The Bluedog Group has come a long way since it was founded in 1999, evolving into a global collective of specialist agencies offering integrated solutions for prestigious brands.
Group CEO Nick King tells TMI that Bluedog today is a unique one-stop-shop of agencies, delivering seamless, full-service support tailored to client needs, offering its clients everything from creative design and implementation to media liaison and live events.
“I started Bluedog Productions in 1999, so we’re now 26 years old. We’ve evolved year on year, expanding our services into exhibition, live events, digital and much more. But retail was where we started,” says King.
Bluedog can today offer 360-degree service, he says.
“You can come to us and say ‘I want XYZ for a retail activation or a pop-up that needs digital integration or something engaging.’ We have a creative agency in house. And now you like what we’ve done with that concept, and would like to roll out across exhibitions for trade shows. That’s fine, because we have an event agency in house. And now you want to shout about it. Well, that’s fine, because we’ve got Essential Communications within group. So we’ve got everything in house that a brand needs.”
Under the Bluedog umbrella, the group’s companies include doplr, Essential Communications, HEX, Kounter and Underlined, each offering something different that its travel retail clients might need.
Kounter offers travel retail and global shopping development, implementation and insights. doplr focuses on live events, from Olympic sponsorships, product launches and exhibitions to large scale B2B conferences. HEX delivers digital services, including web and app development, and gamification. And in 2023 Bluedog acquired the leading Travel Retail PR agency Essential Communications to meet increasing levels of client interest in PR alignment. Since then, the group has also introduced Underlined, its in-house creative agency, servicing all client creative needs.
Over the past two years, Kounter (The Bluedog Group’s retail agency) has doubled its retail client base, and expanded its team to 24.
King tells TMI that Bluedog receives a lot of its business through word of mouth. And clients are loyal as the group delivers time and time again for them, always going above and beyond client expectations. Bluedog has been working with some partners since it began more than 26 years ago.
“Our first job was with World Duty Free in 1999. We did the first campaign that World Duty Free as a company did. They gave away a car in the store. It was a super successful event and from then on we have worked with World Duty Free and its various guises. They are our longest standing client,” says King.
.
Expanding geographically
A majority of its travel retail business is focused in Europe, but Bluedog Group is delivering projects for its clients all over the world.
“From a travel retail perspective, 40-50% of the business is in Europe, with quite a lot in the Middle East and Asia. And South America has exploded for us the last two to three years. In North America we deliver activations and permanent displays,” Andrew Machin, Kounter Managing Director tells TMI. “We’ve broken into cruise in the last couple of years.”
“One of our aims is to build a team locally, in the Americas, improve our customer base, and our breadth of service there,” says King.
To help drive growth across the group’s companies, at the beginning of the year Bluedog appointed Sarah Genest as Global Business Development Director.
“We’re aggressively investing in our group on a continual basis through acquisition, internal investment, and strategic employees like Sarah, who is a fantastic addition to our team. We have very high hopes. We’re aggressively targeting growth. We’ve grown year on year since the pandemic. So we are in a very good place,” says King.
“We have a plan that looks two to three years ahead, and we can see further expansion through organic growth and acquisition.”
