What does 2022 look like at Summit?

As we have now passed the halfway point in 2022 and Christmas is looming, Martin Corcoran has shared an update from Summit as we move into the second half of the year. It’s an exciting time for the business with a lot of growth on the horizon, so here’s a bit about what we’ve been doing and what’s a priority moving forward in 2022.

Feedback for Thought

Feedback is essential to progress so I want to say thank you to all of our clients and sponsors who contributed to our client satisfaction survey.  As well as being delighted with a Net Promoter Score of 47 (borderline ‘excellent’) and ‘Would Recommend’ score of 90% we got some welcome and constructive feedback.  In particular, clients told us how much they were looking forward to getting back to face-to-face meetings, so I hope that I / we increasingly make this happen in H2. We were also able to make a sizable donation to the Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief Fund as a thank you to the 40+ responders.

Fight for Talent

Key to client satisfaction and top of mind for me and Summit right now is the fight for people; the acquisition and retention of the best talent.  With nearly 1m UK job vacancies in the digital sector this is the #1 challenge facing our industry.  Retention of top talent is essential for consistency and performance and although I’m proud of our 84% retention of Summit staff, we can do more. The need for digital experience and the cost-of-living crisis is one of the reasons we made significant extra efforts to support staff financially in Spring and we will continue to show (rather than tell as some other agencies do!) our staff we’re serious about being the best employers. 

On the people front I’m pleased to welcome some top talent to Summit. Carl Hutchinson joined in June as Head of Paid Media. Carl has a wealth of experience and knowledge and I know his passion for paid media will have a big impact for all our clients.  We will also welcome Neil Collins to the Summit leadership team.  Neil, having previously been MD of a competitor agency, will take up the role of Managing Director of our Productcaster technology division from September 1^st (just as well Neil is joining as we have just signed a global agreement with The Hut Group, which is very exciting!).

Alongside this, we continue our partnership with Hull University and have recruited a further 13 graduates in the last 12 months (with more to come), as we fully commit to our approach of ‘developing our own’ talent.  Check out this this case study video from the Hull University Business School explaining our partnership further.

Continued Premier Partner Status

By now many of you will be aware Google has recently re-launched their Premier Agency Program.  They have reduced the number of Premier Partners but increased the investment into those who have remained in the programme and continue to excel; and we are delighted to be a Google Premier Partner for 2022.  For those clients who work with Summit on paid Google advertising, this means increased specialised support and more dedicated account support. We also remain the only agency in the UK who can provide specialist Google support for both Paid Media and Google Comparison Shopping, a sweet spot we are very proud of and unrivalled in retail.

It’s my job to wring every last benefit out of the Google Premier relationships and myself and the team will work tirelessly to do this on your behalf.  In particular I am working with our Google contacts to bring insights and innovations in regard to how we mitigate the impacts of low consumer confidence, cost of living crises and what looks like a potential recession.

As ever we thrive on partnership, collaboration and feedback so if you have questions, thoughts or ideas please reach out to myself, Ryan or the team at info@summitmedia.com.