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You gave us some great feedback about The Difference’s progress in our Christmas message – thank you! As January draws to a close, we thought we’d follow on by sharing our plans and predictions for client work this year.
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The evolving healthcare industry
needs focused, agile support
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It’s exciting that our historically cautious industry is embracing the virtual agency model: we are seeing companies large and small grasping how our agile way of working can deliver better, faster results in a competitive market.
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Changes in the market are
changing the agency model
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The new IR35 legislation is only going to accelerate this trend. In a nutshell, once this comes into force on April 6 this year, many contractors are likely to be classified as employees by HMRC, based on a number of criteria. Employers will need to pay NICS and offer them employee status. That takes away the client’s flexibility to add and remove comms resources. And many contractors don’t want to go on payroll, preferring to retain their autonomy.
But the need for high calibre, proven people to deliver projects and supplement in-house teams won’t go away. We predict that clients will look to retain resources on a project basis, pulling in specialist skills as and when needed. As a trusted, sector-specialist team of senior freelancers, The Difference Collective provides an ideal solution to provide that purpose-built project support.
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The Difference Collective is going from strength to strength and we believe it is now a real agency force to be reckoned with. Our success in the past two years has made us feel bolder about staking our claim to excellence as healthcare communications specialists. We’ve honed our proposition, learning as we went: evidence suggests that it’s a strong match with client needs.
We’re now a formidable force in the comms sector: proven, senior talent; specialist knowledge and experience; mixing and matching skills to form powerful teams that are a precise fit to the challenge at hand. With over 90 fully vetted members, we have the resources to meet large-scale briefs and provide every healthcare comms specialism you could want, throughout your project.
Last year was transformational both for us and for our clients: we took on major, multi-skill projects for big players as well as supporting specialist and entrepreneurial healthcare businesses. With over £1m fees last year and our streamlined overhead from virtual working, we’ve proved that our model is both effective for clients and financially sustainable. We’re here to stay.
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Our 2020 goals… to support your 2020 goals
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In 2020, we plan to grow our Collective to 125 high calibre members. We’ll continue to champion our selective approach to pitching and to promote efficient, cost-effective alternatives for clients. And we’ll keep on delivering exceptional results that help healthcare businesses hit their targets and outperform for patients and stakeholders.
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We can make a Difference to you
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If you’ve not yet worked with us, why not make 2020 the year that we prove our worth to you? Give us a project and let us show how your business can benefit from doing things Differently. If you’ve already seen the light, thank you – we’ll continue giving our very best to our loyal customers and those who have used and championed us from the start.
We are also pushing forwards our Pitch Invasion – mentioned in our last Newsletter – leading the conversation about more effective approaches to pitching and selection. We are working with a range of stakeholders across healthcare PR and comms to drive the debate and create real change. Watch this space for more!
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Look out for the next issue of our newsletter, A Different View, in March - in an even more streamlined format. We’ll be sharing more healthcare sector insights plus news of projects and people. Sign up here to receive it by email.
Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter to join in with the ‘pitch Differently’ conversation and get the latest on events, issues and announcements in the sector.
With best wishes,
From Angie and The Difference Collective team
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