Consultants to the marketing industry

How we helped OVO Energy

AAR's brief was two-fold:

• A discovery phase to define the right agency model for OVO to adopt for any external creative and media services
• To design a pitch programme to populate this model with the right agency partners

Outcome:

• Following a pitch programme in early 2021, OVO Energy appointed Lucky Generals as their new creative partner, and Goodstuff as their new media partner.

How we helped DFS

• With an aspirational strategic vision of becoming ‘The Leading Sofa Retailer in the Digital Age’, the DFS team wanted to ensure their new agency could partner with them to achieve that ambition.

• The successful agency would need to have the capability to understand the entire customer journey, from consideration through to purchase and potentially repurchase. And, equally as important, there would need to be a very strong cultural fit. DFS was looking to appoint a potential agency partner for the next decade.

• AAR consequently ran a pitch programme that allowed agencies to prove their strategic and creative capabilities while encouraging both client and agency teams to spend as much time together as possible, safely within COVID-19 guidelines. By the time DFS arrived at their final decision, there was no doubt that there would be a strong fit in terms of capability, personal engagement and collaboration.

• The final presentations took place over two days at the DFS HQ in Doncaster, with Pablo being appointed.

How we helped the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

• Founded by Bill and Melinda Gates and launched in 2000, the aims of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty on a global basis.

• The Foundation was seeking to appoint a global creative and media agency partnership to work on a campaign to elevate Health up the political agenda.

• Whether this could be achieved through raising public awareness or by directly influencing politicians was one of the key questions that was asked of the pitching agencies.

• In order to make the strategy as robust as possible it was decided to use the UK and Germany as test markets in advance of a global roll out.

• It was therefore important that the chosen agency could deliver a seamless team from both countries, and following a highly competitive pitch, AMV BBDO was appointed.

How we helped the England and Wales Cricket Board

• In 2021, a new cricket format called “The Hundred” was launched, with each team having 100 balls to score the maximum number of runs. Eight cities (rather than counties) were to compete over a five-week period, and the new concept was intended to appeal to both traditional cricket fans and new audiences who might be looking for an alternative entertainment option.

• We worked closely with the ECB (England & Wales Cricket Board) to help them identify creative agencies and PR consultancies who had experience of working on behaviour change campaigns to ensure that the launch would be a success in both the short and long term.

How we helped Just Eat

• Just Eat had been operating successfully across its core markets, each one producing its own advertising. This approach was going to be unsustainable as the business continued to grow and AAR was briefed to help Just Eat identify agencies that could deliver global work that would have creative impact and resonance across multiple markets.

• The heart of the brief was to replace what was a functional relationship between the brand and its customers, with more of an emotional one, and so help to distinguish Just Eat from an increasingly crowded and noisy competitive marketplace. All of which had to be done in an aggressive timescale.

• Against stiff competition, McCann’s delivered a pitch-winning performance.

How we helped Subway

• We worked with Subway UK & Ireland to help them appoint a new creative agency partner.

• Our brief was to help them find an agency that could not only work in a very fast retail environment but, equally importantly, ensure that their key franchisee audience was involved in the pitch programme. 

• In a final shoot out, Above & Beyond were appointed.

How we helped Save The Children

• Save The Children approached us ahead of a review and consolidation of their media planning and buying agencies from four relationships managed by different teams to one agency, managed centrally.  

• Their agency split was broken down by Brand, Direct Response, Digital and Legacy Marketing and, whilst each team supported the review in theory, there was some concern that no one agency would understand the nuances of the charity world and be able to service their specialist areas as well as the incumbents.

• AAR’s approach was to first map the market to ensure that there were credible candidates available to the charity and interested in the opportunity.

• Once all stakeholders had been reassured, we devised a review programme and built a brief that would answer the needs of the charity as well as making Save the Children an appealing potential partner to an agency.

• MediaCom North was appointed to the business.

How we helped Three

• As Three geared up for the introduction of 5G, the mobile services provider undertook a full transformation exercise across the business with the deployment of a new, largely Adobe based, tech platform playing a crucial role in delivering a joined-up ecosystem across all touch points to provide a much richer view of the customer, as well as greater end to end performance management capability.

• They approached AAR to help find an agency that could not only help with this transition to a new tech stack but also create the step change in how Three communicate with their existing base across all journeys, and ultimately lift them out of category conventions and create totally unique experiences for their customers.

• After a highly competitive pitch, MRM McCann were appointed to the account.

How we helped Thinkbox

• Finding a creative agency to promote the benefits of television advertising has to be one of the most daunting and rewarding projects we’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with.

• Whilst it was important that the pitching agencies had chemistry with the team at Thinkbox, this was one of the rare occasions where the main point of the review was to find the creative idea…..a world class TV campaign that would get the public talking and engaged.

• Following a series of Chemistry Meetings, we ended up with our own version of the Champions League Semi Final involving four of the strongest agencies slugging it out, with Mother finally picking up the winner’s trophy.

How we helped Travel Republic

• The travel sector is probably one of the most competitive sectors in which any business can operate. There is little differentiation between the products available and, consequently, the brand has become a key asset and point of difference.

• The team at Travel Republic are very ambitious and keen to give the brand back its personality which had been diluted over time.

• Whilst they were using the pitch to find the right agency partner, there was an added complexity in that the brand had recently taken up a sponsorship opportunity with Take Me Out which meant that not only did any creative vehicle have to work as a programme ident, but these assets had to be delivered less than three weeks after appointment.

• In order to facilitate this, additional creative check ins were added to the pitch programme so that when the appointment was made, the appointed agency, which turned out to be The Corner, could start work the next day.

How we helped airbnb

• This was an opportunity for media agencies to prove themselves worthy across three regions comprising The Americas, APAC and EMEA. Up for grabs was the chance to win in any one or all of the regions.

• Added to this challenge was the brand team’s desire to consider worthy domestic agencies in the core markets of UK & North America, with the potential to separate these from the regional play. All with a parallel commercial, contractual and operational pitch brief feeding into Airbnb’s Head of Deal Operations. Complex and challenging: just our kind of brief!

• There were two standout elements to our consultancy. First, brand team interviews and workshops to ensure alignment on the brief, their expectations and what success could look like. Then a pitch programme heavy on interaction and engagement between prospective agencies and the regional Airbnb teams, involving market sprints (brief on Monday, response on Thursday), Airbnb experiences with the brand and agency teams and a big strategic challenge in which the agencies strategic Jedi Knight could shine.

• Essence proved themselves to be a Superhost and were awarded the business across all three territories.

How we helped Zoopla

• Like many businesses, Zoopla has been moving to a full funnel approach to marketing and communications, and wanted to ensure they had a media agency partner that would accelerate this change in approach.

• The agency landscape is not short of hand-raisers, whatever the question, and our job was to cut through to those that not only had the necessary expertise, but equally important for Zoopla, would be a good fit with the team and other agency partners.

• A key requirement was an agency’s proven capability and expertise in data driven and informed media thinking and execution. Zoopla is a marketplace that services two connected audiences, sellers/landlords and buyers/renters and experience of other marketplace businesses was critical.

• This meant that the candidate list of agencies was relatively short, and as such, Zoopla was able to spend more time focused on a genuine understanding of each agency’s capabilities, beyond the superficiality of a case study. There was a chance for better engagement with agency team members that, if successful, would be working on the account.

• Among stiff competition (isn’t it always), Essence proved themselves to be the team and the agency that Zoopla felt will be the right partner.

How we helped Tetley

• Tetley has the highest household penetration of all tea brands in England at 36%. But, in an increasingly competitive market, it was felt the brand had become a little dusty and anchored in the past. It needed modernising to engage a younger and broader socio-economic audience to protect market share.

• To do this, Tetley required a new brand communication proposition that can live across platforms, media and channels, with a domestic (UK) focus but with assets that might need to travel to other markets in the future.

• With very lean internal resource, the Tetley team needed a partner who could do the heavy lifting on this project, acting as an extension of the internal team.

• They needed a pitch process that would not be overly engineered but thorough enough to address the necessary levels of governance and reassurance that the right partner had been chosen.

• After a four-way pitch, Neverland were appointed as the winning agency. The Tetley team concluded that they were the right partner from a strategic, creative and cultural perspective, and their passion for the brand and their thinking blew them away.

How we helped Alzheimer's Society

• Dementia is now the UK’s biggest killer, with someone developing it every three minutes. There are 850,000 people with dementia, and this is set to reach 2 million by 2051. One in three people will become a carer for someone with dementia in their lifetime.

• Alzheimer’s Society is the UK’s leading dementia charity, campaigning for change, funding research and supporting people living with dementia today.

• The Society had recently created a new strategy to provide a unifying, singular sense of organisational purpose so that it can be clearly and succinctly explained to all stakeholders.

• They were therefore looking to appoint an external creative agency to work alongside their internal capabilities to plan and deliver the work needed for a brand refresh and execution.

• We worked with the team to identify a shortlist of agencies who were invited to pitch, with New Commercial Arts ultimately being appointed.

How we helped Freesat

• Freesat is the UK’s biggest free to air satellite television service. Operating within an increasingly competitive landscape, Freesat has continued to invest and evolve its business. From becoming a manufacturer, to launching a new device, website and a D2C proposition in the short space of 9 months, by early 2021 they had created a unique free to air organisation in the UK.

• These businesses changes meant that their communication needs were also changing, and they needed to be sure they had the right partners on board to support the business moving forward.

• Freesat embarked on a media and creative pitch process, with the support of AAR and, in April 2021, the brand appointed TMW Unlimited to its creative account and The Specialist Works to its media account.