Ignore bloggers at your peril when running PR campaigns!
September 6th - 2010
Guest interview with Lee Hicken, Hebe Media Hebe Media ran a very successful social media campaign for Marketing Leeds in Barcelona earlier...
Best results in over a decade for Yorkshire -based Clugston Group
The group, which has its head office in Scunthorpe and operations across the UK, includes construction, logistics and property development with clients such as Corus, BP and Morrisons.
Best performance came from the construction arm which increased turnover by £33 million despite the tough market. Stephen Martin, chief executive, attributes this to its strategy of focusing on key sectors industrial, energy, waste, retail and education and a different approach to bidding for new contracts, giving better returns on the time invested. They have also strengthened their offices and operations in Newcastle and Leeds.
Clugston has won a number of national prestigious awards in the last year including the leading health and safety award from Building magazine.
The logistics division has seen demand for its warehousing, bulk food and industrial powders transportation decline, but won new business from steel producers, maintaining turnover compared to the previous year.
Clugston's profitable property development arm has a number of joint venture schemes across the north of England which are now coming to fruition and have all secured lets before completion.
Stephen Martin joined Clugston two years ago and has led a significant change programme across the group, particularly focusing on delivering quality work and winning premium contracts.
As part of the strategy, Martin was keen to understand more about how the company worked at grass roots and earlier this year grasped an opportunity from Channel 4 to work incognito as a labourer for the new series, Undercover Boss, due to air at the end of June.
Stephen Martin added: "This was an extraordinary chance to see firsthand what goes on in our company, without any gloss added for the benefit of management. It was a humbling experience. The camaraderie and support is incredible. People look out for each other because of health and safety - no matter what the age or role, everyone pulls together to do a good job. - However there were problems. And I realised these were mostly in my remit. The biggest issue was communication. You try so hard in head office to communicate but going undercover, I realised very little of it gets through in the way intended. We are making significant changes across the group as a result of what I learned."
Martin admits the year ahead will be challenging as the economy continues to shrink. He said: "We will not be immune to the impact of the credit crunch. However, with a greatly improved balance sheet, strong cash reserves and recently renewed banking facilities we are in a much better position to weather the economic storm."
