Zone bags £6m fund as Kelly joins

London digital agency Zone – which counts Coke, Tesco and BT on its client base – is preparing for major expansion on the back of a £6m investment of equity finance.
As part of the deal, Business Growth Fund (BGF) has taken a 20% stake in the agency, which employs over 180 staff across its four offices in Bristol, Berlin and Köln.
The capital investment will support the agency in making a number of UK and European acquisitions, a number of which have already been identified.
Zone specialises in content creation and offers a range of services, including campaign management; designing and building user-centred websites; social media management; CRM; and videos and blogs to games.
It has grown revenues consistently over the past 5 years organically and through acquisition, and is forecasting turnover of £17m in 2015.
To coincide with BGF’s investment, Zone has also appointed Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe co-founder Jim Kelly (pictured) as non-executive director. He stepped down from his role as Dentsu UK chairman in 2013 and has since been working as an independent consultant to digital, advertising and marketing services agencies.
Zone executive chairman James Freedman said: “The UK’s digital sector is one of the country’s economic success stories. Working with marketing-leading clients who are as ambitious as us, we are helping drive that story.
“Zone is always committed to delivering a world-class digital service. In today’s fast-changing world that means always developing our capabilities. In the past we’ve made acquisitions through cashflow. With this new investment we’ll be able to further build our offering.”