Jaywing PLC Q&A: Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies Report (LON:JWNG)

Jaywing Plc
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Jaywing PLC (LON:JWNG) Chairman Martin Boddy caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies Report

 

Q1: Friday we saw the release of Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies Report, how did Jaywing get on in the top 100?

A1: Well, I’m pleased to say that Jaywing’s climb a place to rank 21st in the Top 100 Digital Agencies.

 

Q2: The report not only details financial performance of agencies but takes an in depth look at the industry and Jaywing was particularly highlighted in the relation to the rise of the smart creative and its use of artificial intelligence. Can you tell us more about that?

A2: It was great to see that our advance in the field of data science, artificial intelligence and virtual reality we’re highlighted in the smart creative article. We absolutely believe that brand will be as critical as performance in a future that will see machines, marketing to other machines and where voice will be the new face of how consumers search and connect with those machines.

We’ve got a longstanding approach to collaboration and bringing key disciplines and deep specialisms together to create innovative products and that frees both our specialists and clients to be more creative in taking advantage of those opportunities.

 

Q3: The report also highlights that agencies are encountering challenges in attracting and retaining such skilled individuals, do you have an issue with this?

A3: We’ve fostered a culture and a way of working that’s attractive, I think, to really highly skilled people. If you look at our data science consulting division, that now accounts for 1 in 10 of our employees and it’s one of the fields where these advanced skills are in really really short supply in the UK and consequently, retention is key.

The good news for us is attrition is exceptionally low, we’ve got around half of our data scientists that have been with the company for over 5 years and more than 15% of the data scientists are over 15 years. Fundamentally, that’s because it’s a great place to do data science with some exceptional data scientists.

 

Q4: One of the key themes in the report is the threat to agencies from big consultancies as clients approach large scale digital transformation projects, do you see this as an issue for Jaywing?

A4: Well, we’ve certainly noticed this issue too as clients continue to grapple with both the complexities and opportunities that come with technological advances. We believe we offer the best of both worlds in terms of digital transformation as big consultancies don’t tend to have the creative skills sets that we do and agencies don’t tend to have the scale and capability that we do in data science.

We are deliberately made up of specialists who’ve got experts in all the fields needed to design and build and integrate infrastructure and create and execute efficient and effective marketing activities right throughout the entire customer experience.

 

Q5: There’s also been a significant shift, according to the report, to brand marketers consolidating agency relationships, is this an issue for the company?

A5: We’ve certainly seen this shift to agency consolidation which was mentioned in the report and because we offer both breadth and depth last year we saw an increase from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 of our top 50 clients taking more than one of our services. Now, in some cases, you see clients that are taking their agencies in-house or asking agencies to actually create agencies specifically for them, but there’s kind of a risk that those agencies lack the broader context although for those clients it clearly offers a focus.

I guess we wouldn’t be averse to offering such arrangement, we already cultivate relationships that see clients working in our buildings alongside our teams and vice versa. We’ve long since located our people as part of internal teams on client sites and this ensures they operate as one with the client but still gives them access to their agency colleagues to keep up to date with all the latest thinking. We also spend a lot of time upscaling clients to allow them to take on tasks themselves and in so doing we keep the value in the relationship. For me, this kind of agility demonstrates our clients focus and why clients are deepening their relationship with us.

 

Q6: The key threats to agencies, identified in the report, include Brexit, the US election and GDPR, how does Jaywing view those?

A6: As we highlighted when we published our results in July, we’ve seen a small number of our clients exercising caution towards their marketing budgets particularly those in the retail sector. We believe this was in direct response to all the political and economic uncertainty at the beginning of the financial year, it’s been quite a year.

However, I don’t see GDPR as a threat and actually far from it because marketeers need to understand and embrace what it means beyond the regulation itself and our skills mean we can absolutely address the basic regulatory requirements. We also believe there’s a real opportunity for brands to reset the way in which they communicate with their customers, it forces a genuine value exchange and respect for all customers, as well as sharpening the focus on a great customer experience. These are things that we bang the drum about for as long as I can remember.

 

Q7: Finally, how would you summarise your reaction to the report?

A7: In summary, I think the report very much points to a bright future for Jaywing, we bridge the divide between agencies and consultancies perfectly and our deep specialism in data science clearly differentiates us. We’re delighted to have climbed the table, it’s always good to be on the up especially as this excludes our performance overseas where we’ve reported the growth in our Australia operation has outstripped that of the UK.

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