Upfront Business Development
Company News
Upfront celebrates 7th birthday
In May 2005 Upfront was launched. We had the vision, and ambition, to innovate and change the way outsourced new business is undertaken within the marketing sector. We moved to our first offices - overlooking Saatchi’s on Charlotte Street - and began working with our first retained clients. We saw these early clients – as we do every client – as an opportunity to establish our reputation for delivering new business success, and helping our clients to grow their business. 7 years on we still work with one of them, and another we generated over £10 million worth of new business wins during a very successful 5 year programme.
Today we’re now based in the heart of Clerkenwell, and have grown from 2 to 27 people. Over the last 7 years we’ve developed new business programmes for over 150 agencies, and helped our clients win new business with hundreds of brands; including the likes of Coca Cola, Virgin Money, BT, Adidas, First Drinks, Panasonic, American Express, Cats Protection League, Thomas Cook, L’Oreal, B&Q, John Lewis, GSK and Barclays, to name but a few. We have, and continue to employ, extremely talented and dynamic business development professionals, who as well as delivering stand out results for our clients, provide the foundation and impetus for the development of our business, and the service we offer. Having consistently enjoyed year on year growth, our continued business success has been consistently achieved through a combination of our collective expertise and experience, and continuing to find, develop and retain exceptional staff, whilst providing a structure for them to flourish.
The last year has been particularly exciting for us with the successful roll out of a new management team, and the integration of a new organisational structure which has helped us advance our offering, and provide the foundations for continued growth. The business development team is now ably supported by our account management, operations, events, and research teams. This has allowed our business development team to maximize their time doing the things they are best at: identifying and developing new business opportunities for our clients. Whilst also providing complimentary skill sets which has helped us develop even more engaging campaigns and contact strategies for our clients - all in alignment with our ultimate goal of helping our clients win new business.
As part of our wider company strategy we have also extended our offering with the continued evolution of our new business tool, Darwin – feeding new business teams with daily insights and up to date decision maker contact details. We have also launched a specialist recruitment service, which we set up to help agencies find their own talented business development professionals. The addition of these services allows us to provide a complete solution for any business - be it in-house, outsourced, or a combination of the two – to help our clients maximize the opportunity to grow their business.
It has been a fantastic 7 years and we would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in getting us to where we are now. We remain true to our early ethos, and in particular like to maintain our ‘work hard, play hard’ value, so will be celebrating with a few drinks at the end of this week where we will be recognising everyone who has, and continues to play a big part in our growth. Please get in touch if you’d like to join us...
Jody Osman | Founder & Managing Partner
