Different Narrative was formed by the merger of Different Advertising, Design and Marketing, where Ben Quigley was CEO, and Narrative Integrated Communications. The Newcastle-based agency delivers a range of services and last year secured £250,000 investment from the North East Growth Capital Fund.
What was your first job (and how much did it pay)? At the Guardian, back when it was a national daily newspaper, no online in those days! I wanted to work in advertising so I got a job as a advertising sales executive on £15k, selling ad space to agencies and direct advertisers. It was a fortune back then and a great company to work for. Advertising sales was a great grounding and springboard into the industry.
What is the best advice or support you’ve been given in business? Make sure you are well funded with working capital in your business, so you can operate, expand, or deal with whatever life throws at you – whether it is enough capital to scale-up, or more recently to cope with a global pandemic!
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What are the main changes you’ve seen in your business/sector, and what are the challenges you’re facing? Many organisations are up-scaling their in-house marketing services, but typically for habitual, low-value, repetitive tasks. They still need fresh thinking for new product launches, re-brands, scaling-up and marketing advice and creativity outside ‘business as usual’ activities and this is where agencies still come in. Automation of marketing is also now increasingly important as a long term trend, but mainly for processing data quickly and heavy-lifting with programmatic to make simple adaptions at scale. And finally, proving the effectiveness of marketing has never been as important as now. At Different Narrative we have a proprietary tool called Marketing Engine, that shows the impact of marketing activity on sales, web traffic, whatever data is fed in. It blows clients’ minds and helps make investment decisions easier for CFOs.
How has the pandemic changed the way you work? Like most businesses we are now hybrid - working both at the office and at home. As a creative business, office working for heads-up and heads together early in the week is massive for us. Later in the week, heads down at home works to get the job done. Hybrid working also helps us attract and retain the best talent as an employer. Cloud tools for work from office and work from home like Microsoft Teams make this all work really well.
Who is your role model in business? I really like what I see from Malcom Walker at Iceland, he talks a lot of sense and is quietly effective as an authority in his sector and as a great ambassador and role model for British business. Iceland has evolved really well under his tenure.
What would your dream job be? Manager of West Ham United FC of course.
What advice would you give to someone starting out a career in your sector? Show you want it, show your commitment. Have a point of view and articulate it persuasively with evidence in support. It will help you stand out and show you can walk the talk. I love it when applicants critique our work from their own point of view. It’s not about ‘getting it right’, but having the courage to put forward a point of view, we need this in the industry.
What makes the North East a good place to do business? It's a Goldilocks city - big enough to have lots of major businesses across all sectors and with a great talent pool, small enough to be human with loads of connections and infrastructure available.
How important is it for business to play a role in society? It always has been.
Outside of work, what are you really good at? Socialising, walking my dog, watching sport and playing music. Renaissance man!
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