On Tour is a series of video blogs by staff at Vision+Media recording visits to some of the digital and creative businesses in and around the Northwest.
Tony Tickle, Digital and Creative Services Manager at Vision+Media continues the series with a visit to We Make Media based in Furness, South Cumbria.
We Make Media Company Profile
We’re a creative media agency based in Furness, South Cumbria. We work with all sorts of organisations to create media which excites and inspires. We have a reputation for producing stunning visuals - from slick moving images to luscious print design.
We make films for both private and public sector organisations - from carefully crafted productions to live event coverage - all in stunning high definition. And our website design skills have received plaudits from BAFTA and Cannes. We specialise in producing innovative and engaging interactive media.
What are the benefits of not being ‘Inner City’?
We get to live and work in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, without having to make any compromises on the people we work with or the projects we produce. In this day and age, I really don’t see location being a factor in how you do business. Why spend time and money travelling to meetings when video conferencing is a very real - and free - alternative? Since pretty much everything we do is in the digital domain, clients can review work online, wherever they are, in their own time, which is a much better way of working. Right now we’re working on a project with hours and hours of video footage to review, it’s being viewed by about eight different people across the UK and France. It’s a massive collaborative effort, which would be a nightmare to manage in an offline world - being able to manage it all online makes life so much easier.
And besides, we’re less “rural” than some might think: we’re a half hour drive from the M6, we have a direct train service to Manchester Airport, and can be in London within three and a half hours. Sure, it might be different if we had to worry about retaining a much larger team - it’s obviously going to be easier to attract skilled people in a city location - but that’s not the way we roll. We tend to build bespoke teams around individual projects, leveraging the skills of some of the most talented freelancers in the area. There are some really talented people living and working in Cumbria, and the creative eco-system is thriving. When people ask me “why Cumbria?”, I say “why not?”
Where do you see your business in the next 2 years?
We’ve been very careful in the way we’ve put together our business, and we continue to be cautious as we develop it further - particularly in the current economic climate. I’ve learned that it’s wise to build a business on solid financial foundations - too many small businesses fail because they’ve been too optimistic; tried to grow too fast without putting safety nets in place to guard against hiccups.
And we’ve also always been adamant that we want to maintain control over the type of work we undertake, because the quality of our output is incredibly important. So our growth in the early years has been about creating a solid business model, backed by a roster of satisfied clients. We’ve kept our team small, refined our processes and created rock-solid foundations. The next couple of years are going to be about growing our team, undertaking more ambitious projects, and continuing to strive to be the very best at what we do.
What do you see as the biggest disruptor that may affect your business?
Obviously, everyone’s major concern right now is the economy, which is a worry for any business. We’re fortunate that we’ve established good relationships with our client base, and continue to pull in new business off the back of our reputation for producing high quality work. A recession is a worry, but we just have to ride it out and work that little bit harder.
From a technology point of view, I think mobile devices are going to cause the biggest disruption to the type of work we do - in a good way though. The move to the cloud, and the mainstream adoption of touchscreen devices are going to change the way we consume our media, and there are exciting opportunities ahead - the iPad is just the tip of the iceberg. We work in a fast-moving industry, so it’s more important than it ever has been that we keep abreast of new trends and technologies - things will change, and fast.
What single ‘thing’ could improve your business?
I think we’d like to see more industry engagement in our region. I firmly believe that a thriving creative eco-system adds value and benefits everyone who works in the creative industries. Cumbria tends to get ignored a little when it comes to creating networks and hosting industry events. It’s a crying shame, because there are some truly inspirational, talented people working in the region, but there’s little opportunity for them to engage with other like-minded professionals.
We’ve tried to rectify this by running networks and staging events ourselves - which have proven to be huge successes. But these things involve a lot of time and effort, and without serious finance behind them, they just aren’t sustainable. Where funding and grants are made available, they tend to be awarded to organisations who are experienced in “grant farming”, which I believe has a detrimental effect on the diversity of the creative industries, and does little to stimulate the cultural economy.
Celebrating our creative community, and creating more exposure for the county’s talent is something which I think would bring huge benefits.
Do you see MediaCityUK making an impact on your business?
We’re really excited about the opportunities which Media City, and the BBC move, will bring to the whole of the Northwest. There are so many knock-on effects which will ripple out across the region, and creative businesses need to embrace it. Obviously, it’d be naive to think that there’s going to be some kind of gold rush, but it’s a great thing for the creative economy of the Northwest, at a time when funding and finance for creative and cultural projects is dwindling.
The biggest impact will be felt in Manchester and Salford, but there will be lots of opportunities for specialised businesses like ours to compete for outsourced contracts and to collaborate on big projects. We already have a wealth of experience of working collaboratively and being flexible and adaptive, so we’ll be taking full advantage of Media City’s arrival.
www.wemakemedia.co.uk