01 Oct 2017

High 5: a birthday update from Roaring Mouse

Roaring Mouse is five years old today. The extra admin associated with year end is upon us, but it is also a time for some reflection on what has been our best year yet.

Roaring Mouse started trading on 1 October 2012 to provide progressive businesses with an edge in today’s increasingly digital media environment, to help startups and growing businesses communicate with impact so that they could better gain and retain the attention of those they want to do business with.

In the last 12 months, our team has spent thousands of hours doing just that. We’ve helped our customers with PR strategy, content creation and campaign implementation and they’ve rewarded us with their continued loyalty.

More than half our customers have been with us for more than two years now and three go back to our very earliest days.

Highlights

There are many highlights from the last year. Firstly, we won more business than we lost, and we’ve seen our fee income grow by a fifth as a result.

Significant moments we can mention on here include our appointment by fintech startup allpago to support its international expansion plans, being named a PR Moment Award finalist for our work with Beaming, making a film that has had more than 120,000 views on Facebook, and embarking on our first dedicated consumer PR campaigns (see below).

We also launched this new website, which was beautifully put together for us by the team at Crush, and made solid progress on a documentary about growing businesses. Expect to see more on that soon!

Consumer PR

Our move into consumer PR represents a big step forward for Roaring Mouse. Consumer PR is a real specialism, so to provide it properly we engaged Lucie Arnaud, a colleague from my time at Bite and one of the most talented consumer PR strategists in the industry.

Lucie is supported by Gillian Edwards, another experienced consumer PR specialist who worked with Lucie at Freud Communications.

Both are tenacious, hard working and terrific additions to the team.

Investing in startups

Our support for startups has been furthered by putting our money where our mouths are and investing in some promising startups. It is very early days for our investment activities, but here are three we’ve supported in a small way:

  • Tutora: platform connecting pupils and parents directly with talented and trusted tutors
  • Hurree: marketing automation platform for apps
  • My Friend’s Room: travel platform where you can rent accommodation from friends of friends

Supporting good causes

And finally, Roaring Mouse is committed to supporting good causes. This year we’ve donated time and money to three that are close to our hearts:

  • The Linacre Institute: charity helping state-school sixth formers in northern England reach the UK’s most competitive universities
  • Ashgate Hospice: Chesterfield-based charity providing care to terminally ill people and their families
  • Holmewood Cricket Club: a small cricket club in North Derbyshire

We enter our sixth year in a fantastic position, with a strong team doing the kind of work for progressive businesses that Roaring Mouse was founded to focus on. Over the next 12 months we are going to share much more about that on here.

In the meantime though, we will raise a glass to the year just gone and look forward to the one ahead.

Happy Birthday Roaring Mouse!

All the best

James