Record year for Birmingham communications firm
National marcomms agency, Beattie Communications Group – which has one of its eight UK offices in Birmingham – has reported a record year for 2016.
Profit before tax rose by 6% to £624,000, while turnover went up by 7% to £9.3m with only a 2% increase in expenses.
Dividends of £430,000 were paid to shareholders and performance bonuses of £80,000 were awarded to members of the Beattie team.
Besides the office in Victoria Square, Beattie also has a presence in London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.
“The latest record figures were recorded after an unprecedented performance in 2015,” said CEO Laurna Woods. “They are, of course, particularly pleasing because 2016 was our 30th anniversary year.
“It was a year of achievement and progress for Beattie Group. We won the large PR Agency of The Year title and a national newspaper crowned us Britain’s third best medium-sized employer.
“We announced our expansion into Canada and opened our state-of-the-art training academy, The Beattie Bootcamp, in Scotland.”
New clients won by Beattie during 2016 included retail chain Smiggle, Dairy Crest, Discovery Channel, High Street TV and the Vue cinema chain.
“Steady progress is what we aim for at Beattie and we have consistently achieved that goal over the past decade,” added Ms Woods.
“Much of our success can be attributed to our strong and stable leadership team to which we recently added former Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts and former Grayling CEO Alison Clarke.”
Looking ahead, she said that while no one could predict the full impact of Brexit, 2017 was set to be another flourishing year for the business.
It operates three headline brands, Beattie itself, 11ten its student recruitment arm and the Only Marketing series of specialist boutiques which include Only Digital, Only Crisis, Only Retail and Only Health. Total billings for all brands is approaching £20m.
