A new Bristol creative consultancy is aiming to shake up the marketing industry with a virtual model and strong sense of social purpose.
Sparro House, which claims to be one of the first virtual marketing consultancies in the South West, will bring together brand, digital and communications expertise under founder Paul Kirkcaldy, former partnership director at Bristol marketing agency Mr B & Friends. 
It will draw on a network of specialist senior contractors, hand-picked for each project. As a result, it will provide clients with a bespoke team working collaboratively as a seamless extension of their own in-house marketing team.
Virtual consultancies are growing in popularity by offering a flexible and cost-effective way of working with clients as they have no fixed overheads.
Clients only pay for what they really need, meaning fees are typically 20% cheaper than a traditional creative agency.
Sparro House also says its focus on wellbeing for its network of freelancers is unusual in the creative industry.
It has partnered with employee-support platform Juno, recently launched in Bristol, and will provide its contractors with benefits around health and wellbeing that are usually only on offer to full-time employees.
Sparro House is also an early patron of the One Life, One Tree project, which offsets lifetime carbon footprint by planting giant sequoia trees at specialist locations in the UK. 
Paul Kirkcaldy, pictured, believes Sparro House will not only better suit the needs of clients but will also appeal to the booming freelance market in the UK who prioritise flexibility and wellbeing over 9-to-5 employment, and who want to work on projects they genuinely feel passionate about.
Paul, who has 20 years’ experience in the creative industry, said: “I don’t subscribe to the noise we hear about the traditional agency model being dead. I just think the nature of the agency/client relationship has changed, now lending itself to new agency models starting up to better meet the needs of clients.
“The rise of the freelance economy, an increasingly strong sense of ethics and social purpose, and an ever vigilant eye on budgets and value for money is now the world we live in.”
“I feel strongly that, as employers, we have a responsibility for the health and wellbeing of everyone who works with us, and freelancers should be no different. However you choose to work, your wellbeing should always be a priority and we want to put a focus on that for our Sparro community.”
