Management Team & Culture

Hiring great people has helped us to keep winning accounts but we also believe that our agency culture has played a key role in our success. We believe that everyone on the team should understand their client’s business inside out and be a strong all rounder so that they can deliver that client’s message via any form of communication, whether it is written or verbal, in new, social or ‘old’ media. Our billable hours are less than two-thirds of a typical forty hour week so we have plenty of time and energy to innovate, to be creative and to continue to learn about the industry. We don’t work in silos; everyone at Spark gets involved in ideas generation for every client, giving our clients a broader range of ideas than just those of their team.

Lauren Richards, Director

The foolhardiness of youth led Lauren to leave the security of an account director position at Weber Shandwick to start her own agency during the Internet start-up boom of the late ‘90s. At that time, there was a huge gap in the market; big agencies were so stretched working on global accounts that there was not time to give senior counsel to start-ups. These new companies desperately needed help with positioning themselves and the reassurance that results would be guaranteed. It turned out that global brands also wanted our combination of strong advice, excellent implementation and great results, and along the way Spark picked up clients such as 3Com and Compuware. Lauren has worked on campaigns for some of the biggest brands in technology such as Kodak, Lexmark and SAP. She has also helped many start-ups build visibility in Europe.

Kewal Varia, Director

As a graduate of one of the first ever PR degrees, Kewal enjoys a glass of bolly with the best of them. But don’t call him fluffy: his biggest bugbear is agencies that fail to get to grips with their client’s message and how to turn it into a workable campaign and then still spend a large amount of the client’s budget on pointless consultancy meetings. Clients work with Kewal because they like the mix of technical understanding, creativity and strategy that he brings to their campaigns. Having also dabbled in freelance journalism, he understands what the media is looking for and believes that Spark’s relationship with the media contributes greatly towards the agency’s ability to deliver better results and ROI than most technology PR agencies. Kewal has developed campaigns for start-ups and multinational companies such as Orange, Compuware, Morse, JDA and Parallels.

Ana Williams, Director

Ana is known in the industry for her technical prowess and love of technology and new media, whether it’s layer 2 switches, ATMs, augmented reality or encryption. She can often be heard extolling the benefits of her iPhone and getting excited about the latest applications and social networks. Technology PR agencies that don’t understand or have a passion for technology are anathema to her. She has an analytical ability to digest complex technologies and a skill at translating this into ideas and content, which then form the basis of campaigns that deliver great coverage. Messaging she has developed has consistently positioned clients as thought leaders, challengers and innovators. She has a passion for results and getting teams to deliver on guarantees and coverage for clients. From an International perspective, she has a keen interest in applying messages and campaigns across Europe and has built a European model that gives clients the best of both worlds, a global approach with locally relevant campaigns. She has worked on re-positioning many global companies including D-Link, 3Com, Motorola and Wincor Nixdorf.

  • Stonewood

    Impressed with the time and energy that Spark puts into researching topics and issues… they understood our business really quickly and translated that into positioning us in the right way… helped in raising awareness of Stonewood and was a leading factor in our successful purchase by ViaSat… really exceeded all our expectations.

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    Getting buy in from all local markets can be challenging but Spark made it look easy… Their creative approach to big campaigns and their ability to develop a message has resulted in ROI on a global basis… they develop campaigns that tap into the heart of our business.

    BelAir_blue_hi

    Extension of our marketing team rather than simply a supplier… understand the challenges our customer face… get through the filters that the influencers we want to reach put in our way… writing is excellent quality… guarantee coverage… really impressed with results.