Armadillo is an independent CRM agency that combines data, insight, and strategy with talent, personality, and craft to deliver fantastic work and unrivalled ROI for global brands such as McDonald’s, Carnival UK and Disney.
This week, we spoke to CEO James Ray, to discuss the company's rebirth and its current creative rennaisance.
How was your company born and where are you based?
Armadillo was born in 1991, when the two founders decided to leave their previous agency and set up their own marketing and design consultancy in Bath – right in the teeth of a recession. I joined in 1996, by which time the agency was 10 people strong and starting to specialise in Direct Marketing.
It was kind of re-born in 2017, when myself and my partners Andy Brown and Chris Thurling completed an MBO to take on ownership of the business, and re-located to Bristol where we are based today.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
In those early days it was visibility: we grew a couple of clients very rapidly, and still being a small team that left us limited bandwidth to try and make ourselves famous. We were the DM industry’s best kept secret.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
It was on my first account, Blockbuster. The Direct Marketing Manager and myself developed a bulletproof post-campaign analysis approach for our first high volume DM campaign, which we proved had delivered an impressive ROI.
We presented it back to the senior leadership in the business and answered every challenge with data-based evidence. It lit the touch paper for a massively successful programme.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
At Armadillo we’re focussed on how first party data can fuel creativity, that both builds our client’s brands and drives effectiveness and ROI from their CRM programme. I think more and more businesses are starting to realise the potential of this connected approach across their marketing strategy.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
Our teams work cross-functionally, with creative, data insight and tech expertise applied at the start, middle and end of the process. That means we get insight-driven, brand-building ideas that can be brought to life by technology and ready to be deployed efficiently and effectively across channels.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
We have an amazing team and some awesome clients: it’s not hard to keep people inspired by their colleagues, and motivated by the brands we work on. We have plenty of socials and benefits too.
But fundamentally we think the key to motivation is ensuring our people have great opportunities by working at Armadillo. We’ve just started rolling out a new appraisal and development programme, that we custom built around our company values.
It ensures that ensures everyone in our business has the benefit of regular, objective, evidence-based feedback, and puts them in the driving seat of their own career development. It’s already getting great results for our people and the business. It was hard work building it ourselves, but so worth it!
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
Like most in our industry, at the start of the pandemic we had to deal with the twin challenges of some clients reining in their budgets, while at the same time having to adapt rapidly to remote working.
However, with a combination of luck and good judgement, we’ve actually accelerated our growth, doubling the size of the business in the last two years, by ensuring CRM remained the most effective part of our client’s marketing mix at a time when budgetary accountability was higher than ever.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
I’ve been lucky to work with many talented, intelligent and motivated people in my career: colleagues, clients and fellow agency peers. I’m continually inspired by all of them.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Think about how you will continually provide opportunities and development for your people: it’s easy to lose sight of that when you’re focussed on developing clients and delivering great work. When you hit critical mass, retaining your best talent will be the most important factor in sustaining growth.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
We prioritise retaining our existing clients: we’ve been working with both of our biggest clients, McDonald’s and Disney, for over a decade. After that, our new business pipeline is a combination of inbound driven by our marketing programme and networks, as well as opportunities via intermediaries.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
I’d like to see the disciplines of data and creativity continue to come ever closer together.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
The DMA Awards site is a gold-mine of case studies on award winning work that was as effective as it was creative: https://dma.org.uk/awards/filter/curate
