Managing director Sandra McDiarmid believes it is the agency’s owner-managed, entrepreneurial model that allows for robust relationships, resulting in its well-established, longterm partnerships with clients: “We don’t want to be big because that’s when we’ll lose the personal involvement we currently have; we believe that small is the new big and that our flexible structure makes it possible for us to deliver the contemporary solutions that keep our clients happy.”

“Part of the success of Shanghai’s model is that our business owners are in client meetings, not junior account directors. We deal with decision makers and our clients deal with agency decision makers every day.”

McDiarmid says the agency’s integrated offering means it can deliver effective campaigns that meet strategic objectives across all channels: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s advertising, PR, social media, digital marketing, online solutions, content creation and curation, branding, CI development or design, we have a specialist who can deliver.”

2014 has seen The Old Shanghai acquire a full-service communications company specialising in content curation and creation, public relations and social media.

McDiarmid says: “This enables us to enhance our online marketing, content marketing, social media and PR strategies, especially in the consumer and FMCG sectors where we are seeing enormous growth opportunities on existing and new clients.”

The agency also formalised its design offering by appointing senior LISOF design lecturer, Tania Whitely, who has won serveral creative awards for her inspiring translation of ideas into form, to steer the team and inspire originality.

The agency has an entrenched policy of always employing specialists in their chosen fields; people who want to own their projects and grow their specialties alongside clients.

McDiarmid says she seeks out people who have multiple skills within a discipline: Our designers, for example, design for print, web and social media, while our writers can produce short form copy, long form writing, social media copy, web copy and PR copy. The Old Shanghai has just written and published a legacy coffee table book for a blue chip client.

“We also make sure our client service team are trained in strategy, digital marketing, production and delivery.”

She says, longevity of relationships is a cornerstone of the way The Old Shanghai does business. “For this reason it’s very important to us that we choose both our clients and our people very carefully – the personalities must be a match and we must be able to operate as a single team. We don't experience broken telephone, where briefs get lost in operations and traffic; another reason to value small – we all have direct communication with one other and with our clients all the time.”

And the proof is in the pudding: The Old Shanghai is currently developing an integrated campaign for client Bestmed Medical Scheme, using television advertising, online advertising, video marketing, content curation, activations and social media to reach potential new members.

In addition, The Old Shanghai is about to launch an all-new rewards programme, has completely rebranded a South African hotel group and continues to provide daily content, social media and PR for groups like Abland, SAPPI, Enablis, RaizCorp and Emperor's Palace.

“There are no hard lines between channels for us – we simply take the best approach to achieve our clients’ business strategic objectives. We understand the reality of omni -channels and we know how to create content for each of them, effectively linking messages and producing integrated, and cost effective, campaigns,” says McDiarmid.