In 18 years at the helm of public relations group Next Fifteen Communications Group (LON:NFC) , Tim Dyson has pulled off a string of acquisitions, expanded globally and made a smooth transition from pure play technology PR into the consumer market. While he is the first to admit that niche “inevitable markets” have been central to Next Fifteen’s success, he also knows that the group can’t stop growing if it is going to meet the requirements of its clients today, next year and in five years. With that in mind, 2009 saw Dyson set up a new digital consultancy called Beyond in order to help deal with what has now emerged as the dominating factor expected to reshape global PR, marketing and advertising in the coming years – digital media.
That is not to say that digital isn’t already influencing every aspect to Next Fifteen’s businesses. The group’s operating companies – including, among others Text 100, Bite Communications, Lexis, The Outcast Agency and 463 Communications – represent some of the biggest brands in the world, counting among them IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (NSQ: MSFT), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Facebook, HP (NYSE: HPQ), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Unilever (NYSE:UL) and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO).
Advising those companies, and many other growing business in the tech and consumer space, on how to deal with digital and how the media landscape will change in the near future is, by Dyson’s own admission, far from straight forward. Indeed, the likelihood is that the companies surrounding his base in Palo Alto, in the heart of California’ Silicon Valley, will end up playing a very substantial role in the way his own industry will evolve in the coming years.Putting longer term strategising to one side, the here and now of Next Fifteen is far easier to understand. Shares in the group have rallied since the end of the summer, pulling nicely away from a 58p low in July to spend most of the autumn well above 70p. The price reflects a business performance during 2009 that shook off concerns about the economy on both sides of the Atlantic and delivered an 11% rise in sales to £72.3m and an adjusted pre-tax profit up 68%…
