Sabre Awards: EMEA Corporate Consultancy of the Year 2017

We are delighted to have been recognised at the Sabre Awards, managed by the Holmes Report, as their EMEA Corporate Consultancy of the Year.

We are thrilled that our client work, growth and culture all contributed to this accolade. The Holmes Report themselves put it as:

“Three years after rebranding and repositioning as an international business communications consultancy, Instinctif Partners is effectively unrecognisable from the firm once known as College Hill. That is probably for the best, because Instinctif today is a multi-specialist consultancy with significant depth in capital markets, corporate and public policy, bolstered by considerable breadth across content, creative, research and insights. And much of the firm’s work involves multiple practice areas, reflecting an interconnected approach that now accounts for 29% of its revenue, up from 19% in 2015.

Aiding that approach are internal initiatives which celebrate collaboration, part of a substantial cultural effort which saw the firm’s 386 employees co-create a new set of values. Staff retention and client retention have both improved considerably, and these days Instinctif looks like an agency that takes its internal outcomes as seriously as its external results.

Those results remain in very good shape, with revenues up slightly to £34m, with the UK driving much of the firm’s global growth, which included an 18% uptick in Continental Europe. Unsurprisingly, given its own positioning, Instinctif has carved out a credible niche working for challenger brands, including Purple Bricks, World First, Secret Sales, graze.com and Made.com. There was also new business last year from Majestic Wines, Biffa, UK Power Networks, Redrow, University of Portsmouth, Shepherd Neame and Eve Mattresses, joining an existing roster that already features eBay, Jupiter Asset Management, AGCO, Thomson Reuters, Aviva and Cushman and Wakefield. 

Meanwhile, the best of the firm’s work demonstrates its approach to disrupting the traditional corporate PR template. For its largest client eBay, that involves re-engaging the company’s global community around a new global mission. For Aviva, that means work to establish its brand with multiple customer demographics And for graze, made.com, Purple Bricks and Eve Mattresses, that featured a range of communications strategies that improved the bottom line.”