Q&A – Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text 100

How has the economic climate changed the way you work?

Many clients continue to deal with lingering financial pressures from the previous two years and have sought ways to bolster their brands and drive awareness through social channels. Many of these clients sought to hone their message to a marketplace that was in turmoil, more competitive and more difficult to attract customers. Text 100 has been able to provide more brand positioning and messaging services in the last year to clients in these situations.

Which three offices have been experiencing the greatest growth over the 12 months to July 31 2010? Why?

The three offices that grew the most were Paris, Shanghai, and Johannesburg. Project work across multiple clients in Western Europe helped fuel the growth in our Paris office, while both Shanghai and Joburg benefited from the rapid pace of growth endemic to the world’s emerging market economies.

What were your agency’s three highlights of the past year?

• We invested heavily in training all Text 100 staff globally in social media by doubling our training budget and the number of consultants dedicated to this offering.
• We appointed industry veteran, Sarah Howe, as our global leader for Campaign Innovation. This is a strategic investment focused on elevating the creativity of our work for clients worldwide.
• We completed a comprehensive restructure of our business worldwide in June 2010. We’ve split the globe into five regions and appointed leaders for four of these through internal promotions. This change brought our most senior leaders closer to clients and the business.

Tell us about one account for which your agency is producing creative and effective digital work

At MTV, Text 100 led communications for MTV’s first ever Twitter Jockey (TJ) Contest, driving over 100 broadcast and radio segments, including The Today Show. In addition, the team secured hundreds of print and online stories and drove thousands of people to the TJ Facebook page through twitter and other social media channels.

We are also taking what we learned in driving social media communications programs and applying it in other business functions. During the past year, for example, we executed ‘Social Media for Sales’ projects for a number of high profile clients that helped each enterprise identify how to engage their sales prospects more tangibly within individual social channels.

What are the most effective ways of encouraging more collaborative working between global sister agencies?

While other agencies boast a global presence, Text 100 IS global through and through. It makes no difference to an employee whether they’re talking to someone in their own office or reaching out to a colleague elsewhere.

This entrenched belief that we are one team means our employees and clients can always count on the full support of Text 100 colleagues in any office at any time. We work with the majority of our top 20 clients in at least two markets, which is a reflection of Text 100’s talented global staff and strong global philosophy. We also tap into specialised capabilities within the Next Fifteen Communications Group portfolio of companies to bring supplementary skills and expertise to bear on our clients’ behalf. In the past year we worked with Redshift Research, 463 Communications and Beyond to support additional opportunities at Text 100 clients and prospects.

What was your best decision over the past year?

Text 100 invested heavily in training our staff in social media and it has paid off. Social media continues to present a myriad of opportunities for our clients to communicate with every target audience, from customers to partners to influencers. Even with PR budgets under pressure, we have conducted campaigns that integrated social media seamlessly, amplifying our clients’ messages and creating more opportunities for meaningful conversations. The investment has made us more valuable to our existing clients and more attractive to potential clients.

What will successful global PR agencies be doing in 2011?

Our strategy for 2011 focuses on smart investment in key areas – specifically social media, digital lifestyle and energy. The goal is to continue to build skills in these areas and deliver thought leadership that bolsters our brand and relevance to existing and potential clients. We have also made a worldwide concerted effort to bring our senior staff closer to our clients and to boost innovation and creativity on their business. Our goal is to ‘chart our own future’ by generating opportunities that are more valuable to our business in all ways.

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Key Information:

Website address www.text100.com

Parent company of agency NextFifteen

Global HQ address and telephone Text 100 London
Level 5
The Triangle
5-17 Hammersmith Grove
London, W6 0LG, UK
T: +44 20 8846 0700

CEO Aedhmar Hynes
Tel: +1 212 331 8427
AedhmarH@Text100.com

Global new business contact Ken Peters
+ 1 617 723 1044
kenp@text100.com

Regional contacts South Asia
Anne Costello
+61 2 8923 9505
anne.costello@text100.com.au

North Asia
Steven Murphy
+61 2 8923 9503
steven.murphy@text100.com.au

Central & Southern Europe
Rowan Benecke
+852 2821 8693
rowan.benecke@text100.com.hk

Northern Europe
Sarah MacKenzie
+44 (0) 208 846 0729
sarah.mackenzie@text100.co.uk

North America
Scott Friedman
+61 2 8923 9505

Key global clients Xerox, 15 years, N America (NA), Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC), Adobe, 10 years, NA and APAC, IBM, 10 years, NA, EMEA and APAC, Cisco, 8 years, NA, EMEA and APAC, ARM, 8 years, EMEA and APAC, Nokia, 6 years, APAC, Lenovo, 5 years, NA, EMEA and APAC (started with the IBM PC business in 2001), Citrix, 5 years, EMEA, The MathWorks, 4 years, NA, EMEA and APAC

No. of wholly-owned offices 29

No. of affiliates Seven sister brands and eight partners