag’. Supported via a national press advertising campaign, extensive in-store support, near store advertising and consumer PR, our initiative will be the creative positioning to underpin Morrisons’ on-going communication of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme for 2008 and beyond.

The creative theme of ‘Today’ reinforces the significant strides Morrisons has already achieved and is continuing to achieve within the area of CSR on a daily basis. The campaign focuses on the retailers core environmental objectives around waste, climate change and sustainability.

The ‘Today’ positioning will appear at regular intervals in-store, communicating selected CSR achievements to Morrisons’ nine million UK shoppers. Our creative uses real world examples to drive home the message. One of the first, appearing later this month, will address the carbon footprint – ‘Today, we have reduced our carbon footprint by 315 tonnes – equivalent to the C02 emissions of flying to New York and back 90 times a day’.

BCL Director of Retail, Adrian Thomas, said: “The ‘Today’ campaign provides a creative platform for us to dramatise the CSR commitment from Morrisons. It takes what they are currently doing and provides tangible examples to demonstrate how much of an impact the business is making on a daily basis, making it more relevant and engaging to both colleague and customers”.