New briefs total £24m

Looking back over the year

The main story for us in 2006 has been the growth in client activity. It has by any measure, been nothing short of phenomenal. What has been particularly encouraging has been both the growth in new clients coupled with the increase in repeat business from existing clients - surely the best measure of success.

Our year started with the launch of our new website, redeveloped on the experience of two years of use, your comments and extensive research. everyone seems to like it, find it easier and cleaner to use and faster to get results - this helps to explains the rise in online search activity, but it's also the growth in diversity of categories now covered in the database and the massive growth in agency subscriptions and renewals.

Worth a note on renewals, as like client repeat business, the truest measures of our success. Well I am delighted to report the strength of our client interaction has taken our renewal rates to close to a practical level 100%, given the natural fall off and changes in this market. This is a considerable upturn and directly reflects the strength and diversity of our client brief and review activity.

So, what have we done this year?

Here are a few of the highlights,

• Client briefs up 40%, value up from an average £550,000 to £1,500,000.
• Briefs across advertising, DM, SP, digital, sponsorship, field marketing, insight and strategy, experiential, events management, market research, production and public relations amongst others.
• Legal & General. Against stiff opposition from intermediaries and consultancies, we won the pitch to handle the roster review for the L&G brand. This is long term work that will continue well into 2007.
• The Marketing Society. in June 2006, we launched a milestone agreement with the UKs leading senior client marketer organisation. This allows every member to have access to our website service and to use our managed brief service.
• Strategic relationships. We now have several formalised relationships with some of the world's leading companies. These lead to a constant stream of review and roster management assignments and are set to develop fast in 2007 as more and more clients repeat their use of our services.

All this progress takes us into 2007 with a range of opportunity to develop what works (our client engagement and agency subscriptions), grow the potential for our new and constantly improving website and build strategic relationships with more and more of our clients.

Best wishes for Christmas and New Year

Paul Duncanson
Managing Director
Key clients that have used creativebrief in 2006

A selection of the most high profile briefs in 2006

More new agencies on creativebrief