Technology Director & Joint Managing Director
The Real Adventure Unlimited
Bristol, United Kingdom
The Real Adventure Unlimited, a specialist CRM entity within the Unlimited Group, was an Econsultancy Top 100 digital agency, with 120 staff. Its clients included Danone, Costa Coffee, Asda, Lloyds Black Horse and HM Government. Its expertise in data-driven customer journeys and engaging brand content encompassed web, mobile, email, social media, apps, video and DM.I was responsible for all technical aspects of our client delivery. This included website and CRM tech for Danone's mum & baby programs (a client I'd helped win in 2001), email delivery for the Costa Coffee club and marketing technology thought leadership for ASDA. During my time leading the technology direction of the agency I drove innovation in many areas including the ongoing development of our proprietary multi-channel CRM and marketing automation platform, voice assistants and automated, multi-channel conversational interfaces. I also supported Danone in their move to their globally-adopted Adobe Marketing Cloud.I was jointly responsible for growing the agency’s turnover to £9m and profit to £1.3m by 2016/17, its most successful financial year. I also jointly headed up an agency leadership team which got consistently high ratings in the Group’s annual staff feedback survey. The agency also received Best Company one star status.