Case study: GEL Studios

GEL Studios is a full-service creative agency based in Swindon, Wiltshire. Since 2015, APD has worked with the agency to help streamline its daily processes and better define its purpose.

When GEL Studios approached APD, the agency was very busy working to establish and grow organically, which meant they didn't have time to define its purpose and evaluate how best to grow in the future.

GEL Studios knew what its values were, but struggled to articulate them in a meaningful way. They needed an outsider's perspective who could come in to help them define their values, so they could communicate them in a transparent way that the team and their clients would understand.

As the agency increased in size, the amount of work coming in was also increasing. This meant that they also needed a way to better manage their projects and ensure details weren’t missed.

As a first step, APD held a number of interactive workshops with the whole team, to help them identify and define what GELs core values were, determine why they do what they do and explore how they want their customers to perceive them.

Part of that discovery workshop involved each member of the team writing down on post-its what they thought GEL stood for. The team then took turns to vote for their top five values, with the ones with the most votes being their core values. It was important that the whole team was involved in the workshops so that everyone's ideas and thoughts were considered.

As the whole team had helped to shape the values, GEL Studios found it easy for the team to embrace them. GEL is now a team of ten, and those core values are still at the heart of everything they do today.

GEL attended an APD Scrum Training workshop where we taught their team the foundations of the Scrum Framework and the underlying principles. This enabled GEL to adopt more efficient ways to manage its flow of work.

Simon's insight and help have been pivotal to laying foundations of our business. He’s provided much-needed direction and ongoing counsel, which has enabled us as a small business to work at a much higher level of effectiveness than businesses much larger than ours.
Graeme Leighfield, Managing Director at GEL Studios.