DBA Roundup
A roundup of industry expertise, exclusive resources, business support and tools for your design business.
With a sluggish UK economy, many agencies are exploring opportunities overseas. Of the businesses responding to this year’s DBA Annual Survey, 16% earn 75% or more of their income internationally. In fact, the share of income generated overseas has increased from 20% to 34% across the last ten years.
“UK design agencies are well aware that there is far greater opportunity and less competition overseas than there is at home. The UK’s design sector is respected and sought after, but individual agencies need to build a profile if they want to win work in these markets,” says Claire Blyth, DBA Expert and founder of PR agency, Red Setter.
“The agencies we work with who do this see huge benefits when they grow their reputation and client base overseas,” says Blyth, who recommends:
“Opportunity is out there but you need to tell the right people about your work, so they’ll come to you,” adds Blyth.
You can find out more about how other agencies are successfully working overseas in this Design Week feature.
During the last three years, respondents to the DBA Annual Survey had voiced concerns relating to people and talent, especially during the 2021/22 ‘talent war’, which many agencies found themselves in. But this year’s Report shows staff turnover has decreased on average across all agencies from 17% to 15%.
“We have seen a shift towards the ‘Big Stay’ in 2024, whereby employees are prioritising stability over the unknown,” says JourneyHR’s co-founder and DBA Expert, Aliya Vigor-Robertson, who cites the combination of “the uncertainty experienced in recent years” and “the work that agencies have put into retaining and engaging their talent”, as key factors behind this.
However, with only two-thirds of agencies planning to give payrises in the next twelve months, what should businesses be mindful of? “The true cost of losing talent has many implications, not all of which are financial, though this aspect cannot be overlooked” says Vigor-Robertson. “We know replacing talent costs, on average, £25K per employee,” she reports, highlighting that this includes recruitment fees and lost productivity and that for senior hires, “this figure can be significantly higher”.
Vigor-Robertson is clear that beyond the financial impact, losing talent can also negatively impact the culture and productivity of an agency and that in order to truly engage and retain teams, agencies must look beyond pay.
“Successful agencies have taken a holistic approach to this, recognising that employee needs are individual and there is no one size fits all approach,” says Vigor-Robertson, who recommends understanding the needs of your people through engagement surveys, which can “help to create tailored retention and engagement strategies, focusing on transparency, recognition, progression, and work-life balance – all of which are essential, in addition to competitive pay, to drive retention.”
“With employee departures, comes knowledge gaps and a sense of decreased morale within the remaining team members. Particularly when working with clients, there is an additional pressure of maintaining the relationships that often take a significant amount of time to establish,” adds Vigor-Robertson, but by “actively listening and actioning employee feedback, agencies can reduce their turnover and strengthen their culture.”
Although return-to-office mandates continue to make waves in the news, hybrid working remains a large part of business practice in the design industry, with 80% of agencies responding that they have a hybrid working policy in place. But how can you tell if this is working well at your agency?
DBA Expert, Joanna Anthony of The Client Service Person, suggests examining the impact of hybrid working on culture, people development and workloads at your business by asking these questions:
Anthony recommends these three tactics for hybrid working success:
And the main thing to avoid? It’s “filling people’s diaries with endless, back-to-back meetings and simply using all day to talk, says Anthony, people need time “to produce actual work”.
While profit and revenue metrics are important business measures, the Report highlights how, “ultimately cashflow is the most crucial barometer of health.” Even profitable businesses need careful cashflow management.
“At its simplest, most ‘people businesses’ including agencies, have to pay their people at the end of each month for the work they did, and often have to wait until a month later to get paid by their clients,” says DBA Expert Peter Carter of Backstop Consulting, “so there’s always a disjoint, and usually in an unfavourable direction, between the happy P&L and the sad cashflow forecast or bank balance.”
Carter adds that “conversely there’s also a tendency, if businesses judge their performance by their bank balance, that upcoming VAT / PAYE / corporation tax payments are a shock and feel like a loss when they happen, so looking at the big three (P&L, balance sheet and the cash flow) together is essential.”
Carter’s topline tips for successfully managing cashflow include:
You can find more simple cashflow tips for SMEs in Backstop Consulting’s blog.
There has been an increase in agencies holding the ‘B-Corp‘ certification, while others forms of accreditation – such as signing up to the ‘UN sustainability goals‘ and ‘1% for the Planet‘ – have also seen a significant uplift amongst DBA members over the last year.
It won’t be long before all companies are required to report on their impact on the environment and the active contribution they are making to reduce their carbon footprint. Ahead of potential legislation coming into play, agencies should think about how they might deal with future requirements on things such as UK energy use and carbon emissions, which large companies already have to report on. Certification future-proofs an agency, keeping it in sync with evolving industry and regulatory standards. But there are other reasons to consider accreditation too.
“Design agencies tend to attract a more liberal demographic workforce than most industries,” says DBA Expert, Future Shift’s founder Will Powell. “This, combined with the fact 75% of the workforce will be millennials in 2025, mean communicating that your agency is placing sustainability at its core, will help to align your business with the morals of new recruits, ensuring you can attract and retain the very best talent.”
Powell adds, that for design agencies, “sustainability certification reflects a commitment to creating with purpose and reducing environmental impact”, something he cites will be vital as clients and consumers seek partners who prioritise the planet.
“Sustainability certification can be the deal clincher for a design agency,” reflects Powell. “With certifications like B Corp, you bring a trusted, third-party framework to clients who increasingly view sustainability as non-negotiable. For design agencies, where the footprint may seem minimal, certification provides a roadmap to boost responsible sourcing, reduce waste, and adopt forward-thinking practices, aligning with clients’ values and differentiating your agency in proposals,” he adds.
When it comes to choosing the right certification for your business, Powell recommends selecting a certification that can effectively quantify and communicate sustainability, like ‘B Corp’ or ‘The Butterfly Mark‘, which provide rigorous standards applicable even to low-footprint industries. “Choose one that supports continuous improvement, ensuring you’re not only meeting but actively advancing sustainable design,” he says.
Read more about Designing for a sustainable future here.
DBA Experts are accredited expert consultants who have sustained and relevant experience in supporting the design industry. Browse the Register of Experts and get in touch >
The DBA Annual Survey Report is an invaluable members-only business tool which enables you to benchmark your financial performance with your peers. Released each October it covers fees, salaries, utilisation, income, recovery rates and trends within DBA member companies. Data is segmented by geography and size of agency to make comparisons more relevant.
The recording of the webinar launching the 2024 Report is available for DBA members to watch on demand.
Your team, headcount and pay rises:
Overseas income and working internationally:
Client servicing and new business development
There was much, much more covered in the hour – I hope you find these notes helpful. Join our next meeting on Tuesday 3 December, 4-5pm GMT, look out for an email with the details in a few weeks.
We’ve captured the conversation highlights from the all the Members’ Forums which have taken place and they can all be found here.
No ordinary industry event, The Design Effect was a unique and inspiring afternoon and evening of talks, panel debates, effectiveness case studies and dinner discussions in the spectacular surroundings of The British Museum.
Senior leaders from companies like Carlsberg, NatWest, Pearlfisher, Bayer, Danone, Osborne Pike, 2LK, Volvo, Nestlé, ELSE, Reckitt, Wolff Olins and more, fired up their passion for what design can achieve and left ready to change tomorrow.
The Design Effect was opened by the DBA’s Chief Executive Deborah Dawton and featured a keynote speech in the British Museum’s Great Court by Sir Geoff Mulgan, author of ‘Another World is Possible’.
Take a peek into the day, see who won DBA Design Effectiveness Awards and read Deborah Dawton’s speech below.
“Welcome to The Design Effect. My name is Deborah Dawton and I’m the Chief Executive of the Design Business Association, and it’s my privilege to welcome you here today.
When Adam (Fennelow) and I are talking to business leaders about joining the DBA, one of the propositions that we put to them is that they should join the DBA if they want to be the architects of their own future, of the future of the design industry.
Adam we’ve got this wrong!
It’s not nearly a big enough goal, given the capability of impact and influence this sector of ours could be having. Surely our goal should be much much more ambitious. Being the architects of THE future is what we should have a concern for, because if we’re not, who is?
I’d like to read you a bit of a story in a magazine I get – it’s the October edition of The Simple Things magazine, and it’s about the legacy of the textile industry. Picture sheep in fields and in the distance a prosperous town boasting great housing of the time, and a spectacular church or two, and a guildhall.
The article starts, “Woven into the British Isles is the story of our textiles. And traces of this history are found everywhere, from sheep that graze our hills to the mills that skim our skylines. These threads take us from farms to weavers to merchants, and from towns and villages to all over the world. They’ve shaped grand civic buildings and humble domestic dwellings; we’ve used natural resources to power production and brute force to build railways and canals for transportation. There are specific local histories – such as Dundee’s jute, Welsh tapestry blankets, and the ganseys of the Shetland Isles and coastal communities. Then there are the specialist trades, such as lace, silk, dyeing and finishing.”
Take wool. “In medieval times, wool was one of the most important contributors to the English economy. The likes of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, in Northleach, in the Cotswolds, rebuilt with wool money in the 15th century, is just one of the many gilded reminders of the spectacular wealth generated by wool. Families who grew rich rearing sheep, trading fleeces or weaving wool, made generous contributions to the church, often creating places of worship completely out of scale with modest village congregations. Their building also supported hundreds of crafts people, from stonemasons to stained glass makers.”
The article goes on to say that you can see wool’s influence in the sheep you’ll spot such as Herdwick and Welsh Mountain, whose coarse wool makes it more suitable for use in carpets, or the softer fleeces of lowland sheep, such as Ryland and Suffolk, and the longwool breeds, like Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale, that find use in knitting yarns. And it also goes on to tell you how surviving packhorse routes show the journeys undertaken to take the wool from sheep to weaver to merchant, such as Norfolk’s Weavers’ Way, winding between Great Yarmouth and Cromer. And you’ll be familiar with the fact that these yarns were woven into very different textiles often influenced by place – look at the colours of tweed and tell me those aren’t the colours of Scotland, and those colours were most often created by dyes made from plants and berries found in those places.
Reading this got me thinking. What will the legacy of the design industry be?
If I was reading this article about all of us 50 years from now, what would it say? Let’s bring that forward. What would it say in 2035? 10 years from now. What do we want it to say, because that article would be talking about us.
The textile industry built towns, better living conditions, churches , guild halls, markets to sell goods, and so on. And I know I’m giving you the version of their history that is rose-tinted, but it’s to make the point.
What do we want our legacy to be?
Do we think and exist beyond the immediate design challenge?
Is there a thread of altruism that runs through this industry, a generosity of spirit? There is in all of you – you’ve given your time today to come together around a common purpose. We’re here today because we want to weave a closer association across the design industry.
But, I also want to challenge you to exercise your imagination to its full potential, in order for you to be able to put yourself far ahead of what your designing today.
My suspicion is that we’ve all had our heads down focusing on what we’re designing now, and I think we need this event today to encourage us to change our perspective. This isn’t about look up and look out. I need you living in the “out” bit. Out there looking back.
Having that perspective on the future is now critical – it has to be a part of who you are. We cannot continue to design despite it, the future that is.
Design will save the world has been the matra coming out of our sector for the last 25 years. You know, pants outside your trousers stuff.
In the same way that a piece of fabric won’t clothe someone, but it allows you to make the garments that will clothe people, design allows companies to make products and services that can have an impact.
The Design Effectiveness Awards, and this event today, The Design Effect give us the case studies that are historical evidence – there was a brief, there was a design, it went to market, it was in market for 3 years and this was the impact.
My call to you today is that you take confidence in knowing that that will happen. But… design is just one component of that reality.
Designers need to exist beyond their designs – you need to imagine five years after the launch. It’s where you need to be. You shouldn’t have to be told to look up and look out, you should already be in the future. Yes we operate in the creation of something today but our responsibility is to sit in that forward state and consider the implications of what we’re designing.
In order for us to have a better sense of what the future is, we need to be better woven together. We need to be congregating, discussing, debating, showing and telling. Challenging each other.
And where has the concept work gone everybody? It was concept work that got SeymourPowell on our TVs 25 years ago. It was house of the future that attracted 250,000 through it at the Ideal Home Show years ago. What are our concepts around sustainability? Around equality. Around diversity. Where can we be seen taking responsibility for the future? With no flag in the sand, what are we aiming for?
I’d love us be presenting our concepts of the future the next time we meet, interwoven with the case studies of our proven successes. And I’m talking about the opposite of nudge here! Nudge ignores our ability to create. But the power to draw people into our future lies with us – to draw alongside, because when we’ve suggested what the future looks like, it’s less risky for those that need to step into it, the businesses we work with. There can be no more design in isolation. We must draw together if we’re going weave the right narrative of the future, a future we’ve designed.
And just maybe, our legacy will be a good one.”
Design Week’s Clare Dowdy summarises Four Takeaways from The Design Effect event.
Spanning work for global companies, major retailers, start-up challengers and beyond, the 2024 DBA Design Effectiveness Award winners have been revealed. The Awards celebrate the integral role design plays in transforming businesses, improving societies and enhancing people’s lives. Judged by a broad range of business leaders and entered jointly by client and designer, this year’s Awards were presented at The Design Effect. Find out who won.
Browse all the Gold, Silver and Bronze award winning case studies here >
The DBA Design Effectiveness Awards celebrate the integral role design plays in transforming businesses, improving societies and enhancing people’s lives.
Judged by a broad range of business leaders and entered jointly by client and designer, this year’s awards were presented at The Design Effect, a new event from the DBA celebrating and exploring the impact of design on business, society and beyond and featuring speakers including Monzo’s Vuokko Aro, Wolff Olins’ Sairah Ashman and Diageo’s Jeremy Lindley.
Says DBA, Chief Executive Deborah Dawton: “It was fantastic to bring together brands, agencies and design leaders from across the industry to explore design’s impact at the inaugural ‘The Design Effect’ conference this week. By celebrating the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards as an integral part of the day, the successes of the 2024 winners brought-to-life how design can create truly effective outcomes for business, people and planet.
With the challenges economies, companies and communities around the world face today, illuminating the value of design in responding to change has never been more important. The Gold, Silver and Bronze Design Effectiveness Award winners do just that. Across industry sectors and design disciplines, they prove how essential design is in creating a brighter future for all.”
Mockingbird Raw Press’ Brand Creation by B&B studio was awarded Gold as well as the coveted Grand Prix.
By creating a brand that consumers understand is worth paying more for, the design empowered Mockingbird’s strategy of introducing a premium tier into grocery and of reshaping the UK smoothie category into a good, better, best model. The small but mighty new brand creation has disrupted the dominance of market giants to become the UK’s fastest-growing smoothie brand and number one contributor to overall category growth. Find out more about Mockingbird Raw Press Brand Creation.
Also winning Gold was the immersive, rich experience created online by Else for Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, which increased engagement and saw website usage leap 60% on the previous year and conversions from browsing visitors to bookings improve by 50%. Find out more Else’s work with Fred. Olsen.
Tom Parker Creamery also took home a Gold award with White Bear for a rebrand which transformed the way the 100-year-old dairy company works, enabling it to unlock mainstream opportunities including national listings in 733 Sainsbury’s stores, 300 Waitrose and online at Ocado. Find out more about Tom Parker Creamery’s rebrand.
Other winners include Nottingham Express Transit and Michon’s NET Freshers’ Campaign which helped increase daily downloads of a dedicated app by 141% and positively impacted on reducing fare evasion on trams in the city; GW+Co’s and Control Techniques collaboration which delivered a new-found momentum to the drives business following a rebrand and there are now 89% more staff on the UK team; NatWest’s ‘Carbon Planner’ digital tool, which in its launch year was used by over 4,000 businesses to easily understand their carbon footprint and take tangible steps to reduce it; and ‘The Kitcheneers’ by Without for school caterers Alliance in Partnership, which improved nutrition across dishes, with a 35% increase in vegetable servings compared to prior to the rebrand.
Thank you to our fantastic judges who brought their insight and experience to rigorously judge all the entries and congratulations to the winning agency and client partnerships. Browse all of the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners and take a look at their case studies.
Says Sean Carney, Chair of the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards Judging Panel: “This year’s DBA Design Effectiveness Award winners demonstrated solutions to a truly diverse set of challenges and once again the distinguished groups of judges had to work hard to pick the winners.
The judging panels consisted of an incredible cross section of Business, Marketing and Design leadership, ensuring that we had a diverse set of perspectives when evaluating the entries. As Chair of these judging panels, it was truly an honour to witness the quality and depth of the discussions triggered by each entry.
The winners provide clear and compelling evidence that design can and does deliver value, improving business results, positively impacting society and improving lives. They can be extremely proud of the recognition they have received.”
Award | Client | Consultancy | Project |
Grand Prix & Gold | Mockingbird Raw Press | B&B studio | Mockingbird Raw Press Brand Creation |
Gold | Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines | Else | Fred. Olsen |
Gold | Tom Parker Creamery | White Bear | Tom Parker Creamery Rebrand |
Silver | Burts | Biles Hendry | Burts Rebrand |
Silver | Clarivate | Clarivate Brand Experience Design and Studio Texture |
Top 100 Global Innovators 2021 |
Silver | La Vie | Everland | La Vie Packaging and Branding |
Silver | Toms Gruppen | Everland | Toms Guld Barre Packaging |
Silver | Nottingham Express Transit (NET) | Michon | NET Freshers’ Campaign 2022 |
Silver | NatWest | NatWest |
NatWest Carbon Planner |
Silver | Alliance in Partnership | Without |
The Kitcheneers |
Bronze | Control Techniques | GW+Co |
Control Techniques Rebrand |
Bronze | Plenish | Magpie Studio |
Plenish Rebrand |
Bronze | Danone | Osborne Pike |
Olvarit Rebrand |
Bronze | Asda | OurCreative. |
Asda Just Essentials |
More information on the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards and how to enter can be found here.
As BIDA prepares to cease operations, it has chosen the DBA as the most suitable organisation to support its members and advance the representation of industrial designers in the UK.
All current BIDA members will be transitioned into DBA membership for the remainder of 2024, gaining access to the full range of benefits provided by the DBA.
The DBA will be holding an online ‘Town Hall’ on 21 November for those in the industrial design community to discuss the needs and opportunities for the sector. Those interested should register their intention to attend.
BIDA stated: “As a not-for-profit membership organisation run entirely by volunteers it is an increasing challenge to be on top of representing the emerging diversification and specialisations developing from the traditional Industrial Design model. We have therefore concluded that in order to move forward in national representation of the ID profession there is a need for a new approach to adequately service and represent the needs and complexities of the sector.
We will therefore be handing over the interests of BIDA to the Design Business Association (DBA), an excellent organisation we have worked with and had a positive dialogue with over many years and who are well matched to the future business and professional needs of the UK Industrial Design community in all its forms.”
Deborah Dawton, DBA Chief Executive, added: “The DBA is looking forward to engaging with the BIDA community and we’re excited to announce that current BIDA members will be moved into DBA membership for the rest of 2024. We’re looking forward to expanding our representation in the industrial design community.”
There was much, much more covered in the hour – I hope you find these notes helpful. Join our next meeting on Monday 4 November, 4-5pm GMT, look out for an email with the details in a few weeks.
We’ve captured the conversation highlights from the all the Members’ Forums which have taken place and they can all be found here.
In our previous article for the DBA we discussed when a creative agency might employ its first Finance Director and what shape that might take, for example, full-time versus portfolio/fractional; in-house versus outsourced.
Whichever approach you take, and whatever your business size, having someone with dedicated time to understand the financial dynamics of the business is essential. Someone who can really get “under the bonnet”, contribute to the strategy and help translate that into monthly, annual and longer-term business planning, using appropriate metrics and KPIs to forecast and set goals.
Whilst agencies will often chase top line fee and revenue growth, devoting large amounts of costly time and resources to competitive creative pitches, having a keen eye on client and project profitability of existing business is key in terms of the actual financial benefit to a business.
Let’s take an example, whereby an agency secures a piece of business worth, say, £100k in fees. Assuming a “modest” operating profit margin of 10%, this would return £10k to the agency’s bottom line (pre-tax). Now let’s also assume that the overall agency revenues are £1m, generating a £100k profit at our 10% margin.
If the FD (or senior finance personnel) is able to help improve the overall margin by just 1% to 11%, then the increased profit (£110k instead of £100k), is tantamount to the business winning that £100k piece of new business. And what if we could improve the margin to 15%, more of an industry norm, or even 20%+ which is what the best performing agencies make? Without any margin improvement, the agency would need to increase its revenues by 50-100% to achieve the same level of increased absolute profit.
Of course, it’s very easy to say that, and possibly harder to achieve in practice, but a strong FD can help by:
Armed with this knowledge, they can then work with client facing teams to:
Allied to this, your FD will also be improving commercial acumen of your account handlers and their confidence in discussing financial issues directly with clients.
As a business grows and even in times of contraction, having access to a senior Finance Director to ensure the business operates as efficiently and profitably as possible is more of a necessity rather than a luxury. Running an SME business throws up ad hoc issues on a regular basis – things can blind side you, for example issues with suppliers, landlords, cashflow, staff, utilisation, overservicing, potential M&A, taxation, legal matters, insurance claims, bad debts, audit, procurement & general operating efficiencies to name some. In most instances, the Finance Director should more than cover their overhead by improving your profitability from clients or projects and/or also controlling costs and risk.
What you’re aiming for is to combine the generation of new fee income through new business development and dove-tailing this with improved margin performance on existing business; that’s the sweet spot to a thriving business.
There was much, much more covered in the hour – I hope you find these notes helpful. Join our next meeting on Monday 2 September, 4-5pm BST, look out for an email with the details in a few weeks.
We’ve captured the conversation highlights from the all the Members’ Forums which have taken place and they can all be found here.