LYNDSAY Menzies took a step into the unknown when, four years after she was part of the team that led search marketing agency Bigmouthmedia into a transformational deal with digital marketing firm LBi International, she broke away to form a new agency.

Alongside Bigmouthmedia co-founder Steve Leach and account manager Robin Richmond, Ms Menzies set up Edinburgh-based content agency 8 Million Stories, becoming chief executive in the process.

Though the business counted BBC Global News as its first-ever client, Ms Menzies admitted that the move was daunting – all the more so because it brought home just how big their previous venture had become.

“It was quite a change for us going from being a really big organisation to being a start-up again,” she said. “I hadn’t realised how far we’d come.”

Three years on and 8 Million Stories is in growth mode, with turnover for the current year expected to hit £2 million and clients including high-profile names such as William Grant and Sons, Universal Music Group, Burts Bees and Conde Nast.

Bringing them on board has been no small task, especially as 8 Million Stories has set about breaking the mould when it comes to content, ensuring that creative campaigns should only be produced if they are going to lead to a direct uplift in sales.

“In some instances people didn’t want to know [how the content impacted on sales],” Ms Menzies said.

“Brand managers really like [working on] the creative and if it’s not doing much they say ‘but that’s the fun bit of my job’.

“We saw a real opportunity to do something different because really good content was being made by the huge network agencies but they didn’t know how many products they sold on the back of that.

“We saw an opportunity to make fantastic content that actually achieves something for the client.

“Over time people have realised the value of creating really nice content that gives results and we have created a tool that tracks content and looks at the results.

“People have really started to realise the value of measuring that.”

The fact that the UK market for marketing has matured in recent years has helped on this front, with businesses like 8 Million Stories now playing a much more strategic role in advising on clients’ marketing strategies.

As more and more clients have established their own in-house marketing functions they have begun handling more of that work themselves as opposed to sending it all out to an agency, as was previously the case. That means that what is passed out tends to be far more specialist in nature.

“It changes the level of the conversation,” Ms Menzies said. “It’s been nice to go in and do a lot more of the strategic piece.”

When it comes to its own business, 8 Million Stories wins most of its work out of London, where it has an office, but the bulk of its 22-strong workforce is based in Edinburgh, where, according to Ms Menzies, “the talent is so good”.

Expansion is in its sights, though, with Ms Menzies’ experience at Bigmouthmedia and LBi giving her a good grounding in how to go about building a business.

Having joined Bigmouthmedia in 1999, by 2006 the Edinburgh firm was also operating in London and New York before going on to expand further via a private equity-backed deal with 12-office German business Global Media Web Marketing.

The 2009 deal with LBi took the business further into Europe, the US and Asia and brought Ms Menzies the dual role of chief executive and chief marketing officer.

Although the scale of the expansion at 8 Million Stories will be smaller in the first instance, Ms Menzies said the firm is about to set out on the acquisition trail.

“We want to build the creative side of the business because there’s more and more demand for that,” Ms Menzies said.

“After that it’s about jobs.

“There’s demand in the US from clients to build out the offering there.

“We might do that through partnership or acquisition although New York is a difficult market.

“When we first started working there in 2004 we found at that time that it was so far behind the UK.

“The UK market is really advanced and a lot of brands have very good in-house teams.

“The US is a very different landscape because people think about it in a different way. It’s difficult to enter that.”

Other areas the business might look at could include Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

Although this could result in significant growth in the next two to three years, Ms Menzies noted that the firm is also positioning itself to weather any economic knocks, with marketing being among the first areas businesses will look to scale back in times of woe.

“In a lot of situations marketing does suffer,” she said.

“It tends to be the first thing to receive some form of cut because it’s much easier than making job cuts.

“We want to have really good quality clients in long relationships because it is very important not to have all eggs our in one basket.

She added: “We have to spread the risk as much as possible.”