This year we’ve been running our London agency across two continents, with Co-founder and Creative Director Peter setting up a studio in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This has allowed us to forge new relationships with suppliers and creatives, as well as operating almost around the clock with a 16 hour day (KL being 8 hours ahead of GMT).
We’ve taken on clients in New Zealand, Malaysia, New York and Washington DC and have enjoyed the diversity of projects and individuals which these varying geographic cultures provide.
With Peter based on another continent for much of this year, we decided to ensure March remained steady and purposely left the business to grow organically, rather than invest too heavily in business development. That said March has continued to grow as successful London digital agency (turnover, project size, client size, client number) and we find ourselves looking back on a pile of completed projects we’re quite proud of.
Our favourite works will, of course, end up in our Projects section in time, but here’s a shortlist of our top projects this year:
- Connect Search – Branding and website for long-term recruitment client seeking global repositioning. View Connect Search Case Study.
- Albion Parties – Various event microsites for weddings and parties, for high net worth individuals.
- Stem Cell Fairy – Joint venture with Animation Guys (see below) providing design consultancy for a new website as well as a range of printed collateral. View Stem Cell Fairy Case Study.
- Healthy Back Bag – Collaboration with partner agency for rebranding, plus production of brand guidelines, hang tags, workbook and sales book printed materials. View Healthy Back Bag Case Study.
- March Branding – Our own website was finally redesigned and launched, winning several design awards on the way!
In 2017 we spent time building our network of partner agencies. This is proven to be more worthwhile than we would ever have predicted with a large chunk of work secured as a result of partner referrals. We would like to give particular attention to PilotBean (https://www.pilotbean.com) with whom Peter and I have a long-standing relationship, but this year we have collaborated closely with them on 4 large projects, resulting in a much renewed and closer relationship between the two teams.
Also, we doff our caps to The Animation Guys (http://theanimationguys.com) who we met in late spring. Managing Director Jamien Middleton has proven to be a great source of entrepreneurial prowess and the locator of leads. Among others we found ourselves working together on a project for a new biomedical startup Stem Cell Fairy, which was a very enjoyable and creative project for the March team.
As we plan for 2018, the aim is to focus on business development activity. As all our work has been acquired via word of mouth recommendations to date, this is an interesting and exciting time for March. We hope to continue to grow our network of partner agencies as this has already proven to bear fruit, but we will look more closely at our client acquisition as well.
We will reposition March to focus our target markets and ensure we do not dilute our expertise and instead strengthen our offering to our key sectors.
Of course, this must all happen whilst maintaining the strong relationships with have with our existing clients and with the continuation of high-quality work and service we offer as a small dynamic agency.
It’s hard work running your own business – any business owner will tell you that – but it’s also a highly rewarding and fulfilling experience. We’re excited about what 2018 will bring!
AHEAD
