MARC WRIGHT: Serial Entrepreneur Shares Sale of Simply to Gallagher Comms
Marc is a serial entrepreneur, building and leading businesses in the internal communications space.
Simply – the community and consultancy for internal communications is the market leader in the IC tech space. The biannual simplyIC and simplyEXP conferences are the biggest events of their kind in the UK. He sold Simply to Gallagher Comms in Feb 2024. www.simply-communicate.com
Previously he was Chairman of MCA Live, a live events agency specialising in large scale engagement programmes, which he sold to WPP in 2001.
Back in the 1990s he bought Crown, one of the largest corporate video producers in the UK and turned it into a major producer of live events.
Marc started his career in television making science documentaries and TV drama including the soap 20 Steps to Better Business for the BBC. He wrote Tevolution, The Evolution of TV Satellite and Cable and edited The Gower Handbook of Internal Communication. He is a Past President of the Internal Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for EMENA and holds an MA from Oxford University.
Now an investor, he has returned to his media roots and has taken a significant stake in Pasta Grannies, where Vicky and her film team feature Nonnas from around Italy making handmade pasta in the traditional methods. The media sensation has over 3m followers on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. www.pastagrannies.com
You have spent your career building and leading business in the internal communications space. Share your background
My original background was in TV production where I made TV drama and documentaries for the BBC, but I got seduced into corporate communications. As I am an entrepreneur through and through, working with CEOs of massive organisations helping them communicate better was irresistible. I ended up helping British Airways, Tetra Pak, GSK and HSBC among many.
I did not leave my media roots however, and built a company that not only did consultancy but also became the largest publisher in Europe focused on the employee communications industry. Our Simply events are the largest of their kind in the UK.
Tell us about how 2024 changed your life.
Simply is the 4th company I had founded and the second that I took to market to sell, so it was always in the plan to exit at some point. It took a little longer than I expected (the financial crash of 2008 and then the Pandemic threw a couple of spanners in the works). But after 20 years it was time to sell and retire from actively managing a company.
Gallagher is a global insurance and benefits group with over 55,000 employees and a $10bn turnover. They have a growing communications arm and it was the perfect fit for Simply. Our strength is using digital tech in employee communications and we are now deploying that as part of Gallagher, in particular helping large organisations introduce AI to their employees.
We love being part of the group; since we joined in February 2024 we have doubled our headcount. I have only one more year to go and the big difference for me has been letting go of the day to day running of Simply and seeing my direct reports blossom in a new, larger environment.
As a business owner the first thing you do in the morning is check the bank balance and cashflow. These days I can ignore the bank feed and focus on how my colleagues are feeling.
What did the sale of Simply to Gallagher Comms mean to you?
Obviously there is the personal de-risking; and I am still getting used to that. Like any entrepreneur I am mindful of the days in the past when I went to the ATM not sure that I could withdraw any cash. You always had to ensure your staff’s mortgages were being paid, even if that meant selling your own home. I sold everything I owned and cashed in my pension to keep Simply on the road. It never occurred to me at the time that I was taking too many risks. The survival and growth of the company was everything; like a lioness with her cubs, you just fight every inch to survive.
Communications agencies live and die by their clients’ billings; they can switch the tap on and off for a bunch of reasons that are out of your control. Running agencies I got tired of borrowing my turnover. But I got lucky – sometimes a brutal barrier can open another door to riches. For instance, after I sold my live events business to WPP in 2001, I wanted to leave, but the sale contract prevented me from setting up another production company. So, I looked around for something else to do and invested $1M in building Simply as a publishing brand first. Owning a bedrock of subscribing members for our content and events gave me a guaranteed yearly income and a bunch of companies I could sell other services to. Later we started to do consultancy to build it into the company that attracted the eye of Gallagher.
Now you are an investor and have taken a significant stake in Pasta Grannies.
Pasta Grannies was set up 7 years ago by an old school friend Vicky Bennison when she started filming Nonni around Italy making pasta by hand. For her it was (and still is) a passion project, whereby she could preserve and share these traditional recipes and a way of life.
My investment is to help monetise the channel through memberships and affiliate marketing. We have just launched the new site www.pastagrannies.com and the memberships are outperforming the business plan. We are about to sign our first sponsors in a six figure deal.
How did this deal come to fruition?
Pasta Grannies grew on the back of advertising revenue from Youtube and Facebook. It was enough to fund the monthly trips to Italy to film the Grannies plus post production costs. But in 2023 the income from advertising fell significantly as Google and Meta moved the goalposts. So although viewers were going up (3m across the main social channels) income was plummeting and putting the channel in danger.
When I sold Simply it was a simple decision to invest in Pasta Grannies. Italy, grandmothers and pasta: what’s not to like? And I knew how to build and monetise a community following.
What is it about this brand as an investor that is attractive?
It’s the authenticity of the brand that truly attracted me. We have a granny finder who scours the smaller villages of Italy for characters and stories. Although Vicky Bennison is central to the brand (and she hosts the video podcast series) it is the Grannies who are the stars. We commissioned research which showed that our typical viewer lives in North America, aged 35-65 and is female – a great demographic for community loyalty. They come for the pasta but stay for the Grannies.
We also have a celebrity following: Pasta Grannies appears in Episode 1 of The Bear and Stanly Tucci is a fan. The cookbooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
As an investor in the media you have to be wary of AI hollowing out your business plan. But AI can never replicate a grandmother with 70 years’ experience of feeding her extended family from the produce that grows within 5 kilometres of their village.
You are on the board of Skills4Startups. Tell us about why the organization is important to you.
One of the projects I am most proud of was running roadshows to SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) for the UK government in the 1990s. We had a truck that toured the regions of Britain for 3 years. Around 30,000 CEOs came on board to learn about the importance of marketing, research and adopting IT. I saw then what good a little knowledge and encouragement can do when applied creatively in the right place at the right time.
Today’s growth is going to come from the small start-ups that S4S is aimed at, and I am very excited to be part of that. Sophie is doing a first-rate job of building the service and I will do whatever I can to support her and the team.
What’s next for you?
I still have a year to work at Gallagher before the earn out completes and I am enjoying every minute. We are focused on helping staff in large organisations adopt the challenges of AI and digital transformation. It’s real pioneering stuff and very exciting.
In a year’s time I will be free to pursue a life of investing and giving back. If Pasta Grannies succeeds like we expect then I will use my company TWIG (The Wright Investment Group) to help monetise and secure other media passion projects. And through Skills4Startups I look forward to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs to build and scale their dreams.
