Life In A Global Social Media Agency

Simon Curtis is the name and face behind one of the UK's leading social media management agencies, Curtis Gabriel. From humble beginnings in Gosforth, the company now employs over 30 members of staff, has offices in Newcastle, Leeds and London and can boast working with some of the biggest international brands in hospitality and transportation across the UK, Europe and North America.

This growth has taken a great deal of determination, belief, sacrifice and expertise from Simon, so we sat down together to find out more about his journey.

What does a working week look like for you?

My weeks are always varied – no two days are ever the same. I often have to split my time between our head office in Newcastle and meeting new and existing clients. There is a huge amount of travel involved in my role, both within the UK and more recently Continental Europe and America. We have clients from Portsmouth to Aberdeen and Cardiff to Ipswich in the UK alone. Whilst it does involve long days and time away from my young family I do enjoy visiting new places and meeting new people. Most recently I have visited Stockholm and Las Vegas and there are definitely worse places you could travel with work!

What is your role at Curtis Gabriel?

My title is Business Development Director and I play a key part in managing new and existing client relationships as well as being a founding director of the company. We have recently added to our senior management team appointing a CEO, Martin Such, which has enabled me to spend even more time with our clients. We always provide a personal service, offering support and guidance as well as ensuring our clients get the best value and results from our products.

How do Curtis Gabriel work with their clients?

The important thing is that we really understand our client’s business as ultimately, we see ourselves as an extension of it. From the moment I first meet the client through to our onboarding and ongoing management service we ensure all our activity is relevant and strategically aligned to their marketing and commercial objectives. This is headed up by a dedicated Account Manager who is the main point of contact for day to day communication as well as top line planning and reporting. We also provide an Evening and Weekend Account Manager to ensure our delivery is 7 days a week, 365 days a year from 9am to 10pm. So that we can continually deliver bespoke creative content we have an in-house studio and three regional Content Creation Managers who visit our clients regularly. We have also recently appointed a highly experienced head of digital based on demand from clients who like the way we work and wanted us to deliver SEO, PPC, web build, web maintenance, hosting, bespoke design and email marketing.

What’s next for Curtis Gabriel?

This is a hard question to answer as we have already had to adapt so many times because social media changes so quickly. It doesn’t seem long ago that I took the decision to focus on out sourced social media and it was a decision that paid off. We are already a UK leading social media agency and we intend to increase our presence and number of clients across the UK, Continental Europe and North America. We are excited to be working with Hilton, managing a number of their key accounts including their F&B account, Taste of Hilton which has a global reach. We also have a number of strategic partnerships within the private hire taxi industry in the UK and North America. Our plan is to capitalise on these clients and relationships, continuing to build our reputation and developing our product. Social media has become the most important form of marketing for any business and we want people to outsource to us, the experts. That said, the North East will always be a special place for us as it is where it all began and where our head office is based. We are lucky to have a great team working with us in Newcastle and we are always looking to expand our client base and professional relationships within the area.