Waikato adman rolls the dice – Fieldays or the French Riviera?

HAMILTON, Today: “The debate raged for about two minutes,” writes Graeme Blake of Waikato-based creative indie Blutui. “Do we take the plunge and revisit Cannes Lions, the event that changed forever our direction as a business in 2018?

“A resounding ‘yes’ rippled through the studio.

“Our story started well before June 2018, our little agency was progressively digital. With hard work and the technical chops to deliver the digital ‘promised land’ came success.

“Success brought with it growth and over time clients enjoyed capitalising on all manner of projects. But what looked like success from the outside this little indie was slowly crippling our business from the inside. 

“We were taking on an ever broadening range of projects and needed a variety of technologies and matching technologists to drive them. Both came at an escalating cost to the business.

“What we didn’t know at the time? We were building an empire based on fast fragmenting tech. What we soon found out was how unsustainable this direction would turn out to be as costs and headcount ballooned. 

“We had options, of course. 

“We could specialise in a single technology and narrow our offering but this would mean we couldn’t service our entire customer roster. We would be boxing in our digital delivery when our clients were coming to us for strategy, creative and digital. We didn’t want to give that revenue up.

“We could outsource but sending projects out to vendors would result in margin and clients heading out the door too. We didn’t want to give that revenue away.

“We could continue as were, knowing we were becoming less and less efficient juggling multiple projects across multiple teams and multiple technologies and needing to continually feed each tech/team vertical with future projects or risk them losing interest.

“Fast forward to now and we’ve solved our issues and in doing so we’ve created a way out of the downward technology spiral for an entire industry.”

“Devs don’t like repetition and they don’t like wasting time so holding onto amazing talent is a major consideration. We didn’t want to go to the wall.

“We knew we needed another option or risk losing margin, clients and credibility. Not to traditionally rival agencies, they were battling the exact same issues. We could see we would start losing to vendors outside Adland.

“That was then; fast forward to now and we’ve solved our issues and in doing so we’ve created a way out of the downward technology spiral for an entire industry.

“Since 2018 we’ve ideated, built and proven Blutui and now, five years later almost to the day, we’re heading back to Cannes to celebrate (a bit) and offer Blutui to progressive, award-winning agencies from every corner of the industry.

“We’ve successfully built Adland’s universal digital delivery platform and brought it to market, helping agencies of every imaginable size and structure to do digital right.

“In doing so we’ve turned our agency into a Martech business but with our roots firmly in the creative services industry we offer what others simply don’t understand. An approach to digital delivery that’s ultimately rooted in survival. Blutui is a practical platform for delivering from an agency perspective for agencies of all shapes and sizes to work their way out of their current chaos.

“From little indies to global holding co brands, agencies are looking to drive every bit of value from their digital projects and Blutui is delivering. Productivity and creativity are baked into Blutui DNA.

“To quote a recent newcomer to the Blutui agency family: ‘Like in terms of how quick that home page was put up. Like f*** that was like dope’. Of course it’s an Aussie agency COO with a line like that.

“So Cannes Lions here we come, but first via Singapore to onboard some of Adland’s most admired brands.

“That’s another thing agencies will notice about Blutui –  we don’t name names, we don’t advertise who we work with and we don’t publish pricing. It’s our version of Fight Club rules we call Covert. We let agencies do their thing with Blutui as their white label solution for delivering their unique brand of creative, ux/ui and value.

Updates from Cannes
“We’ll be away for a few weeks so we’ll update you through the build up to Cannes and from the beach during festival week. From there it’s meetings with London agencies before heading home.

“As the images of a much younger adman attest, we’ve been a long time gone but we’re back.”

• blutui.com