2024: Bluestripe’s year of connections, impact, and innovation
By Tyrone Stewart, Content Strategy Lead at Bluestripe Group
2024 was another eventful (pun very much intended) year for Bluestripe Group, with the team making appearances everywhere from London to Miami across the year. Owned events, partnerships, and activations across 10 months of the year kept us busy, showing the industry what we’re all about. That’s conferences, roundtables, panels, networking lunches, and so much more.
The power of three
Our standout Trinity Lunches continued to grow in strength, with the networking events bringing together leading agencies, tech, and media companies for an afternoon of good food, good conversations, and no presentations in London (twice), Manchester, and Edinburgh.
The event, which started life in 2021, attracted hundreds of industry talents for relaxed conversations with peers, partners, and colleagues across the three key locations.
Striving for equity and equality
Every year, March means Women’s History Month and, within that, International Women’s Day (IWD). For IWD 2024, we once again held an annual lunch through our Digital Women initiative. The theme of ‘Inspire Inclusion’ was observed by a room filled with women and allies, with a panel discussion and keynote from some of the industry’s leading women.
Though the lunch serves as a celebration of the women in our industry, we ensure that the struggles, challenges, and prejudices faced by women around the world every day are not forgotten. And we do this by providing a platform for inspiring women, both at the event itself and throughout the year via our Digital Women platform.
Speakers at the event included Jasmine Dawson, SVP Digital at BBC Studios; Ellie Edwards-Scott, Co-founder at The Advisory Collective and COO & Co-founder at WeGame2; Jasmin Foye, Digital Ad Sales Account Director at BBC Studios; Christina Lemieux, Executive Strategy Director, PG One at Publicis Groupe; Caroline Lidington, UK MD at Invibes Advertising, and Nikki Sehgal, General Manager at Media For All (MEFA).
Later in the year, our annual Media Pride Lunch returned to once again celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community working in advertising & marketing. Part of our Media Pride initiative, the afternoon brought together the community – and allies – for food, drinks, and great conversation.
It kicked off with a panel session featuring Chris Dunne, Head of Marketing at Thinkbox and Joint CEO for Outvertising; Laura Jordan Bambach, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Uncharted; Marty Davies, Founder of both Smarty Pants Consultancy and Trans+ History Week; and Sonnie Spenser, Digital Marketing Manager at Fresh Pies and Communications Co-Director for Outvertising.
Quite the year
Sometimes, living in the present requires you to look at both your past and your future. That’s why we held two events that each ticked one of those boxes: Foresight and NDA Live: A Year in Review.
The second annual edition of our Foresight event was bigger and better than the year before (there was quite literally standing room only). The full-day event explored the topics of brand safety, programmatic, and AI, bringing together experts from right across the digital advertising ecosystem to discuss the role those themes will play in 2025.
The event featured keynote speakers Founder and CEO of Luma Partners Terence ‘Terry’ Kawaja and Brainlabs CSO Sue Unerman, as well as representatives from Diageo, Immediate Media, Kinesso, Mindshare, Multilocal, Coca-Cola, IAB UK, Amazon, The Guardian, JCDecaux, EssenceMediacom, Hilton, Zenith, Mantis, and TAU.
Our A Year in Review event, on the other hand, looked back at 2024, providing a space for industry experts to discuss the year’s successes (and mistakes) and the lessons to take from that.
Across two panels, the half-day event explored 12 of 2024’s biggest talking points: Influencer, Retail Media, Sponsorship, Experiential, Measurement, Omnichannel, Video, Audio, Out-of-Home, Programmatic, Artificial Intelligence, and Customer Experience.
The event – which kicked off with a keynote from MiQ – featured two panels, each exploring six of those topics. These panels were made up of speakers from big-name brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Heineken, Tesco, Boots, Subway, Coca-Cola, and Haleon.
Creating moments
2024 also saw us continue to produce ambitious activations for clients. The two standout activations perhaps being the agency roadshow we produced for Immediate Media and the debuting of a brand-new awards programme for JCDecaux UK.
With Immediate, we visited a total of 11 agencies in London and Manchester to raise awareness for the publisher’s brands – which include Radio Times, Good Food, and BBC Top Gear – and the launch of its first-party data proposition, Prism. And we didn’t do this empty-handed! We brought a variety of fun games and activities with us to each agency, including Top Gear racing simulator, a silent disco, free pick ‘n’ mix, and free massages. Meanwhile, one lucky winner bagged themselves a two-night stay in Paris for themself and a friend/family member/partner.
The JCDecaux Programmatic DOOH Live Awards, which returns for a second year, celebrated the very best of the programmatic digital out-of-home space in a visually-led awards ceremony, which included a unique live voting aspect. The event, held live in London, saw awards handed out for Best Use of Data, Best Integrated pDOOH Campaign, Best Use of pDOOH & Mobile, Best Use of Programmatic & Traditional OOH, and Best Use of pDOOH & Online Video, as well as a Grand Prix award, a People’s Choice award, a Creative Excellence award, and a Creative Attention award.
Alongside our events business, we made some marquee additions to our client roster, taking up B2B PR representation for the advertising divisions of global consumer-facing brands, including Uber, Tripadvisor, and LG.
We even popped up at many of the industry’s biggest events throughout the year including Cannes Lions, MAD//Fest, Advertising Week Europe, Possible, and DMEXCO.
So, here’s to much more of that this year!