Welcome to dR Agency Leeds
Creative & Strategic customer marketing agency.

Who we are

We are dR

An independent full-service creative & strategic customer marketing agency based in Leeds.

Born 12th April 1993 at 9.00am. We're experts at building relationships and driving loyalty between brands and their audiences and particularly insightful with an organisation's customer data, across b2c, b2b and public sector. We link our insight to thought-provoking and on-the-button creative, copywriting and design across the full channel mix.

dR People

We are an agency of clever, motivated people with individual and collective talents that can be tailored to deliver against your needs. We offer you the reassurance of a one-stop solution, with direct access to the people that make the difference.

Ruari Kirwan – MD & Senior Planner

dR founder, MD and Senior Planner, responsible for the vision and overall delivery of the agency’s product. Key skills in planning, data in marketing, communications development.

Key Clients: BT, Lada Cars, Barclays Bank, Barclaycard, B&Q, Comet, Woolworths, Bradford & Bingley, HFC Bank, Capital Bank, Leeds & Holbeck, United Friendly, GE Money, Debenhams, The Scout Association, Arco, Asda, Kingfisher, iceland.co.uk, WH Smith, Tesco Mobile (Ireland), Farnell.

Simon Day – Deputy Managing Director

Simon has almost 20 years experience in agency production and process management. Since joining dR almost 10 years ago he has overseen the development of bespoke workflow management systems and agency-wide procedures that ensure Client projects are completed on schedule and on budget.

Cliff Walton MIDM – Planning Director

Cliff has worked on both Client and Agency side and has over 12 years of direct advertising and marketing experience. He is an excellent data planner, with overall responsibility for a number of key clients, providing both strategic focus and day-to-day management, with additional responsibility for the development of new business opportunities, diversification of the agency product and Social Network Marketing. Clients: Asda, GE Money, Dulux Trade, East Riding Yorkshire Council, West of England Road Safety Partnership, Provident Financial, Histoglass, Steljes, Arco, COI

why dR

hire intelligence
We're a very thorough company. 'Think it through', 'just a little bit harder', 'can it be done better?', 'what will make it really gel with our audience?’. This is what you get from dR, something we call furtherTHINKING™. This is the way we work. This is the way we achieve results, intelligently

What we do

We deliver Customer Marketing

dR is a creative and strategic customer marketing agency. We use customer data to provide a strategic framework to deliver creative communications that inform, engage and influence your audience. It’s so much more than direct marketing; we consider the whole customer journey - from acquisition and conversion through to retention and reactivation.

Our promise, skills and approach

Whether our primary aim is to maximise customer value thorugh increased sales and a loyalty for a commercial client, or to affect behavioural change and achieve a ‘Social Good’ for a public sector client, everything we do begins with people and insight.

Reassuringly at dR the people you meet will be the ones working on your business. All are hands-on people who enjoy working directly with clients. We’re creative, imaginative and passionate with a desire to succeed. We look at the bigger picture and encourage each other to think intelligently – to challenge the conventional and reappraise the accepted.

We call this furtherTHINKING™.

Our services

Strategy & Planning

'How can we do this better?', 'How can we make it more effective?' It's challenges like these that set our planners' pulses racing. Planning is the heart of our agency and it's where our furtherTHINKING™ begins - delivering key customer insight and focusing the direction of our strategic approach, from targeting and segmentation, to media selection, through to campaign planning and creative development. We have a reputation we're proud of; achieving successful campaigns and the evidence to back it up.

Creative

Before anyone even thinks about writing a brief, our creatives work closely with our planners to fully understand the client, the customer and to develop effective and compelling propositions. Every single person in our team is passionate about developing 'intelligent creative' - work that will build the brand, engage the target and stimulate the right response.

Digital & Data

To us, digital’s not just about creating fancy websites and flash animations. It’s about engaging within a channel to stimulate response, to gain accurate data which we can then convert into useful knowledge and then into better ROI. Our digital specialists have capabilities that complement and integrate seamlessly into any channel activity. Couple that with our in-house data offering and you’ve got an end-to-end solution - from database design & build, customer targeting, profiling and segmentation right through to response analysis.

• Website Design, Build and Hosting
• Email Marketing
• Social Media and Social Network Marketing
• Database Design, Development and Management
• Digital broadcast including SMS
• SEO/PPC

Management

Getting the strategy right and producing great creative work will always take priority. However, unless you can manage the campaign, deliver everything on time and on budget plus handle the responses effectively, all that time, effort and money could be wasted. So, if you have any gaps in your process we have people with the right specialisms to bridge them. Or, we can simply manage the whole project from beginning, to end, and back again - now wouldn't that make your life a whole lot easier?

• Customer Insight, Analysis and Interpretation
• Loyalty/CRM
• Lead/Response Management
• Digital Print/ Print management
• Lettershop

Who we do it for

Our Experience

Arco, Asda, B&Q, Barclays, BSL Brammer, BT, Business Link, City of York Council, COI, Comet, Debenhams, Dulux Trade, EEIBA, Farnell, Freemans of London, GE Money, HSBC, Iceland.co.uk, Interfloor, LSC, Lowell, MBNA Europe, Northwest, Provident, Retec Interface, Scouts, TATA, Tesco Mobile Ireland, Venture, WH Smith.

Tasters

Arco

Reactivating spend

Arco is the UK’s leading Health & Safety Equipment and Workwear supplier. The SMEs in this marketplace traditionally purchase from a number of suppliers. Our client wanted to find a way to reactivate dormant customers and encourage them to buy more from Arco over an extended period of time. Our 10% CashBack promotion generated an amazing overall ROI of 4.4 : 1.

B&Q

Evolving a brand

As the largest national DIY chain in the UK, B&Q is commonly perceived amongst the Trade as a DIY supplier. This coupled with a low level of awareness amongst the Trade of B&Q's Trade offer made strong demands on B&Q to review its Trade marketing strategy to move the business forward...

WH Smith

Acquiring new customers

When WHSmith launched their new concept store in Guildford they needed an exciting campaign to engage local people, encourage them to trial the new store and overcome their preconceptions of the WHSmith store offer...

Dulux Trade

Make more of data

Take almost 30 disparate data sources of varying quality/completeness and create a central customer database to service the requirements of several brand teams. Ensure it links to all current (and future) data sources, powers fulfilment requests and enables full MI (Management Information) data to be viewed/extracted...

Iceland.co.uk

Acquiring new customers Iceland was the first retailer in the UK to launch a grocery home shopping service, from a range of 2k products (primarily frozen and non-perishable items) sold in store. In order to increase its market share and attract a new customer base, Iceland introduced a new extended range of premium quality fresh foods in a number of selected locations...

Lowell Group

Evolving a brand

Formed in 2004 Lowell Group is a specialist debt purchasing company. As a new company entering an established and highly competitive market, the key campaign objective was to increase and reinforce corporate brand awareness with clearly differentiated standout.

City of York Council

Reaching hard-to-find audiences

City of York wanted a road safety campaign that would communicate with the traditionally hard to reach 14-25 year old audience. Creating a relevant campaign identity was essential to achieve impact and audience acceptance. What’s more we had to find ways to engage with people who think they’re invincible and don’t want to be preached to. Our blend of social network marketing, guerrilla tactics and innovative creative really did the job, and it’s still doing so.

Provident

Getting more from customers

Provident Financial is the UK's largest Home Credit provider offering unsecured loans, collected by agents, to more than a million customers. Our challenge was to develop multi-channel Retention activity across all stages of the Customer Journey that allowed for increased complexity, closed all contact loopholes, improved results and, crucially, lowered costs...

Tesco Mobile Ireland

Acquiring new customers

To launch Tesco Mobile Ireland (TMI), Ireland’s first virtual mobile network service, in partnership with O2. Working as virtual marketing team with a single contact in Ireland our brief was wide ranging from initial brand development through to actual delivery of all launch material to agreed schedules and budget...