Best Event Agency
Audience
We are Audience. The designers of award-winning, record-breaking and human-centred brand event experiences. This year, we’ve seen incredible growth and affirmed ourselves in the ranking for the Top 50 UK Agencies (CI&T). We put our money where our mouth was and championed what we believe matters most – our people. By doing so, we’ve secured a 99.6% retention rate and headcount increase of 33% this year.
With a happy workforce, we’ve seen incredible adoption of our bespoke innovation model (designed in 2022), our new processes, applications and software that gave us space to scratch our creative itch. Our standout projects include showcasing Virgin Media (VM) as the industry leaders in broadband speed services by breaking a world-record, delivering a world-first OOH 4D billboard experience to launch Stream with VM and ensuring Deloitte are recognised as industry leaders for our fourth year running the SSC.
This has all contributed to a powerful focus on our people, on human-centred event design and our creative ability to keep human connection at the centre of every event.
Brands at Work
Hello, we’re Brands at Work. We’re one of the world’s leading creative communications agencies, made up of 40 full time creative challengers.
For 13 years, we’ve worked with global brands to turn their brilliant business ideas into bold and memorable content experiences. Experiences that shape beliefs, inspire action, build communities, and transform performance.
We’re the agency with the reputation for always challenging the status quo. It’s reflected in our agency ‘Herd’: big thinkers, detail tinkerers. Creativity at the heart of every thought and action. And all blessed with that ambitious question that rears its head at every idea: ‘does this shift the needle?’
2022 was a year of great success and significant evolution. We saw incredible performance, strategic investment, and the continuing realisation of our ambition to be the best place, to do the best work, with the best people.
Bray Leino Events
Bray Leino Events turns 50 in 2023, and the last year has been the busiest in our history. We travelled the world with public and private sector clients.
Events we delivered generated billions for the UK economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs. We’ve unpicked impossible logistical challenges and brought brands to life for new audiences.
We’ve doubled in size since pre-pandemic, and we’ve done it by focusing on what we can do as a force for good, in our industry, for our clients, and most importantly, for our people.
We protect their wellbeing, train them to do the same, and promote an inclusive culture where friendship and support is central. People stay at Bray Leino Events for longer and take half as many sick days as the industry average.
Sustainability took centre stage in 2022. We put ourselves on course to deliver massive carbon reductions in our business operations and implemented new measurement tools to target efforts in reducing our environmental impact across our entire event portfolio.
Sustainability will be the defining issue for our industry in the coming years, which is why we’re calling for less competition, greater collaboration on how we can all be better.
emc3
Life post-covid was a challenge for many in the events industry, and macroeconomic certainty didn’t alleviate those stressors. But two things have stood out as a result, that makes it easier: collaboration and the power of listening. Our mission at emc3 is “to produce game-changing experiences powered by strategy, content and creativity, underpinned by our commitment to a sustainable future for events”, and our submission talks about using that to implement sustainable growth—where it isn’t about a race to the top, but creating meaningful and impactful moments, with our clients and team, to achieve personal and professional growth.
EventsPlanIt
Events Plan It is a specialised partner in the area of events in the Algarve (Portugal), from theme parties, company parties, social events, product launches, collections, fashion shows, beach parties, New Years Eve, birthdays, shooting for companies, weddings…
Having been organising events in the Algarve for the past six years, we have an extensive knowledge of the region’s offer and partners and together we can make any occasion unique!
Given any challenge, we make it happen! We take care of all the details. For us the right event has to be creative and imaginative! Sophisticated, but relaxed! Different, unique, authentic!
First Event
Now 21 years old, First Event, based in Yorkshire, is taking the industry by storm. In 2021 we became employee-owned, meaning every employee is also a shareholder. Our whole 68-strong team has a stake in providing clients with the very best experiences.
In the last year, we have grown our turnover by 175%, from £8 million in 2021 to £22 million in 2022. We’ve grown our workforce by 50%, from 46 in 2021 to 68 in 2022. And we’ve grown our customer base from 42 active clients at the end of 2019 to 117 active clients at the end of 2022.
But it’s not just about the numbers. We’re investing in innovation, creating dedicated web, app and client services teams to provide a more complete service. We’ve invested in an in-house production studio, facilitating high-quality virtual and hybrid events. And we’ve put sustainability at the heart of all we do, with dedicated sustainability experts on every project team from day on and reporting the carbon footprint of every event we create.
We ’ve also developed an in-house training platform, to ensure that every area of our agency is growing and progressing to ensure that First Event is always future-ready.
Identity
For the second year running, Identity, the human experience events agency, is named as one of Europe’s fast-growing companies. Identity ranked 56th in the 2023 edition of the FT 1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies – a climb of 253 places since last year and the only human experience events agency on the list in consecutive years. It also ranked No2 in the UK’s Top 100 Event Agency league table.
This success comes from having a dedicated team; winning great clients; delivering on sustainability; and never losing sight of its social value policy.
Identity sustains its exponential growth with investment and opening of new offices in London and Abu Dhabi, as well as ongoing senior hires, and further additions to the board of directors. The agency now has 200+ employees across its offices.
The agency continues to attract and retain leading industry talent through its holistic approach to work/life balance, continuous learning and development, and offering vast career progression opportunities.
Winning a range of enviable new clients, and delivering high-profile, creative and complex events, while achieving ISO sustainability accreditations for its events and it’s clients has ensured Identity’s successful trajectory.
Outsourced Events
Founded in 2001, Outsourced Events’ (OE) wide-ranging experience, creativity, agility, relationships and commercial prowess supports clients to host engaging, unforgettable, sustainable and cost-effective global events, reaching tens of thousands of delegates.
Providing comprehensive end-to-end event, tradeshow, inventory management and marketing services, London-based OE has a team of 39 who delivered some 300 in-person, hybrid and virtual events in 22 countries and 51 cities during 2022.
Committed to progressing the next generation of event professionals, the leadership team mentors staff including two “year-in-industry” students, supports team members in achieving professional qualifications, creates content and contributes to numerous articles to share learning and best practice.
Forging several 20-year-plus global brand corporate technology and association relationships, OE has built a trusted reputation, becoming ‘part of the team’ and developing unparalleled knowledge of industries and target audiences.
Dedicated to delivering informative events and at the forefront of event management innovation, OE engages clients, delegates, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors to understand and meet their objectives, driving content, format and pre and post-event marketing.
Commercially astute, OE supports clients to develop objectives and KPIs and explore creative ideas and content to attract new delegates and sponsors, encourage repeat attendance and create new revenue streams.
