Interview: Greg Phillips, CEO, Dee Set Group discusses how the agency is building on forwards momentum

Dee Set Group featured a couple of times in our news recently with positive news. This field marketing business is grounded in the retail sector, and its recent continued success story is certainly noteworthy. Field Marketing’s Frank Wainwright took the opportunity to learn a little more about this from CEO Greg Phillips.

Greg opened our chat by saying that Dee Set is in “the fortunate position of having growth in all areas”, before dispelling the idea that fortune has played a major part by unveiling some of the strategy that has seen a positive cycle to reinvestment back into the business.

This includes a “huge transformation around use of data and technology… that is providing “visibility and a very clear return on investment to our partners.”

Those partnerships are expanding. Historically Dee Set has been known for its army of merchandisers that operate in the big four grocery retailers, but the 2020  acquisition of agency Tactical Solutions has added what Greg calls “sales mentality and brand focus.”

These factors came together in FMBE’s award judging process last year where Tactical’s sales know-how was powered by Dee Set’s technology investment to walk away with our Field Data Award noting their transformative activity with FMCG client Quorn. In fact, the entry impressed our judges sufficiently for it to claim the all new ‘Campaign of the Year’ title.

Greg credits the leadership team that he spearheads for successfully enabling the route through from investment to results.

He namechecks three, David Pugh, Chief Information Officer, Rob Slaski, COO and Cathy Evans, MD, Tactical Solutions a balance of talent that has given the boardroom a strong mix. Dee Set is also promoting from within with Antony Lee, Business Unit Director, People and Retail and Lee Horton, Business Unit Director, Product and Supply both recently taking on more responsibility.

Of all these team members it is David Pugh’s work that seems to me to be steering Dee Set towards growth opportunities. David is ex-CTO of Stagecoach, and his arrival at Dee Set has seen the company’s multiple insight streams harnessed together to operate under one accessible cloud-based system. David’s work has also given Dee Set a marketable technology asset. As an example, it will soon be helping a US-based field marketing business to make progress using Dee Set’s image recognition software.

There’s clearly a platform that has been built here to focus the business around the key service of tech-empowered workforces with implications beyond the established expertise in retail and field marketing.

Profitability through recent challenging times has given Dee Set confidence, and with that has come a desire to set the pace against other KPIs too, most notably the environment. Greg is keen to speak about the progress being made on this at Dee Set.

Tactical Solutions is heading for B Corp status – verified to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

More broadly as a group Dee Set is committed to changes including electric fleet vehicles, solar energy, carbon neutrality and zero waste to landfill. Greg says that the motivations are not just altruistic intent. Making these changes is driven by both employee and client expectations of Dee Set as a progressive enterprise. He feels amongst the negatives of lockdown, one of the positives of the past two years has been the chance for society to pause and focus attention on the environment, followed by a demand to see real change.

The same process has applied to workplace wellbeing and the last two years has seen a step change in Dee Set’s focus on Mental Health, subscribing to a programme from an organisation called Mental Health First Aid.

After our interview Greg sent me further details of this programme , together with a report from Pam Buso a mental health champion at Dee Set.  Pam wrote:

“Over 2021 as a team starting with twenty-one first aiders, we have raised awareness and supported more than 200 colleagues with either a listening ear, helpline numbers, virtual call, phone calls, Blink chat support, Blink posts, crisis support and signposting. As well as being there to support through our wellbeing inbox service, it has also been an opportunity to build and maintain relationships to support colleagues ongoing, every day reducing the stigma and working together to improve our mental health and wellbeing at work.”

So, our interview, that started out as a celebration of commercial success above and beyond the survival levels achieved by many successful agencies, showed how that success has underpinned platforms that are built to make Dee Set’s future more assured.  Sustainability is a keyword here, whether applied to the long-term wellbeing of staff or the big E of the Environment. Dee Set looks set to be a harmonious place to work, inside and out.