54. OneFifty Consultancy

Founders: Katie Buckett and Alex Pearmain
Founded: November 2015 (Launched January 2016)
Website: www.onefiftyconsultancy.com

Katie Buckett is a digital brand communications expert who’s worked for global and UK organisations. Alex Pearmain was one of the early UK pioneers of brand social media adoption.

With plenty of experience working in marketing inside large brands between them, the pair saw how brands often made decisions about how to engage customers based on their view, instead of basing it on human behaviours – behaviours which can be seen by the way consumers interact every day online.

With the help of “some wine”, the duo started OneFifty Consultancy.

A digital consultancy, the business uses data and an understanding of human behaviours to “have more effective brand and commercial interactions with the people who actually matter”.

The company helps organisations to develop strategies, models and capabilities, and extract answers from social data to inform decision making. This means it is able “bridge two different worlds” in a truly unique way: fusing digital data analysis and insight, behavioural psychology and creative thinking.

Since launch in January 2016, the business has worked with 28 clients including BP, Sage, Sainsbury’s, O2, Unilever, Mazda, Mercure Hotels, Airbnb, and Green Cola.

Holding the view that “the days of monthly retainers are numbered”, OneFifty instead charges clients for their time based on hourly estimates of the tasks it needs to carry out to fulfil project commitments.

Pioneering a new approach to digital marketing can be a lonely place, but OneFifty has confidence: in five years it hopes to be the most influential brand marketing consultancy.

For Buckett and Pearmain this ambition isn’t enough. The pair say they know they’ll have truly succeeded when other consultancies start imitating what they’re doing.