Concise Media Business Update 2021

It’s been almost exactly a year since we wrote our last full business update and what a year it turned out to be. Aside from the seismic shock that the C-word gave us all, the Concise team adapted to home working well and we’ve continued with the fast-paced growth that has made us the go-to professional services business within the UK media market.

Our much-anticipated office move to our new Fitzrovia base took place during the first lockdown…if only we’d been able to spend more time there! However, when we do get back it will be well worth the wait providing us with the perfect space to develop and grow. That period gave us the ability (via the magic of Zoom!) to fully work through our management restructure and to develop our new brand identity and website. Each of these developments demonstrates a step-change for Concise – designed to help drive strategic direction and support continued growth – and representing the business’ evolution into a full-service commercial assurance specialist.

This also laid the foundations for Concise to build its media ecosystem. By creating new partnerships with like-minded businesses, we’ve built an offering of complimentary skillsets to our clients and in turn widened the reach of Concise’s services.

The first of these partnerships was with Bouvet, a Norwegian technology business that designs, develops and advises on IT solutions and digital communications. Concise has already worked with Bouvet for several years building its proprietary audit and tech systems and this is now extending to systems development across all of our services including Assurance, Research and Consultancy. Bouvet will not only support our systems but will provide proactive solutions to client needs – working under the Concise banner – powering our solutions with optimum tech design and implementation.

We then entered into a formal collaboration with Wiggin, a premier law firm focusing exclusively on media, technology and IP, who we will work with to provide consultancy support to professional teams across a myriad of projects. We also partnered with digital marketing technology specialists Aqilliz to create conversations and solutions to match the ever-evolving needs of infrastructure, data and compliance requirements in a fast-changing world for publishers

And finally, most recently, we have teamed up with market research specialist Customer IQ in a further move to expand our research offering and service our growing customer base. Customer IQ has a clear offering of high-quality, easy to implement research delivered through tailored research projects and digestible insight reports to companies that want to grow their business.

We were delighted to welcome new clients to the Concise family too. The major news that we had won ITV’s huge share audit contract in a multi-year deal was announced in September. We also welcomed Virgin Media Ireland at the start of 2021 in a new multi-year partnership covering media share audit plus additional services, and our latest news is that Discovery UK renewed their contract, so Concise will continue to provide media auditing services throughout 2021.

An increase in clients requires a staffing boost to match so we appointed Sally Scofield as an Audit Manager. Sally has deep understanding of the industry and the auditing challenges facing it. Our audit team investment didn’t stop there, with the appointment of Anthony Elikwu who will provide additional support to the team going forward. Concise has a 100% staff retention rate – of which we are extremely proud – and boasts the most experienced professionals in its field. Speaking of which, we were also incredibly proud to welcome Mike Anderson in a board advisory role, to work with the senior management team to execute their ambitious growth strategy. Mike is a highly respected and multi-disciplinary business adviser and mentor with top-level media and corporate experience and expert knowledge of the start-up and digital world.

We look forward to bringing all of this expertise together to provide the best solutions for our clients and drive their success in new and innovative ways over the coming months and years, so please do give us a call if there’s anything you need help with.

Most importantly, our commitment to delivering best in class services to the clients who have stayed with us and joined us over the last few years will never diminish and as Concise we thank you for your valued loyalty. We wish you all a successful year and hope that there is a brighter future ahead for us all.