After 30 years in the industry, including a successful 2015 exit from the Leeds-based Cloudspotting agency he founded , Jon Swales is joining sector-specialist Creode as performance media director and a board-level partner.
Addressing his decision to join the financial specialist agency, Swales said: “The generalist agency model is under pressure from every direction. Clients can access talent directly, AI is commoditising execution, and the big networks are competing on price. The agencies that will thrive are those with genuine expertise in sectors where that expertise creates measurable value.”
Financial services is one such sector. Regulatory complexity, long consideration cycles, and the need to build trust create challenges that generalist agencies struggle to address. Creode has spent years building deep knowledge of how building societies, fintechs, and financial institutions acquire and retain customers.
READ MORE: Healthy ready meal delivery service makes digital PR appointment
“Most agencies treat financial services as just another vertical,” said Guy Weston, CEO of Creode.
“We’ve made it our entire focus. That means we understand the compliance landscape, we know what messaging works at different stages of the customer journey, and we can demonstrate commercial impact in ways that matter to CFOs, not just CMOs.”
The appointment also reflects a broader bet on technology as a differentiator – but technology built for purpose, not bolted on.
Creode has developed MosaicTM, a proprietary content management platform designed specifically for regulated industries. Where a generalist agency might offer a standard WordPress build, Mosaic
includes audit trails, sign-off workflows, and automated daily screenshots that document exactly what a site said and when – the kind of compliance evidence financial services firms need but rarely get from their agency.
“We built features that only matter if you understand the sector,” added Weston. “Migration tools that format content correctly to eliminate human error during platform moves. Monitoring for broken links and usability issues. A partnership with AudioEye for accessibility compliance. These aren’t selling points for most agencies because most agencies don’t work exclusively in regulated industries.”
The agency has integrated AI across its operations – from auditing client content to optimising campaign performance – allowing it to compete with larger agencies on output while maintaining the specialism that larger agencies can’t replicate.
“Scale used to be the advantage,” said Swales. “Now technology can give a focused team the firepower of a much larger operation. The question becomes: what do you know that others don’t? For us, the answer is financial services – and we’ve built the tools to prove it.”
Swales’ past client experience includes Ecology Building Society, and his expertise spans PPC, conversion rate optimisation, and marketing analytics.
