Campfire in Manchester has made 2 senior appointments as it seeks to become a “social-first digital performance agency.”
Vic McKevitt-Smith, the former Performance MD at Dentsu X, has been named Managing Partner and will head up its performance operation.
Meanwhile Kate Roberts moves from Beauty Bay to become Account Director.
The agency has also released a new keyword mining and trend monitoring tool, Spark.
“There are 3.5 billion searches a day in the UK, which is about 40,000 per second. Each search is a thought that is provoked or prompted by the need to answer a question. To find out which box set to start next, to check the news or buy that coord two piece for the big night out at the weekend. Everything we search for has been nudged by an idea. By a spark,” explained McKevitt-Smith.
“Looking for trends in search is important but a search trend is already well established and highly competitive. Trends are born on social media and emerge on social platforms an average of 4-8 weeks before they build up significant search volume in Google. So, by integrating data from social – which is a mix of human insights and data gleaned from the platforms – we give our clients an edge. They can get there first. And by helping them to step ahead of the competition, we can offer better, tailored and more strategic digital PR, SEO and PPC services – that are more cost-effective and high-performing.”
Prior to Dentsu X, McKevitt-Smith worked at MediaVest, Carat and iProspect.
“Vic’s experience means she’s the ideal person to enable our clients to understand the value of our approach to performance marketing. But she isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty too. She immediately started with the development of Spark,” added CCO Alex Brown.
Roberts spent 4 years as Key Account Manager at Beauty Bay and previously worked alongside McKevitt-Smith at iProspect, where she led the Social Media team. She replaces Sophie Angell, who’s been promoted to Business Director.
“These two appointments represent a huge milestone for Campfire,” stated CEO Joe Gradwell.
“Since we formed in 2019 we’ve made sure our clients succeeded on TikTok and across the social media mix. But we’ve also understood the power of harnessing emerging trends and what this can do for wider performance channels. With Vic and Kate on board, we’re now in a position to deliver on our vision for the next stage of Campfire.”
