This month marks an incredible ten years since Flintlock was established. What began as a collaboration between our two co-founders, Tasha Gladman and Graham Appleyard, has developed into a team of the best creatives, brand marketing specialists, managers and strategists.
Together, we’ve achieved so much more than we might have imagined.
As storytellers, we know that the history of a brand can be a powerful way to showcase what it stands for and the driving forces that continue to inject enthusiasm, passion and excitement into the day-to-day, even after a decade.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a brief recap of how Flintlock evolved into the business we know and love today and reflect on some of the moments and achievements that have cemented our position as a leading strategist with a reputation for excellence.
The Early Days of Flintlock: How it All Began
Most of our colleagues, partners, and clients may know that Flintlock sparked to life in early September 2014. At the time, it comprised our tiny team of two – we ‘parachuted in’ to help brands struggling with their brand identity, shifting markets, or vision to fine-tune their brand strategy to deliver performance improvements.
Fewer might know that the name Flintlock refers to the concept of striking steel to create a beautiful spark, representing creative energy and laser-sharp thinking. We began with a model to deploy our experience into businesses to stimulate growth and transformation.
We still offer this service, and although our ‘sparking’ approach and philosophy remain unchanged, we’ve also covered a lot of ground in the intervening years.
Of course, we weren’t starting without any experience at all, with Tasha and Graham coming together to set up Flintlock with 20-year respective corporate careers. Although both founders had primarily worked in food and drink, convention doesn’t dictate our decision-making, and we’ve since worked in almost every sector – from hospitality to home improvement, fashion to funeral care.
The first project we undertook was with the well-known Hovis bakery brand following its purchase by a private equity buyer needing a marketing reset. We went in with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) team, with Graham steering commercial and Tash on communications and innovation.
Our visionary branding model produced amazing results in record time, testing and proving that the process works – solidified by the fact that the brand remains as strong as ever today.
Recapping Our Big-Name Projects and 10-Year Growth
The brands we work with will recognise that although we’ve been delighted to partner with some multinational firms and household name brands, our work with smaller, dynamic and ambitious companies is still a priority – although the interim projects where Tasha and Graham dip in to deliver swift results tend to be with larger corporations.
Here are some of the steps we’ve taken along the way:
- From 2015 to 2017, Tasha led on a strategic project at B&Q, transforming the brand focus from promoting product ranges to concentrating on more comprehensive DIY projects.
- The next role was as marketing director at Co-Op Foods, from 2017 to 2018, taking on a pivotal role to support the brand during a new brand strategy integration, developing creative campaigns and working on a whole team advocacy project.
- At this stage, we started to work with some scale-up clients, including Agri-tech Breedr, who provide farmers with better tools to embrace sustainability and sustainable approaches, alongside Haines Boatyard here in Chichester.
- In 2018, Tasha took on a marketing communications role at Boots to assist with a Christmas campaign, achieving a top ten advertising accolade.
- Graham and Tasha then worked with Pizza Express while continuing to grow their capacity to support SME and more local businesses and expanding the Flintlock in-house team.
When lockdown hit, we recognised the need to rethink and broaden access to project-based and strategy branding work rather than taking on interim appointments.
We also secured new branding projects with StoryStream, Decathlon, and Vitaccess, to name a few.
Having transitioned to an online delivery model, we were able to tap into the network of experts we’ve worked with now for many years. We brought together creative directors, e-commerce experts, planners, and copywriters to develop an unbeatable team with an extraordinary scope of knowledge.
While Flintlock still provides interim collaborations, we’re passionate about working with clients of every size and in varied capacities. We use our big-brand creativity and thinking to offer a shortcut to gaining clarity, creativity, and strategic thinking.
Looking Forward to the Next Decade of Flintlock Marketing
The concept behind the formation of Flintlock was simple, albeit a significant leap into the unknown. It was based on a strong belief that we could do more to help brands achieve massive impacts in their respective spaces, but in a wider-reaching way than was possible when working with individual big brands with equally big budgets.
We’ve worked in many industries, but rather than focusing solely on one sector, we base our processes on putting the customer first, gaining a deep understanding of their businesses, and using that knowledge to create unique propositions.
Working collaboratively helps us create actionable strategies, with a long list of clients, large and small, that we are all proud to have worked with and continue supporting.
Our biggest thanks go to each of those businesses and brands and to the associates and professionals we work with to create fantastic quality output and who share our insight-led approaches, using this focused method to deliver on planning, creatives and execution.
From seven-day photoshoots using street-cast models to extensive public consultations, strategies that have achieved share price uplifts, and campaigns that have returned outcomes three times higher than those ever achieved by a brand, there have been so many successes along the way—and many more to come.
It seems unbelievable to think that ten years have passed, but we know there is still so much work to do. We welcome enquiries from brands who are interested in having a fresh pair of eyes to help them unlock a business challenge or address gaps in capabilities and resources—reach out, and let’s arrange a good time to ‘spark’.
