81. No Brainer

Founders: Gary Jenkins and Lee Cullen
Founded: April 2015
Website: www.nobraineragency.co.uk

When ex-journalists Gary Jenkins and Lee Cullen came together in April 2015 to launch No Brainer they had no clients, no external funding and limited capital; “it’s probably best described as no business!”

Today,  the PR, social media and content marketing agency has worked with 18 clients – among them M&S Bank, Northern Powergrid, HomeServe and MBNA – employs four members of staff, and has made significant six-figure profit.

Focused on “helping businesses achieve their dreams simply by telling their stories better”, No Brainer offers a service which it dubs ‘creative intelligence’; combining intelligence-led communications and creative ideas to business opportunities through storytelling.

Similarly to fellow Startups 100 2017 company Kaizen, No Brainer was created as a means to help brands better make use of PR, SEO (Search-Engine Optimisation) and online as Jenkins and Cullen felt there was a “lack of traditional agencies in the UK delivering anything close” to this.

This integrated approach is working and delivering results with No Brainer having not lost one client since launch.

Growth to date been completely organic with new clients sourced on the back of referrals and recommendations and Jenkins confidently assets that No Brainer’s “new business pipeline is very strong”.

As well as chasing new business, Jenkins and Cullen intend to grow headcount and office space but they recognise that achieving this growth won’t be easy: “We’ll continue to do what we’ve done through through hard work, smart planning, genuine partnerships, strategies rooted in business objectives and not vanity measures”.

Striving to “create a business of real value – both as legacy and commercially”, it was a ‘no-brainer’ for our judges to include  No Brainer in the Startups 100 2017.