Introducing Campfire, a social media marketing agency creating memorable experiences on social based on science and human behaviour

Throughout their career, Joe Gradwell and Alex Brown have been responsible for 2 billion video views, 14 million new followers, and an impressive four record breaking industry firsts. Now the co-founders of Campfire with clients such as Missguided, MyProtein and The Inkey List, what actually lit the fire to get Campfire started?

Founded in Manchester, UK, Campfire was created by Joe Gradwell and Alex Brown after both holding Director positions at the award winning agency, Social Chain (Brown, Video Director and Gradwell, Media Director). After three plus years at the agency, in which Alex was responsible for over 700 million video views and Joe building a dynamic live stream, seeing boohoo claim the title of “Best Live Branded Video” in 2016, both Gradwell and Brown believed it was time they combined their knowledge and experience to create a new agency.

Introducing Campfire: creating memorable social experiences built by science and human behaviour.

The duo describe themselves as social natives with Gradwell holding the position of CEO and Brown, CCO. Put simply, they’ve been at the forefront of social since its early inception and have quickly asserted their knowledge by winning an impressive client rostre such as Missguided, MyProtein, The Inkey List, Butterlane Antiques, IWantWallpaper, Dewty, NowTV and a further eight more.

Discussing Campfire’s social offering, Gradwell states:

“We’re a collective of social media specialists, a team of professionals in content creation, making consumers stop in their tracks when scrolling platforms due to witnessing a standout piece of content. Be this long form video or static content, it’s imperative to take human behaviour into consideration. For instance, does the content spark any of these marketing must-haves: happiness, awe, joy, anger, sadness, lust? Does it speak to our universal desires for security, status, belonging, adventure, affection, control, creativity, delight? It’s not enough to have a curated piece of content that “looks nice” on brand channels, it has to spark emotion in order for people to engage.”

As well as telling brand stories through such content, Campfire also specialise in paid social with tangible ROI at the core. This is achieved by creating a tailored customer journey using considered touchpoints throughout the consumer purchase process. An example of this in practise is with long standing client, IWantWallpaper, helping the brand achieve a ROAS (return of advertising spend) of 14.90 - for every £1 spent the brand received almost £15 in return.

Within the industry, brands often brief agencies to make their content “go viral”... having worked on numerous viral campaigns over the years, Campfire understands the science behind a viral hack - creating content with the goal of it? being shared outside of a brands’ traditional customer base, creating a surge in talkability and a real “did you see that?” moment. Something Campfire’s achieved successfully for long-standing client, Missguided on multiple occasions.

With every client offering, creative content is key in order to achieve a successful campaign. CCO, Brown, discusses the importance of this, specifically for an individual platform:

“Recently we’ve partnered with The Inkey List to tackle a platform that a lot of brands are yet to conquer: Tik-Tok. By creating content that is native to this platform we’ve managed to gather over 2.7million video views in under a month by tapping into the “challenge” nature of the platform, briefing both hero and nano influencers to create such content. You can’t expect the same piece of content to work across every social platform, you need to be savvy about where your demographic are and what they engage with.”

History & Background

Gradwell’s interest in digital began at the age of thirteen when he taught himself how to use Photoshop. After two years mastering the software, he found himself in the position of selling logos and brand packs to start-ups, quickly realising that he could make this into a social story - beginning a Youtube channel in which his subscribers would challenge him to create a design in a set amount of time.

Gradwell went on to study mathematics at Leeds University and during this time, discovered the power of social communities - social accounts that have the ability to spread a legitimate message or aim on mass due to their large and highly engaged following.

Creating his own community with half a million followers, Gradwell began to sell media packages to clients such as tailored campaigns across his portfolio. The creation of such soon led him to be snapped up by Social Chain.

Brown, the agencies’ CCO, a creative by nature with a keen eye for video since a very young age. Brown began his career by recording videos which often trended on Youtube, eventually moving his creations over to Facebook in which communities such as Lad Bible would share his content.

Brown quickly realised that this had the potential to be his full time profession. After gaining a degree in 3D visual effects and film, he found himself at Social Chain, the award winning social agency founded by Steven Bartlett. Brown quickly set to work, creating their first ever viral video and building social communities such as Student Problems and Sporf into their millions.

Fast forward to today, Campfire stated a previous revenue target of £400,000 at the beginning of 2020 which the agency surpassed by May (https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/digital-agency-news/2020/01/big-growth-plans-former-social-chain-directors). The team have now challenged themselves by almost doubling its target to £1,000,000 due to expanding their team by 100% over the past three months with further hires on the agenda.