As I write this piece just ahead of equimedia’s 25th anniversary, I am conscious that Dictionary.com’s word of the year was “demure”. With this in mind, I will not be boasting about our success but instead I will adopt an appropriate level of awkward embarrassment and suppress the impulse to beat my chest in celebration, in the style of an alpha male!
Equimedia’s origins
This big milestone leads me to reflect on what led Louise and I to start the company back in December 1999.
To set the scene, I was a director of one of the UK’s leading direct media and data agencies and Louise had a direct marketing career behind her. My then team and I had been running early digital campaigns for a couple of years and it was clear that it was possible to collect data from each digital campaign but little of it was meaningfully delivering insight. There were many limitations in the tech and data stacks available, and the ability to measure the combined effect of online and offline media was virtually non-existent. In most cases, marketing teams had little involvement in the design and delivery of the internet experience, and with IT teams and designers, the gate keepers of all things digital, many websites were built in Flash and only visible or usable by Apple Mac users. In any case, whether a site was built in Flash or the fledgling HTML, with only a 56k dial up modem you had to be very patient! In addition, there were huge debates about whether ‘New Media’ would only ever be an information source or whether it could be a customer recruitment and sales channel.
Thinking about this now, why did we start a company to work in this space when there were so many uncertainties?
My then colleagues showed little appetite for developing a new media offering but believing this brave new world had a future, Louise and I scoped out what we thought the potential looked like.
The early years
Our proposition put data insights, customer target audiences and a statistically valid control, test and learn approach to campaign optimisation at the heart of the business to deliver the best combinations of both online and offline media for client campaigns. With this mind, we came up with the name ‘Equi Media’ to reflect our balanced approach to reaching prospects. All the domains were available and so that’s how the company (that has nothing to do with horses), came into being!
We launched in 1999 as the .com bubble was growing. As the bubble burst in the following year, we found ourselves acting as advisors to Managing Directors and investors, interpreting tech jargon into business speak. The attack on the twin towers in September 2001 added to the economic shockwaves. Since then, like many businesses, we have navigated our way through both very challenging conditions, and opportunities for growth.
The company evolved early on as we enhanced the core media campaign planning and buying services with Analytics, SEO, website build and CRO services. These services are now the backbone of the business and a significant strength.
Today, 25 years later and as it was at our inception, data is the cornerstone of everything that we do. Data, Technology and People – it’s our DNA.
The future, ‘coming of age’, and a thank you
As we are talking about data and technology, I would like to raise a concern about content and data, and what we trust today. AI has thrown us a challenge, and an opportunity. Personally, I embrace its current capability and am excited by AI’s potential. However, I also question what it is producing, particularly in terms of search results. Using the term ‘hallucinating’ is in my view asking us to forgive the technology if the content being presented as an informed and trusted answer to a query is in fact, total rubbish. I now add significant exclusions into my search queries to focus the results as in my experience, the LLM and source of the answer is often confused and cannot always be trusted.
In addition, I would encourage every business to have an experienced analytics practitioner to sense check and verify the data that is informing auto optimisation media technology such as Performance Max, Demand Gen and Programmatic Media. This is something we are currently helping many clients of all shapes, sizes and sectors to untangle to enable the media tech stack to make correct optimisations.
Personally, as we reach this huge milestone, I can honestly say we have never stopped learning in all that time, and we call our mistakes ‘earned knowledge’. Now, with a proven foundation of the best combination of data, technology and people I feel that after 25 years, equimedia has come of age.
And finally, to our people. Louise and I would like to express our thanks to past and present clients, suppliers and partners who have contributed to our success. We would particularly like to thank all our team members who have made a significant and positive contribution to the business over the years. You know who you are, and we hope that equimedia has helped you in your personal development and career.
Here’s to the next chapter of our journey of innovating in a data and technology eco system!
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| Author | Andrew Burgess |