NORTH was set up as an offshoot of global marketing group N21 to specialise in digital PR and SEO in 2021.
The content performance and digital PR agency is based alongside the rest of the N21 Group at its European headquarters in Newcastle.
Bethanie Durham, who was recently promoted to Associate Director, now leads the agency which works with clients including Green Chef and Hello Fresh.
She has held a number of roles within N21 starting out as Outreach Manager at Silverbean in 2018 and then Head of Content and Digital PR at AGY47 prior to its rebrand to Ortus.
Here’s what a week in her working life looks like…
Monday
My day starts pretty early, around 7:30am. I’m usually working from home on a Monday so I get ready, start at the laptop and drink a good three cups of tea before breakfast. It’s a quiet one today, the whole agency was on a work trip to Prague this weekend as a reward for hitting our targets last year. Yes really, an all expenses paid trip put on by the company! I am amazed by the person who organised it for all 88 of us that went.
Not many calls were booked in, so everyone is getting on with their own bits and bobs. Monday is an admin day. Every Monday morning I check in with the senior team to see if there’s anything we need to tidy up from the week before. We check if clients are doing OK, people are well, budgets are being spent, and results are being achieved. Next I meet with the Head of Commercial to see how our numbers are doing, what bits of new biz are ready to drop, what’s at proposal stage, and what pitches we have this week. It’s also the start of the month and time to sort some admin bits, so the afternoon involves me looking at last month’s results, checking that we’re on track, and if not, what’s being done to turn it around.
Tuesday
Tuesday is usually one of my office days and I’m carpooling with my husband as he also works in the city centre. He starts pretty early so I’m at the office for around 8am. Again, I need a good few cups of tea before I grab a bagel and a banana which is generously provided by the agency. We have a new starter today so I spend a bit of time welcoming them, then hand over to their new manager.
Today I’m exercising our flexible working policy and meet up with a friend for a long lunch, I end up at The Kiln in Newcastle and because it’s a bit chilly I treat myself to a hot chocolate. I get back to the office and have my monthly ‘people’ meeting with the Associate Director for People and Development. We discuss the general feeling in the team, if there are any training gaps, or any issues.
Wednesday
Another busy one. The morning is a review of our ‘gold plan’ meetings from the last quarter. We work in quarterly sprints to develop the offering we have here, our processes and our ways of working. My senior team have been running the projects and present the results and outcomes to the whole agency. Over lunch I meet with a member of the team I don’t directly manage to see how everything is going. We call them ‘skip level meetings’ and it’s a general check in to see if everything is on track for them.
We pop down the road to a nearby cafe. In the afternoon I’m out to see one of our most long-standing clients to review the last six months, and propose a new offering for next year. I love going out and meeting clients, it gives me a huge buzz. This evening I pop out for dinner with a few colleagues, it’s not often we get together as some work remote so it’s really nice to catch up in a non-work setting.
