About Populate Social Digital Strategy company in Cardiff, United Kingdom
The world is full of marketing agencies, multi-serviced and non specialised. We wanted to break the mould, providing a dedicated, effective and streamlined service for the social media marketing space. We are a team of passionate, dedicated and highly ski
Based in Wales amp; working globally; were a small but powerful team. With varying backgrounds and lots of individual experience we bring a wealth of eclectic insights to our social media campaigns united in creating data-driven results. We know what works and ready to impart knowledge to our clients to get the most out of their social media budgets.
Populate began back in 2015 after our Founder Dan noticed social media was being treated like a bolt on rather than as a primary focus. He set out to build a specialist social media marketing agency; something which cut through the noise and offered depth of knowledge in social.
Our origin actually stems from a time where we were known as Tide Creative.
Fuelled by wanting to change the marketing world from lots of half-baked services amp; very little in terms of value for money for SMEs we wanted to bring a totally different meaning to the word digital marketing. A niche began to develop and we were there to fill it.
2016 amp; 2017 brought exciting growth in our client base amp; we were fortunate to win the venture category for the Santander Spark Challenge in 2016 amp; shortlisted in the Cardiff Business Awards.
Feeling the squeeze in our office in 2017 we decided to move into a new space in the City Centre. We jumped aboard the hiring train and expanded our team so we could service our new exciting clients.
We really started to define our offering at this time after noticing a trend in the lack of transparency of true results businesses were used to receiving. We wanted a more tell all approach and focused heavily on building unequivocal reporting.
Be so good they cant ignore you; the phrase that adorned our 2nd office and formed a key part of our marketing material for a long time.
New clients + new team members = more space! We moved into our current crib back in 2018 after some key client wins amp; the need for a larger photography studio meeting rooms to catch up with our clients to plan out their social media campaigns and of course more desks for our growing team!
Following some fun and successful years Dan was named Young Business Person of the Year in the Cardiff Business Awards. We were also shortlisted in the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
Look at those cheesy grins! A snapshot of our core team back in 2018. This team really helped push the business forward with some great client wins including Northampton Saints Glamorgan Cricket Arbuthnot Latham and Live Nation.
In 2019 we became partners of all the key platforms: Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn amp; Google.
We also brought in some more experienced heads to the business giving our clients even more expertise to call upon.
By Christmas 2019 we had grown to a team of 11 with key specialists across a number of areas. Dublin felt our presence with one hell of a Christmas party that year ☘️
2020 what a year its been. Weve pushed on and made sure our staff are always at the forefront of everything we do. Being shortlisted in the Creative Pool Awards as the Best Agency to Work For amongst some of the biggest names in the business—yeah a proud moment!
As we entered our 5th year of business we felt our current brand did not represent who we were as a company. Sometimes it takes time to really get to grips with who you are and what you want to represent and we felt that it was the right time to really give things a refresh. So we launched our updated brand website and marketing material ready for our next big push!
Plainly speaking we create social campaigns that deliver. At Populate we believe in doing one thing just really well. Although a little oversimplified what we mean is were not trying to conquer the whole world. We just do our best to conquer our bit of it.
In 2015 when we first started social media marketing was a hugely under-serviced sector and knowledge was incredibly poor. Today we live in a world where there are tons of agencies and freelancers providing social media services. However we believe our offering is a little different.
Born out of frustration we set out to eliminate the biggest problem in social marketing. The lack of genuine transparent results. Too often brands spend excessive time money and resources on social marketing without reaping any rewards. There is also a huge lack of understanding within marketing departments regarding social media. We set out to educate our clients to give them the tools they need to enable social media to be a complementary part of their marketing strategy.