Becoming a global player

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :10/04/2008 12:07:42

Already a veteran in search engine advertising, Steak Media’s Oliver Bishop is now taking his award winning brand global - but as he tells Exec, even this doesn’t constitute success.

By Rebecca Waters

“In less than three years, we’ve got all the major players up in our space, but I don’t think we’ve been a success,” says Oliver Bishop. It’s an intriguing view from the CEO of Steak Media – after all, he’s a co-founder of one of the UK’s leading integrated digital marketing agencies and winner of Growing Business’ Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007.

“What we’ve achieved is fantastic - but I think we’ve still got a long way to go. I don’t know at what point I would say ‘right now we have success’. We’ve won awards; we won the Media Agency of the Year last year, and we’ve won entrepreneur and high growth awards,” says Oliver. “But I haven’t got a massive house; we haven’t sold the business and even at that point, does it really constitute success?”

The global client

Steak Media was founded by three pioneers of European search engine marketing in 2005, all former employees of Espotting (now MIVA) - one of the most successful UK Internet start-ups of recent years.

The company is now the second largest independent search-agency in the UK, behind 24/7 Real Media (UK), and boasts British Gas and John Lewis as clients. It has also opened up offices in Melbourne and New York, an interesting expansion since most search agencies acknowledge the difficulties of translating a successful UK search business model to the US. “New York is going to be very difficult. It’s a much more technology-led market out there,” Oliver explains.

So why go? “First of all, they’re English-speaking countries so it’s easier to expand into these areas. Effectively, it makes us an international agency,” he says. “From New York, you can manage campaigns in the whole of North America across Canada and then from London, a few in Europe. The idea now is to attract the global client,” says Oliver. “Once you have those clients, it will facilitate the growth enormously.”

Everything moving

The online industry is still growing in the UK and search agencies are fast attracting bigger names in terms of blue-chip clients, so there’s still plenty of room for expansion at Steak. Search might be something of a niche industry, but the principles of sound entrepreneurism still apply.

“To keep growing you have to stay ahead of the curve, you need to know what’s going on in your marketplace, you’ve got to be aggressive and you’ve got to attract the best people,” Oliver confirms. “We’ve done that in the UK and I’m trying to do that in New York. We’ve already got a couple of people on the ground in Melbourne so we’re well on the way,” explains Oliver.

With such growth – bidding grew by 378 percent from the first to second year – comes interest from potential buyers. Recent years have seen the acquisitions of search marketing specialists Bigmouth Media and Spannerworks for sizeable sums (£50 million and £40 million respectively). With this wave of consolidation, and as one of the few remaining sizeable independent search specialists left, does Oliver see Steak’s position changing?

“It will change,” he responds. “But not by acquisition. I don’t expect us to be bought out anytime soon. Why do I say that? I wouldn’t have taken on funding, we wouldn’t have moved into two other territories - where we’re obviously going to invest quite a lot of money before we actually start to make money - if I was looking to sell. As an agency you want to make sure your contact list is extensive before you’re bought out, so that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

While Steak will remain independent, Oliver does see the firm establishing a group company in the future. “I would love to be an online player, where we start to perhaps look at other companies to buy. We’ve got a long way to go, I understand that. But we want a global business.”

A different type of search

So, where does he look to go with Steak? “It’s a difficult question, everything moves so quickly,” he responds. “The offline world and the online world will become closer, that’s for sure. On the social networking side there are many different kinds of site coming out and that will continue. I think people will be driven to more specific sites from more varied sites that people will naturally go directly to, rather than everything going through search engines.”

Whatever happens, Oliver is confident that Steak can meet these demands: “We’ve just got to continue to work closely with our clients, do what we’re doing at the time being and release ourselves into more areas.” These include mobile, planning and affiliates alongside plans to get into web design. With such plans afoot, revenues look set to double in 2008. Perhaps success beckons after all.