So what’s next for us, and you? 15 years of BlueChip Communication

Last week, we marked BlueChip’s 15th anniversary. I couldn’t be more grateful to be able to celebrate a decade and a half in operation. It takes all sorts of things, including exceptional colleagues, to make a business like ours work. I am humbled daily by the capability of BlueChippers. I am also very mindful that none of us would be here without our clients. It's you, our clients and industry partners, who expect us to be at our best and thus inspire us to be ever better problem-solvers, partners and people.  

Celebrating this milestone it's fine to reflect on our journey, but more important to look ahead. 

When Bruce Madden and I decided to leave our previous consulting roles and join forces professionally to create BlueChip Communication, we didn’t have a clear view of where our venture would take us. For us, it was a matter of giving it a crack, and if it didn’t work, we would just both go and get a job again. Never did we anticipate that we would have fifteen staff in the blink of an eye, that we would find ourselves with a business each fifteen years later, or that our three children would today be teaching us about social media.  

Similarly it’s true to say that while some of BlueChip's current growth and success was planned, and intentional, some is just accidental! 

When BlueChip started in 2004, most people in our industry didn't expect social media to be a game changer, or even a 'thing'. I vividly recall the CEO who said to me mid-conference "Oh the twitter will never matter for a business like ours". In context, it all felt pretty new and not necessarily very useful to most financial services leaders. I'd say even more so those who were serving the superfund, advisers or other "value chain" participants a remove or two from "real people". Consumers.

LinkedIn had just launched in 2003, Facebook was born the year after, the same year we launched BlueChip. and Twitter arrived in 2006. Within five years, BlueChip was blogging, updating statuses and tweeting vigorously from industry conferences such as ASFA, FSC, FPA and SPAA.  

Then the GFC hit global financial markets and banking systems, and what felt like a social and reputational death in 2009 turned into the foundations of a new practice area. As a result, we developed fully integrated marketing in 2015. By then, the technology foundations necessary to run integrated marketing were in place for most of our clients, and it became clear that what used to be traditional PR had the potential to become full funnel communication. Thought leadership on speed and at scale was now possible. We saw the opportunity to do more than just build our clients' profiles – we would use the same skills of storytelling to build your reach and revenue. 

Fast forward to today and BlueChip continues to grow. Fast. We’re still sought out for profile and positioning work, and to help protect clients’ reputations, but much of our new work helps financial services businesses grow through strategy, marketing and communication technologies.  

So, what will we see in the next five, ten and fifteen years? 

By 2024, I expect that our firm will increasingly be using behavioural science, including behavioural economics, in what we do. In 2029, you’ll see your PR and marketing evolving in real time thanks to artificial intelligence, in particular so-called that sub-set of AI called machine learning.  

In 2034, the first of the superannuation guarantee generation (those of us, like me, who started working in 1992) will be reaching the age we can almost get our hands on a working lifetime of super. I'll be two years away from my preservation age of 65, and I'll be one of the first Australians to retire with a whole working lifetime of compulsory retirement saving.

For that money to be worth having, we'd better hope we’ve found a way to halt the effects of climate change.

I find it hard to imagine anything other than a future where most, if not all, investing will be impact investing.

We believe Mark Wiseman, Global Head of Active Equities at BlackRock, when he says that “in the long term, investor value and values converge”.  

That’s a future we want to be part of.