Photo by Jon Butterworth
For a long time location really mattered to us at Hotfoot.
We are a Lancaster based agency, so naturally our first clients, back in 2006, were based here.
We would wander across our city to see them, or they could come and see us at our studio in the beautiful Storey building in the centre of town. And that was enough to keep a small team busy.
Over time, as our first set of clients made recommendations and introductions, and as we did a bit of marketing and attended a few events, we started to get approached by clients a little further away.
Soon enough, most client meetings meant jumping in the car and driving a few miles to see clients up in the Lake District, across the Yorkshire Dales, down the Flyde Coast and across into East Lancashire.
As this was happening, the size of the businesses and organisations we were working with became larger. Some of them were headquartered in our region, others were subsidiaries of much larger entities.
We developed experience in specific sectors, developed some great case studies, picked up a few awards, and started to build relationships with influential people that hopped from one brand to the next, sometimes bringing us with them.
Enquiries started to come in from Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. Early morning trains to London became routine and we opened a satellite office there.
Occasionally clients would ask us to develop multilingual websites for their international customers, and then we would be asked to liaise directly with teams based in different countries around the world.
Covid accelerated things further. Almost overnight, through necessity, everyone learnt the etiquette of video calls with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet. Blurring backgrounds, sharing screens and making use of AI notetakers became routine.
Video calls are a tremendous equaliser. It does not matter if your office has Manhattan zip code and a fountain in the foyer when all you can see is a face in a rectangle on a screen.
Over the last few weeks we have been selected to create brand identities, websites and marketing campaigns by clients as diverse as an arts organisation in Ohio, a contract manufacturer in Florida, a non-profit in Sweden, and a global charity operating in 44 countries around the world.
We will always be a Lancaster business, and we are proud of where we come from, but our location no longer defines us.
