DAN CONNOR: CHANGING TACK

Well, this is all change, isn’t it?

If someone had told me even a year ago that in the next 12 months I'd be on the road to starting my own digital-creative marketing agency, be in deep with the rigours of business ownership and servicing multiple clients before we'd even launched, I'd have laughed them off.

Yet here we are on that exact new venture and after months of (very) long days and nights building behind the scenes, we're finally ready to go, officially.

A bit of background, I guess.

It's been a varied career to this point. Journalist to social media 'admin'. Web editor to digital strategist. Content ideator to chatbot builder. And everything in between.

But no matter the stage of the marketing funnel I was operating at, it was all rooted in one thing once stripped back - storytelling. 'Everything is content, everything is stories' is one of my favourite industry anecdotes. There just so happens to be much more to telling those stories in the digital age.

What platform is it accessed on? What formats and treatments will it take? How will it get distributed in order to reach KPI's? How many people saw it? And were they the right people? How do we take it to new audiences by utilising digital tools? How many people purchased, subscribed or were inspired off the back of it?

All hugely important questions. But ones that are crucial to get right to really succeed in the end-to-end content marketing space.

When I first started out (I was young, cut me some slack), I probably under appreciated that. It was a case of find and source the content, produce it and publish it. With little afterthought.

Now, after years of doing those aforementioned roles and honing as broader craft as possible across digital – and now alongside an esteemed Co-Founder (Ryan, you should meet him) who excels in all things commercial and brand strategy – it's time to take it to the next level and deliver those end-to-end digital and creative campaigns under my own guise.

At AND THE NEW, we're excited to be building a creative digital marketing agency that helps brands in sports, entertainment and gaming grow, monetize, convert, engage and inspire their audience, all while building brand and cultural equity for long-term growth. We're already doing so across an innovative sailing property and with one of the world's largest esports organisations. It's already a whole lot of fun, and we’re excited to share more news soon!

We're committed to delivering first-rate, end-to-end digital and creative strategies and campaigns for our clients, be it in the realms of consumer acquisition, e-commerce, innovative digital product development, audience growth, brand storytelling and digital-first experiences. Essentially, we take an objective, make the audience give a s**t through a variety of digital-creative plays, and put it on the right platform, aimed at the right people, at the right time to generate best results.

So, you know where we are if this is of intrigue to you. We’re buzzing to be off the ground.

This career so far has taken me to Wembley cup finals and the Premier League to Six Nations Grand Slams and trackside in Monte Carlo. If the best is yet to come, I can't wait to see what else is in store.