blackwell’s britain - creative industries · sup_birmingham_09_jul_01.indd 4 16/07/2014 16:47 the...

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blackwell’s britainthe drum visits brum

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THE DRUM 23.JUL.14 www.thedrum.com insiDE03

A WORD FROM THE sPOnsORsCOnTEnTs

04 Young and in Brum Lewis Blackwell kicks off his review of Birmingham by looking at why youthful optimism and the city’s diversity are key foundations of its creative economy.

06 To integration and beyond... Continuing his journey, Blackwell shines a spotlight on the city’s creative kudos and why collaboration and integration are key.

10 Q&A The Drum speaks to a cross-section of Birmingham influencers to highlight the big questions facing the creative community – from dissecting the mood in the oft-overlooked city to predicting areas for growth.

Written by Lewis Blackwell Editing by Thomas O’Neill, Katie McQuater Design & Production by Amanda Dewar, Ross Lesley-Bayne Commercial Management by Liz Hamilton, Gavin Floyd

THE DRUM is published by Carnyx Group Limited. The publishers, authors and printers cannot accept liability for any errors or omissions. Any artwork will be accepted at owner’s risk. All rights reserved. On no account may any part of this publication be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holder and publisher, application for which should be made to the publisher. © Carnyx grouP liMitED 2014 iSSn 2046-0635

As the IPA broadens its involvement in the wider UK creative industries agenda, Greater Birmingham represents a key target for support and promotion on the national and international stage.

IPA agencies are prolific in the city region, with 12 leading creative, digital and media businesses in membership, including WAA, McCann Birmingham, MediaCom, 383, The Partnership and Cogent Elliott, among others. A special mention should go to Gough Bailey Wright in nearby Bromsgrove, which celebrates 60 years with the IPA this month.

Not only are our members significant employers in their own right; they also attract inward investment from client businesses, and sustain the specialist creative, tech and micro businesses in the local supply chain.

In supporting this supplement, we seek to invite new members to join our growing network; unite Greater Birmingham behind a common purpose; celebrate success, identify growth opportunities and accelerate business development.

Janet Hull, OBEIPA director of marketing & executive director, Creative Pioneers Challenge

Jill Fear, partnership manager, advertising & marketing communications, Creative Skillset

As the industry skills body for the creative industries, Creative Skillset supports and encourages companies of every size to overcome the barriers they encounter to training investment. We empower large employers, SMEs, micro businesses and freelancers to grow, by developing their talent.

Our local training network manager, Dan Lawson, works across the sector helping creative and digital media businesses take ownership of their skills and development. He can also assist practitioners and new entrants to gain access to training, from apprenticeships and internships to bespoke CPD requirements.

All Creative Skillset’s work is led by employers and delivered in strategic partnership with the LEP, and alongside the region’s vibrant industry bodies.

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About the author Lewis Blackwell is a former editor-in-chief and publisher of Creative Review. He has also served as the worldwide creative head of

Getty Images and chief creative officer at Evolve Images. Blackwell’s Britain will see him tour the UK to analyse its creative hubs. The next stop is Scotland, published in August.

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www.thedrum.com 23.JUL.14 THE DRUM04birmingham

Youthful optimism, diversity and a jobs pledge from the BBC are driving the future of the ‘city of a thousand trades’.

young & in brum

If there’s one statistic, one thought, to hold in your head about the prospects of the creative industry of Birmingham it is this one: “Under 25s make up 40 per cent of the population – it’s perhaps the youngest city in Europe.”

Those are the words of Anita Bhalla, chair of the Creative City Partnership, the body set up to promote the development of jobs and wealth in the city. It is an umbrella group that helps yoke together the technology and creative economies, along with the young and diverse workforce, to forge a new wave of work that will grow wealth and spill over into the overall cultural richness of the city. Well, that’s the vision.

The recent announcement of a government strategy to double the UK creative economy by 2020, along with competition from Labour plans to boost regional centres and industry, did not say much that was new if you have read your reports from Birmingham. This is a city that has been on to the value of the creative economy for some time and has strategy documents in abundance. It has developed increasingly joined-up thinking around the value of the creative economy over recent years. Hence the CCP, serving the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, with a focus on supporting the already powerful, but fragmented, creative industry of the region.

This is seen as not only good business – capable of generating inward-investment on a regional and national scale – but as a key element in regenerating the city, in creating a good quality of life. When harnessed together with the demographics of Birmingham, a powerful creative economy promises perhaps unique added value: the city’s great diversity can be turned from a potential for conflict and confusion into a rich resource to produce world-leading culturally rich and wide-ranging content. A younger population can be given routes to self-expression, self-actualisation through rewarding work… they are a force waiting to happen.

Or put into simpler terms – there are a lot of them and they are comparatively smart and cheap. That rich supply of human resource and the relatively low-cost of doing business in Birmingham (compared to London) can mean it is a compelling place to do business.

It’s a logic that even appealed to the hard-nosed folk at Deutsche Bank, who have established a fully-fledged new merchant banking operation in the city, taking jobs away from London in the process. Not exactly core creative economy, but it’s a business

story that demonstrates Birmingham can compete at national, even international level, as a place to do business. Deutsche Bank is the kind of employer that makes others sit up and take notice about where it is going to locate.

As is the online fashion retailer Asos, which demonstrated faith in the city by establishing a major base for its digital activities, as of last year building out its international range of websites with a new team based out of the Custard Factory, home to around 400 creative businesses in the Digbeth area. The Asos

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Youthful optimism, diversity and a jobs pledge from the BBC are driving the future of the ‘city of a thousand trades’.

young & in brum

If there’s one statistic, one thought, to hold in your head about the prospects of the creative industry of Birmingham it is this one: “Under 25s make up 40 per cent of the population – it’s perhaps the youngest city in Europe.”

Those are the words of Anita Bhalla, chair of the Creative City Partnership, the body set up to promote the development of jobs and wealth in the city. It is an umbrella group that helps yoke together the technology and creative economies, along with the young and diverse workforce, to forge a new wave of work that will grow wealth and spill over into the overall cultural richness of the city. Well, that’s the vision.

The recent announcement of a government strategy to double the UK creative economy by 2020, along with competition from Labour plans to boost regional centres and industry, did not say much that was new if you have read your reports from Birmingham. This is a city that has been on to the value of the creative economy for some time and has strategy documents in abundance. It has developed increasingly joined-up thinking around the value of the creative economy over recent years. Hence the CCP, serving the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, with a focus on supporting the already powerful, but fragmented, creative industry of the region.

This is seen as not only good business – capable of generating inward-investment on a regional and national scale – but as a key element in regenerating the city, in creating a good quality of life. When harnessed together with the demographics of Birmingham, a powerful creative economy promises perhaps unique added value: the city’s great diversity can be turned from a potential for conflict and confusion into a rich resource to produce world-leading culturally rich and wide-ranging content. A younger population can be given routes to self-expression, self-actualisation through rewarding work… they are a force waiting to happen.

Or put into simpler terms – there are a lot of them and they are comparatively smart and cheap. That rich supply of human resource and the relatively low-cost of doing business in Birmingham (compared to London) can mean it is a compelling place to do business.

It’s a logic that even appealed to the hard-nosed folk at Deutsche Bank, who have established a fully-fledged new merchant banking operation in the city, taking jobs away from London in the process. Not exactly core creative economy, but it’s a business

story that demonstrates Birmingham can compete at national, even international level, as a place to do business. Deutsche Bank is the kind of employer that makes others sit up and take notice about where it is going to locate.

As is the online fashion retailer Asos, which demonstrated faith in the city by establishing a major base for its digital activities, as of last year building out its international range of websites with a new team based out of the Custard Factory, home to around 400 creative businesses in the Digbeth area. The Asos


THE DRUM 23.JUL.14 www.thedrum.com birmingham05

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jobs might have been placed in London in the past. Chief information officer Pete Marsden explains the decision: “Birmingham is a city with the talent, cost- effectiveness, physical infrastructure, plans and will to help our business succeed”. And he didn’t even take the advantages of putting his offices in the Enterprise area, but wanted to be immersed with the Custard folk.

We could go on with the fine words. But Birmingham has yet to have the image to match its output and its potential. For all that there are perhaps 50,000 creative workers and rising in the city area, and more than 5,800 companies (from larger agencies to small one-man bands), and lots of world-leading cultural landmarks, the city has yet to enjoy the ‘creative brand’ or even general cultural reputation that some of its peers can sit upon.

One of the city’s more famous sons, Trevor Beattie, creative director and co-founder of BMB, tell us: “It’s a great city and it has never been stronger in its creative industry. It’s really vibrant at present and I’m not entirely sure why. But at the same time it has always been in the shadow of London, because it is so

close and so big, and then we’ve also suffered from being in the shadow of the arrogance of Manchester and Liverpool.” (Mancunians, Liverpudlians – don’t complain here, I’m just the messenger.)

Perhaps the city’s not blowing its own trumpet enough, as Paul Kehoe, CEO of the fast-growing Birmingham Airport, as well as chairman of Marketing Birmingham, suggests. “We’re a down-to-earth lot, we get stuff done. But that means we haven’t always been the kind that like to be shouting about ourselves. That has counted against us. It’s an absolute challenge at the national level to get the positive story across while at the international level the city is already seen much more positively. It’s a place with a great heritage in making things and we can be recognised for all the new creative things we do.”

‘Speaking with one voice’ is part of what Kehoe sees as the task. Wouter Schuitemaker, investment director at Business Birmingham, sees that coming by ensuring a viral community of evangelists. “We have been working with the tech and digital community to get them to do the shouting rather than the city,” he says. “We need to create the buzz. With Asos for example, it has an important story to tell. It came here because we have a powerful feed of digital talent. It was struggling to get the staff in London. Here you can hire well and people will stay. That makes it much more efficient for business than if you have a freelance culture of people jumping in and out of a business, difficult to retain, as can happen in London.”

A big win for the city and its creative scene recently has been the commitment by BBC director-general Tony Hall to put jobs back into the city. After years in which the BBC’s staffing fell from around 1,700 to less than 100 positions, the city rethought its strategy and appealed to the BBC on a new basis. As Anita Bhalla, explains, the city’s appeal was based on a vision of positive change rather than negativity.

“We didn’t come back to them with a complaint about how the BBC should support Birmingham because we have lots of people paying the license fees,” she says.

“Instead we focused on what made Birmingham really different and useful; our strapline was ‘young, diverse and digital’. We took that pitch to Tony Hall. We showed the BBC how there was a way to reinvent itself in the region.”

The outcome has been plans to significantly regrow its activities out of Birmingham in order to harness the culturally diverse talents. Hall recently announced that a new digital initiative, the Guerrilla Group, is to be based out of Birmingham with a broad remit to explore ways of communicating stories to all the audiences that the BBC wants to reach.

When a global creative brand decides that the city can be a place to innovate world-leading creative thinking, that’s an endorsement. It could be a keystone in building the image of Birmingham as a world-player for digital and creative enterprise. The human resource and talent is there: we can now start to really believe that they can deliver.

I’m prompted to think of an earlier era in the city’s history – that of the ‘Birmingham Enlightenment’ in the later 18th century. The great and the good of that era linked the scientific and industrial revolutions, and fed into intellectual and artistic movements. It was perhaps the finest flowering of the city of a thousand trades… until now?

birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter

“here you can hire well and people will stay. that makes it much more efficient for business than if you have a freelance culture.”

the custard factory, home to a community of creative businesses

in the city





There’s been a cheeky campaign down at Old Street tube. You probably read about it in The Drum: Birmingham going head-to-head with the Tech City crowd on their way to work, to tell them to up sticks and relocate 100 miles north to a land of plenty.

The creatives behind that were the folk at Cogent, a veteran of the Midlands ad scene and yet not actually from Birmingham. Instead they are all in a nice barn-like place in Meriden, a few miles away, all 230 of them.

“I guess the ad industry in the Midlands has always suffered in some way, at least image-wise, from not having a central area,” says Richard Payne, creative director at Cogent. So ironically, while he can genuinely create a message that draws the digital crowd to a highly attractive digital scene in the creative quarter, he is typical of the major ad businesses of the area in being relatively loosely connected. “We don’t really have that community scene that might be seen in London, or in Manchester.”

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To inTegraTion

He feels it impacts on recruitment, but responds with a mix of “growing our own” and also hiring in from all over, notably providing a lifestyle alternative for talent wanting to head out of London. The agency aims high and has held a national ‘integrated agency of the year’ award. That means in the one building it can work as lead agency on one account across a whole range of channels, or might be a specialist supplier into a different agency with specific skills. For instance, with the recently won Kwikfit work, it is doing the local dealership work, with lead TV and strategy coming from Adam&Eve.

Integrated and flexible is also the story at its principal ‘rivals’ as substantial agencies, McCann and WAA. Both are not really in Birmingham at all, but are of that area, comfortably ensconced in dedicated single office locations. As with Cogent, they make up sizeable portions of their roster from clients outside of the region. Having sights often set firmly outside the region helps make them leaders in it.

John Sanders, group executive director of McCann Central (which covers the Birmingham, Luton and Bristol offices) says: “Typically we are pitching against London agencies, or ones from Manchester and elsewhere. We’re getting on the pitch list because of our special strengths, not because of where we are from.”

The creative approach is not that of a creative community so much as a fortress. “We have everything in-house; we can be a one-stop solution. We have strong media expertise, a digital business, and one of the largest PR agencies around. With this way of working we can find powerful integrated solutions very quickly and effectively.” He aims for ‘best in class’ agencies within the agency. “Each unit has to be able to compete in a pure way, excellent at its own specialism as well as ready to work well together.”

Sanders believes the output and image of the region’s advertising is changing. More work has spawned more quality, and this is more of an attraction to draw talent to come to the area.

Andrew Wilson, founder and CEO of WAA Group, speaks proudly of the geography and culture of Birmingham and its industry as being a key influence on the work. “There’s a commercial and industrial heritage. It is in the spirit of our approach. This area was the workshop of the world; got things done. We see ourselves as being creative with a real commercial

Integrated, flexible and collaborative is the name of the game for Birmingham’s creative industry, as Lewis Blackwell finds out when he continues his investigation of the city’s creativity.

and beyond

383 Project’s ‘nosee’ – a new way of monitoring hayfever which uses a mobile sensor that monitors

local air quality, combines it with existing met office data and delivers it through to a mobile app


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approach. And yet we don’t present ourselves as being particularly ‘Birmingham’ because we need to compete on a wider front.”

Creativity includes ‘growing your own’. All three of these larger agencies in the area are actively looking at how to develop and retain their own talent… they can’t just be buying in the expensive hires from London, but want to have talent that can grow with them.

It’s exactly what Joanna Birch, acting director of research innovation and enterprise at Birmingham City University, wants to hear. This university, to the fore in arguing the case for the creative industry to respond to the diverse cultural riches of the city’s youth, has 133 different creative courses to help match up with the wide range of industry. Each of those courses has students wanting to find two eight-week placements in an internship. “We have to build that launch pad to work,” she says – and the ‘we’ is a responsibility of the industry as much as public sector agencies. However, the distinctive nature of the creative industry where there are many ‘micro-businesses’ unable to offer internships has led to an extensive use of ‘live project briefs’ – getting practitioners to share real project briefs and then assess the student work back in the college.

“We’ve had graduates taken directly into jobs as a result of the live project process,” says Birch. She sees a future when there will be a better networked and self-supporting community of the fragmented small business and freelance culture. She wants Birmingham to be a pioneer in developing a “co-location, café and cloud

culture” – three ways in which small businesses or sole practitioners might link up, support and learn from each other. Technology – such as new forms of geo-location apps – could better connect the industry, she argues, creating a compelling community that is richly joined by real and virtual co-location.

Maverick TV, a pioneer of programming (international hits include the likes of Embarrassing Bodies for C4 and others), is also to the fore in seeing new connections that can drive fresh output. Founder and director Jonnie Turpie knows ceaseless reinvention is part and parcel of the media, his company and the city itself.

For Maverick, the young talent pool of Birmingham has been vital in how it can operate its “digital innovation department”, where the aim is “to reflect a whole country through the diversity we have in this one city”. Television sits alongside a powerful move into digital programming, which is becoming increasingly significant in viewing numbers. The company has been working with both Microsoft and Google for content that exists wholly online. “We can do things in Birmingham that would be very difficult to do in most other cities – we have input into programmes from high-end academics through to

all kinds of productions skills,” says Turpie. 383 Project will need to be our sign-off story here, for

want of space. The agency epitomises the lift-off potential of this industry – and perhaps why the government can hope for a doubling of revenues in the creative economy in just five years. “We have averaged 80 per cent year-on-year growth”, says strategy director Jacob Dutton. That’s since 2007, through the recession. Not bad.

But what does it do? Nothing as straightforward as advertising, design, TV, etc. “We’re not a marketing agency,” he asserts. “We help to make products and services better.” Put a different way, it has insight into where digital and technology is heading and can use this to think strategically and creatively for clients.

On a city-scale, there is a sense that Birmingham may just be starting to do to other cities what has been done to it. It’s now getting a cool image. It is starting to have a buzz, have its evangelists preach the same story; one that fires up belief that Birmingham can be a world-leading place to do business, particularly creative business. Where the map once showed a lot of roads crossing and leaving Birmingham, now it would seem they lead us there.

“there is a sense that birmingham may be starting to do to other cities what has been done to it. it’s now getting a cool image. it is starting to have a buzz.”

mccann central’s work for old Jamaica ginger beer, ‘man vs old Jamaica’

maverick tv’s beauty bootcamp annual series exclusive to the daily

mix channel on youtube

imo created the ‘shower to the People’ video content marketing

campaign for bristan



Being the underdog can have its benefits, and while Birmingham might have to work twice as hard for recognition, this makes it shine all the brighter, as local stakeholders are keen to highlight.

we try harder

what’s the mood like in the region?James Edwards, founder and CEO, Bpi AgencyThere’s a definite buzz around areas such as the Custard Factory, Jewellery Quarter

and in Leamington Spa.Boutique agencies are nestled in between the

coffee shops and fashionable street food sellers. A ‘new media’ culture similar to that of London’s Soho is emerging; yet all with one difference – the Brummie sense of humour.

Being the second largest city in the UK, you could say that we’re the underdog – we want it more and we work for it harder.

The irony is so many of our clients are London based. But, they don’t care about logistics and we’re proud of where we come from.

Janet Hull, director of marketing, IPAWith jobs in the creative sector on the up in the region, there’s a new found optimism and desire to pull together to shout louder

about the strength of the sector and its contribution to the local economy.

where are we likely to see the most growth?Jill Fear, partnership manager, advertising and marketing communications, Creative Skillset‘Young, digital and diverse’ sums up Greater

Birmingham’s USP, as reflected in its high-growth sectors. Centered on digital innovation, they include incubator hubs like Innovation Birmingham’s e4f incubator, where scores of technology start-ups rival London’s Tech City for breadth of talent and ideas.

A cluster of new and established animation studios continue to grow in the region, with the likes of CharacterShop and Second Home Studios joined more recently by Drew Roper’s Yamination Studios.

In the games industry the East and West Midlands account for 49 per cent of the UK workforce and nearby Leamington Spa’s historic association with that sector has spilled into Birmingham, seeing major studios rubbing shoulders with brand new businesses.

The Midlands development scene shows real tenacity of spirit; it is thriving, with the collapse of bigger studios being the catalyst for new start-ups in the area.

Wouter Schuitemaker, investment director, Business BirminghamBirmingham is experiencing rapid progress at both the entrepreneurial and corporate

end of the tech sector. Start-up Britain named Greater Birmingham as the UK’s most entrepreneurial region outside of London and a ‘start-up hotspot’ – with more companies starting up here than any other UK city outside of the capital, whilst investment from the BBC and ASOS in the city proves the appeal of the region to large corporations.

The Greater Birmingham region is a strong player in numerous areas of digital media including e-commerce, film and animation, interactive media, radio, music, gaming, photography, web design, open data and creative and social media. It is a fast-moving and high-growth industry, but also a fragmented one with many sub-sectors and more innovative and flexible business models than traditional industries.

This is an exciting time for the city, and we are expecting the combination of key market drivers such as business costs and access to talent to drive growth in all areas of the tech sector.

what does the industry need to do to nurture and attract creative talent?

Simon Morris, client services director, BarefaceThe West Midlands region has a phenomenal talent base on its doorstep that is far too

often drawn south by the bright lights of London. As a whole the industry needs to make sure that it gets an equal place at the decision-making table. Too often big business controls the agenda in schools and this doesn’t always benefit or prepare true creativity.

Another key factor that needs addressing is that educational institutions need to become more professional in the way they engage with the creative industry.

James Edwards, founder and CEO, Bpi AgencyWith the region’s universities and colleges producing a steady flow of creative talent

you would expect a plethora of candidates to choose from. But instead we often let the best slip away.

The central region is alive with specialist digital and

“the west midlands region has a phenomenal talent base on its doorstep.”

the iconic selfridges building, birmingham

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Being the underdog can have its benefits, and while Birmingham might have to work twice as hard for recognition, this makes it shine all the brighter, as local stakeholders are keen to highlight.

we try harder

what’s the mood like in the region?James Edwards, founder and CEO, Bpi AgencyThere’s a definite buzz around areas such as the Custard Factory, Jewellery Quarter

and in Leamington Spa.Boutique agencies are nestled in between the

coffee shops and fashionable street food sellers. A ‘new media’ culture similar to that of London’s Soho is emerging; yet all with one difference – the Brummie sense of humour.

Being the second largest city in the UK, you could say that we’re the underdog – we want it more and we work for it harder.

The irony is so many of our clients are London based. But, they don’t care about logistics and we’re proud of where we come from.

Janet Hull, director of marketing, IPAWith jobs in the creative sector on the up in the region, there’s a new found optimism and desire to pull together to shout louder

about the strength of the sector and its contribution to the local economy.

where are we likely to see the most growth?Jill Fear, partnership manager, advertising and marketing communications, Creative Skillset‘Young, digital and diverse’ sums up Greater

Birmingham’s USP, as reflected in its high-growth sectors. Centered on digital innovation, they include incubator hubs like Innovation Birmingham’s e4f incubator, where scores of technology start-ups rival London’s Tech City for breadth of talent and ideas.

A cluster of new and established animation studios continue to grow in the region, with the likes of CharacterShop and Second Home Studios joined more recently by Drew Roper’s Yamination Studios.

In the games industry the East and West Midlands account for 49 per cent of the UK workforce and nearby Leamington Spa’s historic association with that sector has spilled into Birmingham, seeing major studios rubbing shoulders with brand new businesses.

The Midlands development scene shows real tenacity of spirit; it is thriving, with the collapse of bigger studios being the catalyst for new start-ups in the area.

Wouter Schuitemaker, investment director, Business BirminghamBirmingham is experiencing rapid progress at both the entrepreneurial and corporate

end of the tech sector. Start-up Britain named Greater Birmingham as the UK’s most entrepreneurial region outside of London and a ‘start-up hotspot’ – with more companies starting up here than any other UK city outside of the capital, whilst investment from the BBC and ASOS in the city proves the appeal of the region to large corporations.

The Greater Birmingham region is a strong player in numerous areas of digital media including e-commerce, film and animation, interactive media, radio, music, gaming, photography, web design, open data and creative and social media. It is a fast-moving and high-growth industry, but also a fragmented one with many sub-sectors and more innovative and flexible business models than traditional industries.

This is an exciting time for the city, and we are expecting the combination of key market drivers such as business costs and access to talent to drive growth in all areas of the tech sector.

what does the industry need to do to nurture and attract creative talent?

Simon Morris, client services director, BarefaceThe West Midlands region has a phenomenal talent base on its doorstep that is far too

often drawn south by the bright lights of London. As a whole the industry needs to make sure that it gets an equal place at the decision-making table. Too often big business controls the agenda in schools and this doesn’t always benefit or prepare true creativity.

Another key factor that needs addressing is that educational institutions need to become more professional in the way they engage with the creative industry.

James Edwards, founder and CEO, Bpi AgencyWith the region’s universities and colleges producing a steady flow of creative talent

you would expect a plethora of candidates to choose from. But instead we often let the best slip away.

The central region is alive with specialist digital and

“the west midlands region has a phenomenal talent base on its doorstep.”

the iconic selfridges building, birmingham



creative companies. Perhaps instead of us expecting the youth to call on us, we should treat them like a new client and pitch to them – hold events and give lectures aimed only at students.

Old school maybe, but if we offer them student placements and show them our brightest and our best talent, then maybe we can inspire them to join us.

Mike Rose, managing director, ChapterYoung people with fresh exciting ideas are incredibly important, they help to maintain creative vibrancy and provide a different

perspective on our ever-changing world.From our perspective, we have built up strong links

with Birmingham City University and the excellent B-Hive initiative. We have people working in both creative and client service roles who initially started on placements and internships – our most recent creative recruit worked part time for with us while at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.

Who are the hot new start-ups or ones to watch in birmingham?

Jill Fear, partnership manager, advertising and marketing communications, Creative SkillsetArch Creatives – a not-for profit

organisation running a co-working space for game developers and other digital creatives in Leamington Spa, and the independent game developer Nyamnyam.

Tom Daplyn, managing director, AliveI’m loving the work of Droplet. Having worked with clients in financial services for a number of years, the ‘cashless society’

is definitely becoming more of a reality. Services like Square in the US and i-Zettle in Europe have made taking payments simple for everyone. It’s great to see one being launched from Birmingham, and doing well – long may it continue.

another architectural gem, the recently opened Library of birmingham

birmingham Town hall

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THE DRUM 23.JUL.14 www.thedrum.com KNOWLEDGE BANK13

marketing birmingham

Throughout June 2014 - the whole of East London was talking about Birmingham. Our integrated campaign #techbrum involved high impact out of home print, extensive digital marketing and social media efforts alongside a flagship event in Shoreditch. The effort in London aimed to realise our objective of raising Birmingham’s profile as a perfect place for tech and creative companies to expand and thrive. The campaign caused a massive online stir, pushing Birmingham into the limelight and raising the profile of our truly thriving and exciting tech and creative scene.

We targeted East London for clear reasons; the high prevalence of tech and creative companies, London’s status as an international gateway, and the pressures Tech City entrepreneurs are facing in areas such as talent acquisition and rising business costs.

Birmingham is already home to 6,000 tech firms employing nearly 40,000 people. 25% of the UK’s gaming workforce is based here and digital tech firms boost the region’s economy by in excess of £1.6bn every year. However - creativity and innovation are little use without business drivers such as access to talent and affordable rates, areas in which Birmingham seriously outshines the competition.

Competitive business costs, a huge talent pool and excellent connectivity fuse to create a genuinely complementary offer to the capital. Ironically it is also our proximity to London that is a key advantage over other cities with a short 75 minute train journey allowing flexibility for business owners. In addition the city is consistently receiving recognition from the business community, including being named as the UK’s most entrepreneurial city outside of London and a ‘start-up hotspot’ (Start-up Britain), as well as the number one Foreign Direct Investment destination of the future (FDI Association).

The #techbrum campaign symbolises the diversity of our tech and creative community. We benefit from having both a dynamic start-up scene with companies such as SOSHI Games, Whisk and Droplet making waves, alongside a solid representation from major tech firms such as SCC and Codemasters. In addition the city is looking forward to brilliant new developments such as the BBC Digital Guerilla Unit and Virgin’s centre of excellence to complete the mix. Start-up support is abundant with facilities and programs such as Innovation Birmingham Campus, The Custard Factory, Fazeley Studios, and Entrepreneurs for the Future (e4f) and Oxygen Accelerator providing an ideal ecosystem that has found a perfect home in our creative quarters in Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter.

The key to Birmingham’s success is our community – the companies, agencies, groups and personalities

that provide the credibility and real-world content to our proposition. Apart from Marketing Birmingham’s own efforts we have countless independent organisations and collectives such as Silicon Canal waving the banner for the city. We are a proud and dynamic community with a lot to shout about.

Amidst the media attention during and following the #techbrum campaign, the message remained strong – Birmingham is a great place for tech - but this merely scratches the surface. The city is currently reaping the rewards of 20 years of major investment and planning and 2015 will see the completion of major new developments such as Birmingham Grand Central, New Street Station, Arena Central, the Mailbox re-development, and Paradise Forum alongside the continued gentrification of our creative quarters in Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter. These massive developments signal a sea change for connectivity,

#techbrum

Tel: 0121 202 5115Email: [email protected]: www.businessbirmingham.com/techTwitter: @business_bham

lifestyle and business within the city.This level of investment and development has

transformed the city into a buzzing destination as people are drawn to the city’s history, world class shopping districts, eclectic nightlife and burgeoning food scene. Birmingham’s cultural and social landscape is gaining international recognition including a fourth Michelin star in 2013 and being ranked as having the highest quality of life of any UK city outside of the capital, by the Mercer Quality of Living Report 2014.

We are proud to be a part of this city’s amazing transformation – and are anticipating incredible opportunities and projects in the near future so want to talk to as many companies, entrepreneurs, investors and individuals as possible. Together with our community we are truly making things happen in Birmingham, and the #techbrum campaign is a symbol of our ambition for the city.

Emma GrayDirector of Marketing Services Marketing Birmingham

The Custard Factory – Digbeth creative quarter

#techbrum creative campaign

Launch future gaming digital conference @ Innovation Birmingham Campus

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#techbrum





Emma GrayDirector of Marketing Services Marketing Birmingham











#techbrum





Emma GrayDirector of Marketing Services Marketing Birmingham To make a remarkable transformation to your agency visit

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