Focus on Manchester – Danny Turnbull, Managing Director of gyro Manchester

Tom Holmes

Founder & Chairman Creativebrief

Following our recent feature City Brand Leaders – Manchester, we interviewed a select group of leaders from Manchester’s top agencies to help focus on the Manchester brand and consider their own agency vision.

Creativebrief Founder & Chairman Tom Holmes talks to Danny Turnbull, Managing Director of gyro Manchester.

Danny Turnbull, gyro Manchester

About Danny

In spite of Danny’s position as Managing Director at gyro he still believes passionately in retaining an active involvement with all the agency’s major clients, and with over 18 years experience in client services for leading b-to-b and b-to-c agencies, he is both passionate and hugely experienced. He has a reputation for being straight talking, pragmatic and getting things done.

Danny has played a key role in championing results-led marketing within the industry and has built a team of people that can really deliver results and have the confidence to be measured against business rather than marketing objectives.

Danny’s extensive experience in branding and corporate identity have seen him heavily involved in some of the largest global and European initiatives. These include: re-branding the MBO of Zeneca to Avecia, Forte to Granada, Leyland to DAF amongst many others and more recently in refreshing the brand and corporate hierarchy for ACS (American Chemical Society).

TH: What does the Manchester brand stand for?

DT: As a 40 year old born and bred Mancunian I feel a great sense of affinity with the ‘Manchester brand’. I guess it stands for so much which is hard to codify but the city is one steeped in commerce (dating back to its cottonopolis roots), it’s the cradle of the industrial revolution, and has a beating heart of trade and innovation (also the birthplace of the modern computer and the internet). With one of the largest student populations in Europe it’s a youthful and multicultural city which embraces diversity. I’d say that Manchester is a working class city with a inherent work ethic, whilst all the cliches about it’s own unique sense of creativity endure, symbolised through so many famous artists and bands.

TH: Are the city’s brand values reflected in your own agency culture?

DT: Absolutely, gyro is a ‘global start up’ with a very unique sense of collective purpose and identity, but there’s still plenty of scope for local ‘personality’ within all of the markets in which we operate. As one of our more successful and long standing offices (the agency here was actually started in 1914), this is very much the case with our Manchester operation, that I believe reflects the city’s values of gritty, hard working individualism.

TH: Does being based in Manchester influence your creative output? If so, how?

DT: I think the answer has to be yes to this, although I guess it’s hard to quantify or illustrate – the city has a rich history of creativity, and it also has a large and enduring creative industry base which provides us with a deep and skilled labourforce.

TH: What makes your agency offer different?

DT: Everyone feels their agency is different and better – gyro on a global scale is genuinely unique as we offer the depth and quality of creative services that you would normally only find in some of the larger, ‘label’ agency networks but within a B2B space. Our operation in Manchester embodies this perfectly having operated in this space for many decades.

TH: Why should clients consider sourcing work from Manchester agencies?

I guess its hard to avoid the perception that Manchester agencies offer a better value for money service than our London based peers, however it’s important to stress this doesn’t mean cheaper, it’s just you get ‘more bang for your buck’.
Danny Turnbull, gyro Manchester

Trying to avoid the usual regional cliches,I’d say less arrogant and more hard working.

TH: What sort of clients do you particularly want to attract?

DT: Gyros offering is designed specifically to give blue chip B2B brands and marketers a viable alternative to the old network model – combining the ability to execute across disciplines and geographies, with economies of scale and scope, whilst being able to work in areas of extreme complexity.

TH: What work have you done recently makes you really proud?

DT: We’ve produced some great, brave work this year for brands like CPP, Powwownow, and ABN AMRO – we’ve picked up a sizeable number of awards and nominations, but greater success mertics lie in the impact that we’ve had on these clients businesses.

TH: What local brands do you most admire and why?

DT: I’ve always been wary of a parochial regional view of the agency scene. gyro does service some ‘local’ clients but our client base is global rather than regional – for example, we service clients in Paris, Amsterdam and the US from our Manchester offices. Without wanting to sound sycophantic I always had a deep admiration for the Marshalls brand as a clear market and marketing leader, and am proud to count them amongst our clients. On a personal level, as a football obsessive, I always wanted to work on the Umbro brand, and would hope that may be the case sometime in the future.

TH: Are there any local marketers who have inspired you?

DT: I’ve always been reticent to become too engrossed in a local agency scene as gyro doesn’t really compete in that space, although as a young agency professional growing up in the city I always had huge admiration for the big networks here like TBWA, JWT and McCanns. I worked with Mike Barrington and others at BJL in the 90′s and have always referenced their insight driven approach to creative communications which was a reflection of their JWT roots.

TH: What business would you most like to win?

DT: Personally I’d like to work on Hilti, it’s a perfect match for gyro and having worked their through my student days its would be great to be involved with them again. We don’t currently have a van manufacturer in our portfolio so that’s something I’d love to change too.

TH: Thanks Danny!