AgTalk | Insatiable desire for knowledge, hunger to learn: Bite's Armitage

Creating newer benchmarks in communications is Bites Communications' endeavour. Bites believes thatcompelling communication is all about conversations.  A leading global communications consultancy, Bites provides a range of services from media, analyst and influencer relations to online strategy and social media communications. Bites excels in creating content and nurturing dialogue through multiple channels, be it offline, online, written content, video, broadcast outreach, events or by building relationships with third-party influencers.

 

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Clive Armitage, CEO, Bite Communications describes what goes into creating a successful Public Relations co. Excerpts:

 

 

Clive Armitage (CA): I began my career in 1990 in London at Text 100, and had a great career there. There was an opportunity to pitch Apple in 1995 and Text 100 could not work with Apple because of its work with Microsoft. We saw the opportunity to go to the board of Text 100, and suggested, with their backing, to start this agency. It was essentially a conflict brand to Text 100, and we then pitched Apple in 1995, and Apple took a chance with us in a relationship that continued for close to a decade.

 

 

CA: As growth came, we expanded to broader technology – B2B and B2C. Bite picked up BT, Toshiba, Oracle – big clients that put us on the map quickly. From the get go we were about making sure that we had a good firm in the UK but quickly appreciated that we needed to be more than just the UK, and the natural move was to expand to the US and there’s been no looking back since. A combination of aggressive growth and strategic acquisitions, we are well positioned in the markets that matter. From Germany and Northern Europe to a widespread Asia Pacific presence, we now have offices in 14 markets, including New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai in India.

 

 

CA: Today close to 250 Biters do some great work for many inspiring, innovative and market changing brands executing integrated campaigns with digital built right at the core.

 

 

CA: It’s a misnomer that business communications can’t really be that creative. In fact in today’s day and age any company or brand has to be creative to get the attention it needs. From an agency standpoint a large chunk of that responsibility falls on us. Communicators have to push themselves beyond the realm of public relations and communications as they’ve known it before.

 

We do this rather well at Bite, where our teams focus fiercely on helping clients be more relevant and actively create or join conversations that are relevant and matter. It’s about building and developing a point-of-view that allows you to be differentiated from the rest of the pack. And to do that, we have to be creative to be able to pin down the right inflection points. Needless to say the demands for creativity have never been so strenuous, given the changing media landscape with high-decibel chatter everywhere and brands constantly vying for consumer attention.

 

 

CA: From day one of our existence we’ve had a passionate desire to build a global communications agency.  This desire has meant that we have aggressively focused on opening offices in the key strategic geographic locations around the world where we believe our clients are likely to really value our presence.  At the same time we’ve been obsessional about hiring the best quality talent we could within the markets we serve.  We’ve then worked really hard to build a creative, collaborative culture where our people feel they are set up to do brilliant work.  Growth is then the end product.  The formula works for us and we aren’t about to change it! 

 

 

CA: We think that an open environment goes a long way in fostering a feeling of teamwork and what we call as ‘the newsroom feel’. Such a layout breaks down hierarchy and fosters a spirit of honest and open communication apart from creating a more fun and collegial environment.

 

An open environment is also a great training tool—with everybody including senior folks an ear shot away there’s opportunity for mentoring tips and insights real time. In fact, when I first started in 1990, I listened to people pitching media— how they talked, how they were prepared. I think that that’s something that the junior people can learn from.

 

 

CA: As an innovative and digitally integrated agency, we’ve made some significant moves in the past year or so to acquire capabilities and talent around the various regions we operate in. The results of which are starting to show in the kind of work we’re doing. Notable achievements include the now-integrated acquisition of OneXeno (an eCRM firm) giving us considerable digital muscle in the Asia Pacific region along with the recent acquisition of search specialist firm - Red Bricks Media again out of Hong Kong. Search is increasingly becoming a key element of any social media, corporate reputation and marketing communications campaign and we see a critical need to build capability here.

 

Our strategy of building presence in strategic markets saw us acquiring leading German communications firm – TradeMark thereby helping create a more integrated pan-European team in addition to our Paris office opening a little over a year ago. Last but the least, Bite opened its own offices in India with a presence in New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. So tremendous growth and expansion all around.  

 

And as we do all of that, we continue to raise standards for communications in each of the markets which we operate in. Holmes Report recognized us as the Global Technology Agency of the Year while Bite UK was ranked as 21st in the Small Companies segment in the Great Place to Work survey. Down under, Bite was recently ranked amongst the 25 fastest growing PR firms in Australia – a great testament to our continuing growth. 

 

 

CA: An insatiable desire for knowledge and hunger to learn. Anyone going into the industry, they have to have a voracious appetite to learn. PR is fast moving, and the rules are changing rapidly, and you must be able to soak-up information quickly. People going into the industry need to be open minded.

 

My advice is to get into the industry, submerge yourself, and then find the sections you want to work in.

Look for the kind of culture you can identify with, express yourself.

At Bite, we have a culture where you are comfortable to put forth ideas. We have an environment that encourages interaction, no matter the level.

There are certain maxims for Bite people: smart, fit into our culture, get along with others, exhibit positive energy and have the ability to interface with clients, whatever the level.