In 2008 we celebrated our 10th year in digital and fittingly achieved BLM Quantum's most successful year since launching the agency back in 1998.
It was the year we went international in Spain, Italy and Ireland and won several high profile new clients including 118 118, Tesco and Legal & General from full service agencies. We successfully expanded our offering beyond media with investment in a host of new channels, services and proprietary tools which saw billing up 30% and pass £50m for the first time.
We launched a Social Media Unit which was hired by Budweiser to build visibility of the True Dedication campaign, a creative services arm in partnership with New Media Maze to manage all of Domino's Pizza and Pathe creative, a Mobile Applications build division, and invested heavily in SEO and a Data Analytics service, Q-Lab to take our service wheel 360° - winning the contracts for Setanta, Haven Holidays, Flythomascook and TK Maxx from specialist agencies.
Innovation in new tools included Landscape Online, a planning tool which analyses the digital behaviour of target audiences and measures cross-media consumption to identify the best online strategic approach. It is totally unique to the industry and been instrumental in a sharp rise in brand investment for our clients.
We attracted brilliant new talent, such as our Client Services Director Ed Cox - previously Head of Interactive at audit firm Billets and Paul Bennett as Head of Search from Engine, who have played important roles with various industry bodies such as the IPA and IAB.
Most importantly of all, with performance at the heart of our agency proposition, we have retained our full client roster in 2008 - not least the £19m T-Mobile business despitestiff competition in a pitch against Mediacom who operate as T-Mobile's global media agency of record.
It has ultimately been the performance of our work in 2008 from which our year can best be judged and so in Part 2 of this paper, we outline the commercial impact BLM Quantum has had on our client's business performance across a broad range of digital channels.