The Marketing Practice: Agency In The Spotlight
Year established
2002
Location, country
Oxford, United Kingdom
Seattle, United States
Munich, Germany
Number of people
143
Breakdown of staff
Creative: 30
Account: 45
Planning: 10
Digital: 9
Demand generation: 25
Data & Insight: 11
New business/marketing: 5
Admin/finance: 8
Owner/MD
Clive McNamara (yep, the DJ)
Best known clients
Microsoft, O2 Telefonica, Sage, Amazon, Salesforce, Oracle
What we’re good at
B2B marketing that delivers commercial results: sales pipeline today & a better selling environment tomorrow
Best piece of work done recently
The “I’m Sold on Sage Pay” campaign for Sage
We built a campaign around small business owner advocates (interviews, videos, research, photo shoots…), creating personal stories that explain why they are “sold on Sage Pay”.
The campaign won “Best SME-targeted campaign” at the B2B Marketing Awards in 2018: https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/b2b-case-studies/awards-case-study-how-sage-pay-created-ps156-million-pipeline
More information: https://themarketingpractice.com/sage-pay-for-smbs/
Average age of employees (approx.):
36
Office personalities
Lean Dean – not actually a person, but an alter-ego of David van Schaick (who loves Lean working)
Rising stars
Jake Bird – 2 years into his TMP career, he’s current flying between Munich and Oxford every month helping to launch campaigns in Germany
Agency legends
Kirsty Heath, Julian Thornton, Jo Willis – have all been here since Day One & don’t look a day older than when they started
Agency motto
10-1 = 0 (get one thing wrong, the whole thing won’t work)
What does everyone love about the agency?
The many bizarre events that our social committee come up with
What does everyone complain about?
The car parking spaces
What agency traditions do you have?
Every year we take the whole company away for 2-3 days for our ‘Hall of Fame’ awards
When did you join the network?
2017
Why did you join E3?
We’re running more campaigns globally, so the local knowledge is really useful. Plus we’re always interested in new ideas we’ve not seen before
Which other agencies have you collaborated with?
BBC
What do visitors to England have problems with?
Trying to open train doors. If you are inside, you have to open a window to reach the door handle outside (there are no handles on the inside of train doors).
What’s the coolest thing about Oxford that no one else knows about?
The Mad Hatter. A cocktail bar where you have to answer a riddle to get in.
What’s the one thing you have to do here when you visit
Soak up the culture at the Ashmolean museum – the first museum in the world to be opened to the public
Where we go after work
The Eyston Arms (for a quiet pint in a traditional pub) or Be At One (for not quiet cocktails)
Restaurant we take clients to
The Eyston Arms. And we can get to it from the back of our office car park.
Essential phrase in local language
When we say “Oh, by the way…” we actually mean “This is critically important:..”