Q&A: Ian Anderson, Twentysix London

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Firm name: Twentysix London Date established: 1998 CEO/President: Gail Dudleston Employees: 93 in the UK

Number of clients: 72  Representative clients: Shell, Procter & Gamble, RBS Group, Royal Navy/Marines, Waitrose, Barratt, Investec, Sodexho, Abercrombie & Kent, BP etc

Principal products/services: Full service digital agency (we do not do search or media buying though). Technologies: ASP.net (MS Certified Partner); Full L.A.M.P services; MOSS to SharePoint 07; JAVA; Oracle; Action Script; CMS integration (enterprise and bespoke); System integration; Business analysis; Hosting solution and infrastructure architecture; Support.

Website address: www.twentysixlondon.com  Head office address: Eldon House, 1 Dorset Street, London, W1U 4EG

1. What does your firm do?

Twentysix London is an award winning top ten full service digital agency working with leading UK and international brands. Our services include planning/research, user-centred creative, technical consultancy and development, design and build, digital corporate communications and digital marketing.

Ian Anderson

2. How does your firm help companies be more effective on the web?

Twentysix has always broken the mold in financial corporate communications. We wrote the original UK best practice awards for the UK IR Society, published the definitive book in online IR (real relations, virtual world), and have published a significant amount of research into investor’s real needs without a hidden agenda to sell new services.

We do not develop ‘out of the box’ solutions for IR teams uninterested in achieving the very best for their investors — we leave that to the other UK agencies satisfied in developing $25,000 vanilla services.

We believe that investors deserve more. We believe that your company should develop a user-centered solution that satisfies all user needs and transparently explain why they should become, or remain invested in your company.

That takes time, money and the desire to be the best.

3. Tell us about a recent project that you are particularly proud of?

At BP we developed the information architecture and web content matrix ‘five’ years ago. It is such a success, they have never changed it.

In the consumer field Waitrose.com — transforming middle-aged English ladies to web 2.0, convincing the Managing Director to blog and developing the largest online recipe and forum food site in Europe.

The Waitrose MD blog.

4. What are the biggest challenges your firm faces?

Most IR professionals do not understand the Internet, or how to market their business through no fault of their own — they simply have never been exposed to the discipline.

Most have a sheep-like mentality to do no more, or less, than their peers. This drives complacency and creates disingenuous solutions for investors.

5. Which other firms similar to yours do you admire or respect?

We don’t. You either have tool suppliers selling solutions nobody needs, print companies desperate to retain revenues who have rushed together online solutions usually led by an online annual report, or PR/IR firms developing loss leader solutions to retain client revenues.

6. What differentiates your firm from others in the market?

We are a pure digital user centered design agency and develop solutions for a wide range of global brands both consumer and business focussed.

What we learn is ploughed back into the investor solutions.

7. Are there any future plans for your firm that you want to talk about?

China is interesting.

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