Creative Marketing Services

Leeds has had a full-service marketing agency in Creative Marketing Services since 1982. The firm calls itself the longest established in the city and a multi-award winning one, and its site counts a forty-four year track record, a team of twenty, 112 brands launched and 672 campaigns created. It has a base in Leeds and a presence in London, from which it says it can cover Yorkshire and the whole of the UK.

Skills under one roof

The agency describes itself as one of the few genuinely integrated agencies, because the skills are held within its own teams rather than bought in. It lists several web developers, several senior SEO specialists, a team that makes marketing and viral video, and digital marketing staff, working alongside strategists, journalists, communicators and designers. The work begins with a marketing strategy, including offline strategy, and carries on through traditional and digital channels. The skills it lists include pay-per-click setup and management, social media work that extends to handling a crisis online, and advertising in the traditional above, below and out-of-home categories, so that both old and new media sit within one plan.

Working as the client's marketing department

A good part of the pitch is a retained arrangement in which the agency acts as a client's in-house marketing department. The reasoning is that few organisations could justify the cost of every specialist it employs. Under a monthly fee it includes regular face-to-face strategy meetings at the client's offices, and it describes itself as proactive, offering ideas rather than waiting for briefs. It also offers free advice on SEO, social media and marketing questions.

How the work is judged

The agency says the only results that matter to it are the ones that matter to the client, and describes its team as passionate experts who work together as one unit. It credits its length of service to that mix of people, and says a client gets the benefit of a prestigious client list and a long record in building brands without having to assemble the separate specialists itself.

Clients and outlook

The agency says it works with large and small companies, with experience of marketing to other businesses as well as selling straight to consumers. It calls itself a performance agency at heart, and states that it wants to turn marketing budgets from an overhead into an investment. It describes its approach as working alongside clients rather than across the table from them.

Creative Marketing Services is a full-service marketing agency in Leeds that has been building brands since 1982. It plans marketing strategy and then carries it out across both traditional and digital channels, and it also has a presence in London. The agency covers Yorkshire and the rest of the UK and works as an extension of its clients' own teams.

What Creative Marketing Services does

• Marketing strategy: planning for offline and online campaigns, with regular face-to-face strategy meetings at client offices.
• Digital marketing: SEO, PPC setup and management, and social media, including social media crisis management.
• Web development: sites built by in-house developers.
• Video: marketing and viral video production.
• Advertising: above-the-line, below-the-line and out-of-home campaigns.
• Outsourced marketing department: a retained service for firms that cannot justify hiring every specialist themselves.

Clients

The agency works with companies large and small, in both business-to-business and direct-to-consumer markets.

Key facts

• Based in: Leeds, with a presence in London
• Founded: 1982
• Team: 20 staff
• Track record: 112 brands launched