Abrdn is a global investment company structured around three core businesses- Investments, Adviser and Interactive Investor. In 2020, we took over the production of their series of four podcasts to ensure continuity of production and output as part of their existing series to expand their audience, deepen brand engagement and optimise the potential of their audio channels.

Working alongside their teams, we reviewed their processes, aims, target audience and strategies to understand the brand’s voice whilst celebrating the nuance and diversity already on offer. We established consistency across their series by centralising production processes, providing quick wins in terms of turnaround times, enhancing audio quality and industry-standard production values, and additionally introducing capabilities for broadcast quality live and remote recordings.

As well as offering production support, working closely with abrdn we continue to develop new concepts and strategies to promote the series across social media and on commercial radio in the US and UK, ensuring new and current podcasts are maximised. We regularly hold meetings to maintain schedule momentum and to ensure audience retention.

By migrating the remotely recorded podcasts to a dedicated online platform, abrdn has increased its podcast production to 8 audio series available on its website, Spotify, Apple and YouTube reaching an audience of 26,000 listeners per month. Not only are they increasing the number of listeners, but new listeners are tuning into previous episodes establishing a loyal and engaged audience.

Thank you for your invaluable help, skill and professionalism to get the first abrdn adviser podcast successfully produced. Our stats show that the podcast has been very well received by advisers and the format is one that is now very much part of abrdn adviser’s content planning.

Shona Macdonald, Senior Content Writer, The abrdn Adviser Podcast

Aegon UK is a pension, insurance and investment company, and we’ve been working with them since 2006, delivering a range of marketing, digital and technology services.

Think

Aegon UK wanted a solution that would incorporate a digital and an agile way of working into the heart of its marketing strategy and operations. The overall objective was to develop a multichannel marketing management system which would deliver time and cost savings. To have a clearer understanding of Aegon’s objectives, we led 5 weeks of discovery activity, including multiple workshops.

Create

The solution was centred on our Marketing Operations Suite (MOS) – an integrated set of tools to manage multichannel communications. Using four of our MOS modules: Workflow Manager, Asset Manager, Marcom Store and Operations Manager, Aegon can now manage all of its marketing operations in a more efficient and collaborative way.

Deliver

All marketing activity and assets are available in a centralised location, giving Aegon the additional ability to measure and analyse data, across all projects. A single sign on function was added, allowing third party agencies to engage and upload assets to relevant projects.

• Job speeds increased by 89%
• ¼ of a million historic assets stored
• Accessed by 100s of end users
• 1000s of active projects centralised

“Aegon UK as a business has transformed over the last few years and digital is now very much the focus of all we do. APS has supported us at every stage on this journey and we now have an in-house design studio powered by APS with Account Managers, Digital Designers and Web Developers. APS listen, get what we want very quickly and always deliver what they promise. They are really easy to work with and great to have in my team.”

Head of Brand and Digital, Aegon UK