Chairman’s statement:
Our ‘house of brands’ strategy seems to be paying off with our individual Agencies all developing well, they have seen great new Client wins, exciting new assignments from existing Clients and new expertise introduced.
The first half profit is more or less where we expected it to be but wasn’t helped by losses incurred following the significant scaling back of activity on the Aviva account and the poor performance within the Addiction Agency. Whilst now back on track following significant yet necessary management changes, it has affected our overall performance this year.
Nevertheless, our core businesses and our acquisition of balloon dog are performing within expectation and working closely together to bring added expertise to the whole and making our Group offering outstanding. When I look across our Client base I see a whole host of multi national companies and brands across a broad range of sectors as our Agencies take leading roles in their marketing and creative development. It really is astonishing to see who we work with and what we do with them.
We will continue to pursue our growth strategy and are also looking to invest this Autumn in San Francisco and Singapore, both of which are being driven by Client requests illustrating, yet again, how our Agencies form true partnerships with the businesses we do business with.