Profile - Andy Holt: Creative thinking communicates message of success in tough times

During times of economic uncertainty, marketing and internal communications are often the first budgets to be slashed.

This could have spelt trouble for internal communications firm Words&Pictures three years ago, but the company has continued to grow and innovate by finding new ways of spreading corporate messages.

One of the key players behind the growth is creative director Andy Holt, one of the firm’s founders.

“We are doing alright,” he said. “It’s tough times at the moment, particularly in internal comms and marketing, but we’ve had a few good wins over this year. We are holding our own and growing.”

This year alone, the Otley-based firm has racked up new contracts with Everything Everywhere (the merger between Orange and T Mobile), and insurance firms Aviva and AON, producing video-based magazines, interactive websites and digital channels.

Digital communications is the firm’s biggest growth area, although it still only accounts for 15 per cent of its work.

Mr Holt said: “Digital works well when you have office-based employees but a lot of companies have staff who are out in the field so we still see a big future for print. It’s about using the appropriate channel for the company.”

He added: “Fifteen years ago we were predominantly print but over the last six or seven years, we have become more multi-channel, creating websites and digital magazines. We have recently moved into video.”

The firm, which has a turnover of almost £3m and 40 staff, recently produced a 3D film for Specsavers with the Careers in Optics Working Group to encourage more students to consider optometry as a career option, for which it won an innovation award at the Recruiter Awards 2011. Educational awareness projects are a growing area for the business.

“We have had to re-invent bits of the business during tough times,” said Mr Holt. “But we are a company based in Otley and we have managed to build a client list to die for.

“There is a lot of innovation going on with companies trying to engage with employees at the moment. If the recession had hit five years ago, it would have been the first thing to get chopped but a lot of companies have learned their lesson.

Words&Pictures separated into three companies earlier this year: Words&Pictures (Education) Words&Pictures (Commercial) and Words& Pictures (Educom) to deal with different areas of the business.

“When we first started we were just about magazines and we were just communicating the news,” said Mr Holt. “Over the last eight years we have become much broader. We still have an internal communications focus but we are using our creative talent in a wider remit rather than just getting the news out.”

The company has also started to dabble in social media and blogging.

Mr Holt said: “When AIG got hit, we were doing a magazine for them but we stopped that and did a weekly blog instead to address some of the damage.”

However, he admitted he was not a huge fan of social media. “I am not a heavy user of social media, I’m not a massive advocate,” he said. “If you use it in a targeted way, it has real power but a lot of companies don’t use it properly. Just because you have got a Twitter stream doesn’t mean you are an effective communicator.”

Last year, it launched a new intranet system called Avviso to enable businesses to deliver news, features, video, audio and Flash-based interactions and real-time information to their employees.

Words&Pictures also prides itself in its staff training. “There has been a concentration in developing our own people,” said Mr Holt. “We try to bring graduates in and train them.”

It is also proud of its track record in beating competition from London and beyond to secure high-profile clients. “One of the things that used to annoy me was people thinking that nothing can happen outside London in terms of magazines, but we have managed to attract the talent and the clients to Otley,” said Mr Holt.

One of the company’s unique selling points, he said, is its insistence on working with clients throughout each project.

“There are a lot of egos in the creative industries, with agencies thinking clients don’t know what they are doing and we do,” he said. “By involving them early on in the process, it makes for a much stronger product.”

The company’s corporate clients range from insurance to retail and telecoms – there isn’t one sector which dominates its workload.

“It’s less to do with sectors and more to do with attitudes towards their staff,” said Mr Holt. “We tend to work with companies which have strong values and believe in investing in their people. Some companies don’t get why communications is important, others value it and realise it contributes to the bottom line and that is where we do the real innovative stuff.”

He added: “Companies haven’t stopped spending altogether but what we have found is that where budgets have been squeezed, companies have just cut back a bit or we have taken a different approach. We might do smaller regular communications rather than a big quarterly magazine. Because of that we have managed to fight our way through the storm and continue to grow.”

Mr Holt grew up in Leeds and said his creative side came out early. “My dad painted and did photography in his spare time and my sister went to art college but I didn’t come from a particularly creative background,” he said.

After leaving school he followed his artistic side by studying at the Leeds College of Art before moving to Hull to study design at Humberside University.

On graduating, he moved to London to become a freelance illustrator, working for newspapers and magazines but admits he was “a better designer than illustrator”.

It was Face designer Neville Brody who introduced him to editorial design. After a stint in the capital Mr Holt moved back to Yorkshire and worked for Calderdale Museum Services as an illustrator before getting a job in the editorial graphics department of the Yorkshire Post where he met fellow Words&Pictures founder, Tony Layton.

At the same time, Mr Holt worked a few shifts for national newspapers before eventually deciding to join a brand agency in East Yorkshire.

In his spare time he began working with Mr Layton on the early stages of Words&Pictures, creating prospectuses for schools before taking the plunge in 1995 and becoming creative director of the new business. Finance director David Lynch completed the founding trio.

Mr Holt is married to Karen, a health visitor, with whom he has two children, Alfie, 11, and Phoebe, seven.

He has an eclectic list of famous people he has met, bumped into, worked with, or shared a beer.

It includes: sculptor Henry Moore, artist Joseph Beuys, designer Peter Saville, Spice Girl Mel B, comedian Keith Lemon, indie rock singer Morrissey, Fat Boy Slim, The Housemartins, Dr Jonathan Miller, Billy Bragg, and Paul Weller, among others.

He met funnyman Keith Lemon, whose real name is Leigh Francis, whilst working at the Yorkshire Post. “He was working in the creative department,” said Mr Holt.

“He used to come in with films he had made with his mates and Star Wars figures. He was mad even then and you could see he was suited for television.”

Andy Holt of Words&Pictures

Title: Creative Director

Date of birth: May 15, 1964

Education: Leeds College of Art & Humberside University

First job: Working at a clay pigeon shoot, operating the machines, where I developed a suspiciously large right arm.

Favourite song: London Calling by the Clash.

Car driven: A rather battered Audi TT

Favourite film: It’s a Wonderful Life.

Favourite holiday destination: Cornwall (for the surf, certainly not the sun)

Last book read: Mao’s Great Famine.

What I am most proud of: My two children Alfie and Phoebe and my part in building a great business with talented people and a client list to die for.