Creativity key to Ear to the Ground’s continued growth
EVENTS and live communications agency Ear to the Ground is toasting a contract win with Gaymers as it looks to smash through the £3m turnover barrier this year.
The Manchester-based firm, which was established seven years ago by Steve Smith and Jon Drape, will stage a specially designed promotional event called ‘lost in the orchard’ at six music festivals this summer.
Ear to the Ground had sales of £2.65m to the end of last year which partly resulted from it staging PZ Cussons’ 125th anniversary ‘soap box’ event in Manchester as well as working on the launch of sports giant Umbro’s Manchester City strip.
Founder Steve Smith said that the company has also got 2010 off to a flying start by launching the new England shirt.
He said: “The contract to work with Gaymers will be the first time that we have toured all of this country’s major music festivals on the behalf of one client – and we are looking forward to it. We’ll be at all the main events such as Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading.
“We intend to create a quiet, orchard-like area which is away from the chaos of the festival where people can experience more about Gaymers and its products.”
Over the past seven years, Ear to the Ground has been behind more than 400 events and also counts Orange, Volkswagon and Microsoft among its clients.
It also stages several large scale annual events such as Manchester’s Pride as well as the BBC Proms event in Salford.
Mr Smith added: “I firmly believe that we are on course to hit the £3m turnover target this year despite the recession.
“I don’t think that anyone is under any illusion about the state of the market at the moment but I believe that one of the reasons why we are growing is because of our creative approach.
“What we have found is that companies come to us and say that they want an event to take place within a short time frame scale – which we have always been able to do. In the past, companies tended to plan much further ahead.
“But in recent months, we’ve started to see an increasing number of approaches from property and regeneration companies wanting us to work on their behalf.”
