Communisis aims to improve the Rapport with its customers

Marketing services provider Communisis has rebranded its year-old creative services offering as part of a wider strategy to help blue chip clients keep pace with the times in the way they communicate with their customers.

The Leeds-based company has invested heavily in new skills and technology to move clients away from ‘carpet-bombing’ direct mail campaigns towards more personalised marketing efforts.

Last year, Communisis hired Phil Dean, a creative industry heavyweight, to develop a creative business to offer original design, brand, artworking and messaging services to clients.

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He has spent the last 12 months recruiting experienced executives from creative agencies across the North to staff the business, which now has 45 employees. It has been renamed Ingenious Rapport.

Mr Dean said the rebrand “is all about helping clients communicate more effectively with their customers”.

He added: “Communisis has a really great name in the market for certain services but not in the creative world. We needed something else to sit alongside the Communisis brand and give us a bit of differentiation.”

He suggested the name was inspired by the idea that success in business comes from building relationships – “the sort of relationship where each knows what the other is thinking, where they surprise each other every day”.

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Mr Dean added: “We call this Ingenious Rapport. It’s what guides us and it’s what we strive for every time we work with a client.

“Ingenious Rapport is based on a deep understanding of people, creating ideas that excite and help start a relationship or remind people why they liked you in the first place.

“We do this by combining clever use of data, insight, strategy and creativity to deliver these ideas to your consumers across any output medium.”

Ingenious Rapport’s clients include Barclaycard, HSBC, BMI and Auto Trader.

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Alongside building up Ingenious Rapport, Communisis has invested £3m in a second T300 printer, the only two of their kind in the UK. The printers are built for highly personalised mass communications.

Mr Dean said the combination of Ingenious Rapport and Communisis’s game-changing print technology “is a pretty powerful combination”.

Following a management overhaul, Communisis announced plans last year to split the business into two divisions – Intelligence Driven Communications (IDC) and Specialist Production and Sourcing (SPS).

IDC helps businesses increase revenues from their customer base by using lifestyle and credit data and analytics to target them in a more personalised way.

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SPS helps businesses to improve the efficiency and quality of their print supply chains.

It also produces and delivers documents and marketing communications.

Communisis has considerable heritage in the print industry, having bought Waddingtons, the historic Leeds printing firm in 2000.

While digital communications have transformed aspects of the industry, Communisis believes that print will continue to play a role.

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Mr Dean said: “The world which print inhabits is changing – fast. Gone are the days when a marketer only considered one or two communication channels.

“Today, there is a proliferation of channels and print is just one of them.

“The present and the future is all about an integrated approach to marketing and print is part of that.

“The T300 brings targeted, relevant printed communications to the mix – the ability to personalise print communications as opposed to ‘carpet bombing’ consumers is crucial to the future of print.

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“On that basis, we firmly believe that print has a future as a dynamic and responsive medium, effective and relevant to consumers.”

He plans initially to establish the Ingenious Rapport brand, build the team and gather some good case studies.

Over the next two years, the operation wants to act as a lead agency with top blue-chip clients, said Mr Dean.

A former art school student from Leeds, Mr Dean was previously MD at Thompson Brand Partners, a communications agency.

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Prior to this, he headed the UK office of global creative agency Attik, founded in Huddersfield.

Mr Dean said the opportunities for Communisis are “enormous”.

He added: “We have a great client base. We are winning new work.”

The company has diversified away from financial services, although it sees the mutual sector as an important growth area. It plans to win more corporate work.

The future looks bright

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Stockbrokers at Redmayne-Bentley’s Leeds office have highlighted the future potential of Communisis.

In their Equity Insight newsletter, Ian Hooper, investment manager at Leeds, wrote: “Communisis has evolved to become a leading outsourcer and provider of print solutions to blue chip companies in the UK.”

He added: “After two difficult financial years in 2009 and 2010, analysts expect the company to increase earnings in this financial year by 30 per cent.”

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