Monthly Archives: December 2019

TLA 2019 Round-Up: charity challenges, awards and more…

2019 has been a year of challenge and opportunity. We raised over £25,000 from our various charity events throughout the year, won awards, formed new partnerships and held a one-off idea generation workshop for media agencies and publishers.

Here’s a quick look back at the major highlights and our favourite moments from 2019.

The Lead Agency awarded Google Partner status

We are delighted to announce that The Lead Agency has achieved Google Partner status, demonstrating our expertise and knowledge of delivering high-performance Google Ads campaigns.

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Media industry completes London to Brighton cycle for mental health

Back in June, riders from some of the UK’s biggest media agencies and publishers joined forces on Friday for an epic, 63-mile cycling adventure in aid of NABS.

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TLA, Ford and Mindshare win Best Lead Generation Campaign at the PMAs

We are thrilled to announce that our work alongside media partners Mindshare and GTB on behalf of Ford has won Best Lead Generation Campaign at the Performance Marketing Awards 2019.

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Key takeaways from Jonathan Levav’s Liverpool City Region roundtable event

Last month, Liverpool City Region played host to a special guest – Stanford School of Business professor of marketing Jonathan Levav – who shared his insights from the California tech scene.

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Press release: HonestJohn.co.uk and The Lead Agency form exclusive partnership

Online publisher HonestJohn.co.uk and customer acquisition specialist The Lead Agency (TLA) have formed an exclusive partnership that will allow automotive brands to reach more in-market car buyers as they research their next vehicle.

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Keep an eye out for what 2020 has in store for TLA on our social channels.

Our highlights from the European Data Protection Summit

We were among the 300+ delegates in attendance at the European Data Protection Summit last month to take in some great sessions on GDPR, privacy and more.

The two-day event covered GDPR 16 months on from its introduction, privacy in the era of AI and other emerging technologies and tracking cookies and the need for organisations to ensure that they are following lawful process.

Among the key takeaways from the latter session were:

  • Analytics cookies are not ‘strictly necessary’ and so can’t be used without consent;
  • A high level of (GDPR-compliant) consent must be obtained;
  • No cookies should be dropped until that consent has been given and all third parties should be named.

This will have a significant impact on how many organisations operate.

Another key takeaway from the Summit was that many companies have been waiting for the new ePrivacy Regulation before making any changes – but it may never become law in the UK if its date of application falls after the end of any transition period when the UK leaves the EU.

However, the UK will no doubt have to adopt similar rules even if the ePrivacy Regulation does not apply, so it’s important to be prepared and plan for these changes.

For more insights from the event, contact the TLA compliance team.

Future Leaders Programme introduced for TLA

The Future Leaders Programme has been introduced for those at TLA who have shown potential to become a manager and leader, giving them the opportunity to benefit from further development.

It supports the vision for The Lead Agency which is to have inspiring, confident, empowering leaders and skilled people who take personal responsibility for delivering results, building powerful relationships and enhancing our reputation for doing good in the world.

The Academy is a cross-departmental opportunity, open to all and is run in partnership with I AM Impact who are experts in Executive Leadership and Development.

I AM Impact Founder Steve McCann commented “I am delighted to be working the TLA future leaders to support their leadership development journey. Combining our coaching and training expertise, and board level experience with TLA’s energy, innovation and high growth track record will create a stimulating, challenging and fun learning environment for us all”.

The programme will run for 12 months and consists of research, action learning and project-based modules covering the following subject areas: The TLA Way, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Finance, Innovation and Managing Projects.

Anton Hanley, Founder and CEO of TLA said: “We have amazing talent within our organisation and I am incredibly proud of each and every member of our team for the effort, commitment and ingenuity they bring to their work every day. Establishing the FLP is our way of saying that we value you and we want you to be the best you can possibly be so here is our support and investment  in you as a future leader of our business.”

The FLP is a win-win-win for us all, our people grow and develop, our business develops leadership talent from within and our Industry develops visionary leaders for the future.

The programme will also be supported by senior executive ‘mentors’ from within the business who will be responsible for elements of the course design and delivery based upon their own functional expertise and leadership experience. This will ensure that we create the best climate for skills development, knowledge transfer and innovative thinking that directly supports TLA’s business strategy.

Key takeaways from Jonathan Levav’s Liverpool City Region roundtable event

Last month, Liverpool City Region played host to a special guest – Stanford School of Business professor of marketing Jonathan Levav – who shared his insights from the California tech scene.

Prior to an afternoon session at Liverpool’s Hope Street Hotel, which unpicked the patterns of creativity used by Silicon Valley’s best, Levav spent the morning with a range of professionals, tech companies, policy makers and academic organisations for an exclusive roundtable.

The event was organised by sponsors Brabners, Growth Platform, The Lead Agency and RSM. Here are their key takeaways from an inspiring discussion.

Mark Basnett, managing director at Growth Platform reflects on the discussion: “Collaboration between the universities, public sector and private organisations is critical to success – bringing together the right mix of support to nurture good ideas and successfully take them to market. This theme also extends into building a tech community that supports each other to grow as this enables entrepreneurs to take a risk as they have the support of a wider network.”

Anton Hanley, Group CEO at The Lead Agency, said: “It was interesting to hear about the difference in risk appetite between the UK and the US. Failing is a rite of passage that all entrepreneurs go through; but in the US there is a transparency around this, and a belief that through persistence it leads to better outcomes. In the UK, there is more fear around failure and a tendency to move on quickly from setbacks. As Jonathan highlighted, changing this mindset can help us encourage more innovation.”

Graham Bond, Liverpool and Chester office managing partner at RSM agrees but warned that a track record of failure doesn’t help when getting finance: “The development process can be detrimental to that next step of growth; but ‘smart money’ shouldn’t fear failure, it should expect it and help put a framework of support and advice around each investment to maximise the chances of success.

“This could be where the government and policyholders need to step in to provide incentives, whether its tax breaks; business rates relief; or a match funding system that allows entrepreneurs to test an idea, and probably fail a few times; before they land on the winning product or service.”

Nik White, managing partner at Brabners, said: “It was clear from the organisations around the table and key initiatives launching across the city that Liverpool City Region is heading in the right direction; but we need to create some hype about the amazing academic research, start-ups and established businesses that is going on under the radar. This hype will not only showcase the innovation in the city, but catch the eye of talent, investors and other tech businesses, which is needed to create an effective ecosystem.”

Following on from Jonathan visit, Growth Platform and partners are now looking to establish an Innovation Ecosystem working group to take forward the discussion and the issues raised.