Marketing agency weathers pandemic storm in first year

A Swindon marketing agency celebrated its first anniversary on 1 August.

The Lunn Agency, which also has an office in Ashby de la Zouch, is wholly owned by Joy Lunn, who acknowledges that recent months have been challenging.

She said: "We are still alive and kicking – but it hasn’t been easy”.

When Joy opened the doors of The Lunn Agency, known as TLA, at new offices in Berkeley House, South Marston Park, she could not have envisaged that just eight months on the company would be in lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic.  

She said: “Hindsight is a wonderful gift, and if I had even an inkling that the country would effectively be shut down for 20 weeks, I would not have bought the marketing agency that was then known as Lundie Marketing.  

"But, I didn’t have the benefit of hindsight and we opened on 1 August under a new name in a newly-refurbished office in Berkeley House and a second office in Leicestershire to service Midlands-based clients, with great confidence and high hopes for the future."   

Although the agency had been established for more than 20 years, new ownership and a new direction took time to bed in, and the first eight months were ones of consolidation and steadying the ship.  

Joy says her marketing and business development skills added a new dimension to the agency, and a vigorous new business drive had just started bearing fruit, with TLA on the cusp of signing three new clients when Covid-19 hit.

Joy recalled: “My first reaction was disbelief – as I am sure many people and business owners felt the same – followed by a short period of denial, i.e. it won’t affect us, followed by realisation, then survival instinct kicked in.  

"It would have been very easy to just cut my losses, close the doors and avoid the inevitable headache that would ensue trying to keep my company open and my team employed.  

"Fortunately, we hadn’t lost any clients.  They had simply stopped spending, which had a massive effect on company finances and future viability.  Major design projects that were scheduled for the forthcoming months were put on hold, new website programmes were mothballed, and things went very quiet.  

"The phone stopped ringing and my once 100-plus flow of emails a day dried up to a trickle of a dozen."

Joy then devised a strategy for weathering the pandemic.

She said: “One of the first financial casualties in tough times is marketing budgets, and companies rein in their marketing spend – or in some cases cut it completely.  

"Although marketing agencies will argue that marketing in tough times is more important than in good ones, the reality is that marketing budgets in the main are cut.  I knew that some of our clients had been hit extremely hard, so outlaying on new brochures, websites, newsletters, exhibitions just wasn’t an option, so we focussed our efforts on how we could help them survive and thrive."

A modest, affordable business survival package was launched that became known as: "RE-SET.  RE-CHARGE. GO."

It was designed to help clients engage more effectively and empathetically with customers, find and win new customers and get them ‘business-ready’ for when doors re-opened.  

Joy said: “The concept of this was driven by what our clients were experiencing.

“Many of our clients ran external sales teams which could no longer visit customers or search for new ones, so a new set of ‘sales tools’ were needed to keep them in the game.  

"Our survival package provides a different set of tools and is a combination of advanced digital marketing methods, enhanced sales presentations and pitch decks, response-focused direct marketing, and a whole new marketing language that is needed in today’s ‘business normal' environment.

“Whilst my agency is not out of the woods by any means we have, and are, surviving thanks to our foresight and ability to pivot our traditional offering and provide new thinking for a new business world.  

"I am hopeful for our future; things will never be the same, but the biggest lesson I have learned from the experience is the need to re-think the way you do business when conditions change and adapt to what your clients and customers actually need, rather than what you want to give them.”

The agency's website is https://thelunnagency.com/