Bicycle has launched in Manchester with Cath Offord as founding partner.
Offord has set up the new venture following two decades in the media and advertising industry, most recently holding senior roles at Notorious Communications and Dentsu, where she spent 19 years, latterly as managing director of activation and delivery.
The new business is “built for ambitious growth-stage brands that have become brilliant at digital performance but are starting to hit a familiar problem: spending more in the same channels is no longer delivering the same incremental growth.”
Bicycle calls it the digital performance plateau and believes broadcast and AV can unlock the next phase of growth. But doing AV well is hard. It requires specialist planning and trading expertise, the right creative, intelligent use of data and, crucially, the ability to prove what that investment has actually delivered for the business.
“The old approach isn’t working hard enough for clients,” says Offord.
“There are brilliant businesses across Manchester and the North that have built themselves through performance marketing. They know how to drive an outcome and they know how to measure it. But eventually many of them hit the same problem. They’re spending more but they’re not seeing the same incremental growth. That’s the digital performance plateau.
“The next growth can come from moving up the funnel into broadcast and AV, but that has traditionally felt like a huge leap. Bigger budgets, less flexibility and a much harder job proving what actually worked. We’re here to change that.”
Bicycle Manchester says it will use accountable broadcast and AV to help turn stagnant media spend into scalable business growth.
The agency will combine specialist planning and trading expertise with Bicycle’s technology and measurement capabilities, with measurement built into the approach from the outset rather than treated as something that happens after the campaign.
The aim is to give growth stage brands a level of accountability from broadcast and AV that they have traditionally associated with performance media.
“We can start intelligently, test, learn and scale. But more importantly, we can hold AV to account.
“We don’t want clients to simply believe their investment worked because reach went up or people saw an ad. We want to be able to demonstrate the contribution that investment made to growth.
“Bicycle has incredibly sophisticated measurement capabilities that allow us to go much further than reporting what we bought and how many people we reached. We can understand the impact AV is having and use that evidence to make the next investment work harder.
“If we’re asking an ambitious business to move investment out of channels it knows and into something new, we should be prepared to prove why that was the right decision.”
For Offord, the opportunity is also about challenging some of the established rules of the Northern agency market.
Manchester is one of the UK’s fastest growing city regions, yet Offord believes the media industry has failed to keep pace with that growth. Too much media investment and decision making continues to flow to London, while Manchester is still too often treated as a satellite market.
“Manchester has the ambition, the businesses and the talent, but our industry hasn’t evolved quickly enough around it.
“I’ve spent more than 20 years working in this market and I’ve seen the same patterns play out again and again. Network agencies moving conflict business North without enough respect for the market. Brilliant Northern brands assuming they need a London agency to get the best thinking. And too much business changing hands based on relationships rather than who can genuinely help a brand grow.
“I’m from this market. I care about it and I want Bicycle Manchester to help break that cycle.
“Agencies and platforms continue to service their own interests over those of their clients. I’m not interested in building another agency that plays by those rules. “We’re here to show digital born brands how they can confidently make that leap into premium video to unlock their next stage of growth”.
Bicycle Manchester brings Bicycle’s existing power of AND proposition to the Northern market, combining media, performance and creative around one objective: client growth.
For Offord, that philosophy was central to the decision to build Bicycle Manchester with Bicycle.
“Bicycle thinks about the agency model in a way that really resonates with me. It’s not brand or performance, media or creative, short term or long term. It’s the power of AND.
“And creative is really important in all of this. If we’re going to tell a growth stage brand that broadcast and AV can unlock its next phase of growth, we also need to take responsibility for what that brand is saying when it gets there.
“That means taking accountability for the media and the creative, while using technology and AI where appropriate to reduce some of the traditional production barriers that have made AV feel out of reach for growing brands.”
For Offord, the ambition is not to create a Northern outpost of a London agency.
“This isn’t about putting a Bicycle sign above a Manchester office and recreating another agency.
“It’s about taking what is brilliant about Bicycle and combining it with a genuine understanding of this market.
“I want us to build something new, made in Manchester, powered by clearer rules and with a proper focus on client growth. A place brilliant people want to be part of and that clients genuinely want to work with.
“Manchester doesn’t need to imitate London and Northern brands shouldn’t have to look south for the best thinking.”
Pedro Avery, executive chairman of Bicycle London and co-founder of Bicycle Manchester said: “Broadcast is the most accountable channel there is, but the market’s forgotten how to prove it. We’re here to remind them. Manchester’s agencies and brands deserve better than inherited media planning dogma. That starts with bringing real discipline, real data, real measurability back to AV buying.
“This sector lives and dies by people. Cath’s one of the few leaders I know who doesn’t just talk about putting clients first, she actually builds everything around that discipline. She’s smart, she’s uncompromising on standards, and she’s got the respect of everyone she’s worked with. When we sat down to build Bicycle Manchester, the answer to ‘who do we want running this’ was immediate. There was no one else.”
