Upfront Business Development

Establishing Silence Media as the pioneer of a new approach to online advertising

“Upfront have played an invaluable role in the development of Silence’s business from the very beginning. They understand our market, but more importantly they make things happen!”  

Lee Henshaw - Founder, Silence Media  

Silence Media was established January 2009, with the aim of pioneering a performance-based online video banner advertising pricing model called Cost Per Engagement (CPE).

The approach – building the agency profile and revenue at the same time.

Initially leveraging the Founder’s extensive experience in the music and entertainment industry, we pulled together and segmented the Founders existing contacts, and sourced new data to create a pipeline of potential prospects.

At the same time, we developed a robust communications plan, detailing media opportunities, speaker opportunities and third party alliances. This was to gain real recognition for the new model, and get it talked about positively by key industry titles and trade body associations.

Working alongside any exposure we delivered a highly targeted Business Development programme that included a mix of calling activity, relationship building, and email marketing.

The outcome – a massive amount of coverage and significant business wins.

Upfront has now built Silence’s profile as market leader in pioneering the CPE model across the music and entertainment sector. At the same time we have successfully illustrated the range and quality of work and thinking at Silence.

Business has been won so far with Ministry of Sound, Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

Other successes include:

• Generated industry discussion within the marketing arena on the CPE model. Published news, profile, case studies in trade press: CMU Daily, Revolution, New Media Age (cover story), Marketing, Campaign, Admap, brand-e.biz, brandrepublic.co.uk, and utalkmarkering.com.
• Critiqued by New Media Knowledge and E-consultancy, and trade bodies, BPI (the British record music industry trade organisations and IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau). Resulted in key speaking opportunities, and member of IAB Talent Force.
• Silence’s positioning as innovative company, resulted in the agency winning a place to pitch business to brands at two prestigious and global events, Midem and SXSW.