A Liverpool marketing agency that started with just two staff members has opened an office in New York.
SEEN Connects has represented celebrities including Jack Whitehall and Gok Wan and has been involved in collaborations with eBay and Panasonic.
Founder Sedge Beswick, from Whitchurch, first entered the marketing industry working for Red Bull whilst at university.
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The 33-year-old told The ECHO: "My job was to make sure the right people were holding a can of Red Bull at the right time."
From there she went to ASOS, becoming the first member of their social team. Five years later, she went on to launch her own marketing agency SEEN Connects, which connects influencers with brands.
Recalling how she convinced the first investor to believe in her vision, she said: "While based in London I had a coffee with [what would become the] first investor, where in just under 20 minutes I sold him on the concept of an innovative influencer marketing agency – I know, I’m a fast talker."
She opened in London in 2016 with just one other employee and chose Avenue HQ in Liverpool to open the second office in 2020.
She said: "We chose the north for our second office because we have a ton of clients in Manchester and Liverpool.
"Plus, I know from personal experience there is a lot of untapped talent in both cities, but Liverpool made the most sense from a culture and work environment perspective.
"Coming from a town based half an hour outside of Chester helped with our clients based in Manchester and Liverpool."
"By the end of the first year [of the company starting], we were a team of 10 with almost all of our clients based in Manchester or Liverpool."
On her inspiration for starting the branch, she said: "While working at ASOS I would on the daily receive incomprehensible emails from influencer agencies. They were selling fluffy ideas and I knew that you could be data-driven with our industry. I wanted to build [progress tracking] into the foundations of my agency.
"Celebrity and influencer marketing is second nature to me as it’s been central to my career from the very beginning. You can understand so much about a brand’s audience through influencer and celebrity marketing.
On her company's expansion into New York, she said: "I knew it wouldn’t be easy and that timing would be absolutely everything. It became the natural next step when our UK clients were introducing SEEN Connects to their US counterparts and we were getting enquiries from the US.
"If you’d told me six years ago that our footprint could be stretching even broader than it is now, I wouldn’t have believed you. However, unlike the US, with these newer opportunities, I’m having to school myself to ensure that if we do launch there we’d nail the market.
Praising her team she said: "SEEN Connects has gone from a two women business to a projected 100+ team by the close of the year, with a paid media team, a product studio and NFT specialists.
"I feel really proud of everyone who works in the business. My goal is to keep growing SEEN Connects while futureproofing it."
