The increased investment by brands in social, digital and content has led to one creative agency setting up its own standalone social business, as Andrew Murray of TBWA Ireland explains to John McGee.
With social media now accounting for close to 50% the estimated €1bn in digital spend in Ireland in 2024, more and more traditional creative shops have turned their sights on what continues to be a growth market, as brands increase their investment in digital and social media channels.
For the Omnicom-owned TBWA\Ireland, this has led to significant growth within the agency which, this time last year, was in the process of merging with sister agency BBDO Dublin.
Now the agency has trained its sights on carving out a lucrative slice of the Irish social market with FEED by TBWA, a standalone brand-led social, digital, content and performance agency that sits side-by-side with its other creative, planning, production and research offerings.
“By January 2025, FEED will have 24 people on board,” says Andrew Murray, executive director of FEED.
“That makes us the biggest digital, social, and content offering in Ireland’s creative agency space. We’re driving more than 30% of the agency’s revenue and over €1m in assisted revenue each month for one of our clients alone,” he says.
While the agency had been offering social and content services to clients for a number of years, growth over the past four years has been strong, he says.
“When I joined TBWA back in 2017, I was the lone “social person” in the building. At the time, big brands were already in the door, but social media campaigns were just an add-on to larger, traditional campaigns,” he says.
“Dee [Deirdre Waldron, CEO] and Fergal [Fergal Behan, CFOO ] brought me in to change that mindset, to help brands think beyond the usual playbook, and to build a real social media and content team from the ground up,” he says.
“As our digital, social, content and performance game grew stronger at TBWA, Dee and I had been talking about launching a branded offering for years. In January 2024, however, we put those plans into motion – soft launching in March. Fast forward to July 2024, and FEED by TBWA officially went live,” says Murray.
Headed up on a day-to-day basis by Luke Wilson, FEED also has the support of a full suite of creative, design, and client services from the wider TBWA team. Clients of FEED now include Dalata, Clayton and Maldron Hotels, eir, Chadwicks, Tourism Northern Ireland, Burger King, Glenveagh, Denny, BestDrive by Continental, Audi, Volkswagen and Optimum Nutrition.
“It’s been a whirlwind journey – and it’s been rocky at times, but the goal is clear: keep innovating, keep growing, keep delivering and keep disrupting,” Murray says.
While FEED operates as a standalone business within the agency – and works with non-creative clients- it does tap into all the agency’s different disciplines, Murray says.
“For example, at the beginning of 2024, we won the social media and performance social accounts for Dalata, Clayton and Maldron Hotels across four markets.
“We began by creating new brand strategies, fed from insights gathered from our proprietary research methodology, 100Voices, to deliver new positionings for the Dalata, Clayton, and Maldron brands. Simultaneously we also developed a total brand redesign and guidelines – with brand and social/content shoots by our BOLT by TBWA [the agency’s in-house production unit] to feed website and social media assets,” he says.
“This beautifully challenging task from Dalata Hotel Group provided us with the opportunity to showcase the breadth of our expertise – all with the goal of creating three distinctive brand worlds,” Murray says.
Soaring ROAS
“From consumer research to brand strategy and positioning; from branding development and design to brand building social with performance and community management – this process has allowed us to showcase the power of looking at the ‘total brand world.’ Since the rollout of our social and performance strategy in February – we’re seeing a ROAS of 15, and the new total brand world refresh on social has increased brand scores and performance – driving more direct revenue onsite,” he adds.
Apart from Dalata, Maldron and Clayton, FEED-only clients include the likes of Burger King and Chadwicks.
“For Burger King, we have just developed a new always-on soon-to-be launched social and content strategy for Gen Zs so keep an eye on TikTok and Reels,” Murray says.
“For Chadwick’s, meanwhile, we’re partnering with their marketing and digital team to elevate Chadwicks’ always-on digital and social presence and performance even further. The goal is – boosting brand salience, enhancing customer experience, and ultimately driving sales through best-in-class social, PPC and SEO strategies.”
“Again, for Dalata, Clayton and Maldron Hotels – we’re driving largescale brand awareness, consideration and ultimately conversion,” he adds.
“We’re looking to decrease bookings with online travel aggregators and direct bookings through their new websites. The results in 2024 have exceeded KPIs and our own expectations with an average monthly ROAS of 15 and a 15% increase in average booking value. And that includes upper funnel activity and not just conversion ads”
Another client example Murray cites is that of Glenveagh Homes, a client of both the creative mothership and FEED.
“We create always-on brand building and drive performance for all new Glenveagh developments. Earlier this year, for example, we created a new five-part content series called ‘New Build versus Doer-Upper’ for the company. The series, hosted by Dermot Bannon, followed a first-time buyer family as they navigate the home-buying journey and decide whether a new-build home or a second-hand doer-upper is right for them,” he says.
Content for the campaign was created and produced by the agency’s in-house production business Bolt – which also operates as a standalone unit – and for a relatively small media spend across Meta, Google Ads Network and TikTok, it generated 30m impressions, 13m page views, 18,200 engagements, 69,600 clicks to the Glenveagh site, over 77,000 hours of content watched and 15,400 lead sign-ups by people seeking more information about buying a Glenveagh home.
For the time being, Murray doesn’t see any slow-down in the rate of investment brands will make in social and digital over the next few years. For FEED, he says it’s about “building brands, grabbing attention, and driving performance in every feed, every single day. It’s all about taking the expertise we’ve honed over years in brand strategy and applying it to the fast-moving, attention-grabbing world of social and digital. FEED is about bringing strategy and creativity together to create content that works harder and delivers results,” he concludes.
