Agency secures six-figure backing for growth

A specialist food, drink and hospitality marketing agency has secured a six-figure investment to accelerate its next phase of growth.

Congleton-based GAZER has received the backing from Rick Steckles, former chief technical officer at CTI Digital, who has also joined the agency as technical and insights director.

The investment will be used to strengthen GAZER’s data and technology capabilities, develop its OPTICS proposition and create new tools for trade marketing and sales teams.

It coincides with a rebrand as the agency expands its work across trade marketing strategy, account-based marketing, activation and commercial evaluation. 

Michael Potts, strategy and growth director at GAZER, said: “This investment is an important milestone for GAZER and gives us the backing to accelerate the business we are becoming.

“We are combining strong strategy and activation with technology, data and commercial intelligence to help clients make better decisions and understand what is genuinely working.

“OPTICS is an important part of that, but this is about the wider direction of GAZER and building a more valuable, scalable offer for our clients.”

Rick added: “What attracted me to GAZER was its specialist understanding of the on-trade and the opportunity to apply technology to real commercial problems.

“There is a huge amount of data in the sector, but it is often fragmented across different systems. 

“Our focus is on turning that into clear, practical intelligence that helps clients decide where to focus and what to do next.

“My role will be to build that technical and insights capability as GAZER continues to grow.”

GAZER has recently delivered trials and projects with brands including Jägermeister and Paragon Brands.

Its OPTICS platform enables businesses to test products, sales strategies, point-of-sale materials and activations in live hospitality environments before wider rollout.

Using EPOS-backed sales data, it measures factors including rate of sale, cannibalisation and category impact to help brands assess the commercial effectiveness of campaigns.

A recent trial at Northern Restaurant & Bar found increased visibility at the point of purchase drove up to a 32 per cent uplift in volume, while bar staff advocacy increased sales by more than 44 per cent.

Jägermeister UK has also used the approach to inform its strategy around the wider UK rollout of Jägermeister Orange.

Georgia Gregg-Smith, head of trade marketing at Jägermeister UK, said: “The great thing about Labs is that it de-risks new product launches; you know how consumers are going to respond when they are actually faced with the product in the real world.”

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