The North East’s community-focused culture and tenacious spirit attracted award-winning marketer Samuel Marriott-Dowding to Sunderland.
Originally from London, entrepreneur Samuel Marriott-Dowding is one of a growing number of business owners who are flying their native nests and planting their roots firmly in the North East.
Samuel initially launched his marketing agency – Marriott Communications – on the Scottish borders, but as his company began to grow, he looked elsewhere to take his business to the next stage.
Impressed by the redevelopment efforts taking place across Sunderland and the North East’s dynamic and supportive business community, Sam couldn’t resist the opportunity of launching his new look business on Wearside.
“Personally, I find that everyone has a nice quality about them in the North East,” Sam told BW Magazine. “It’s like, they would give the t-shirt off their own back to help you and there’s a community spirit about that. You don’t find it in many places”
Marriott Communications has grown rapidly since launching in January 2021, acquiring new clients from across the UK and abroad and picking up several prestigious business awards and nominations along the way. Notably, Sam has been nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year in the Sunderland Echo Business Awards and Marketer of The Year in the Prolific North Awards.
For Sam, marketing is all about storytelling. Since launching his company in early 2021, Sam has built a strong reputation for his ability to take the essence of a brand and shape its story into a successful communications campaign.
His multifaceted strategies bring together content marketing, public relations, brand development and storytelling to help businesses get their stories heard and, more importantly, make them resonate with their audience.
“My tagline is, every brand has a story, make yours matter,” Sam said. “Marketing has shifted recently towards a more conscious consumer. People care about where they’re buying from so companies must be aware of their consumers’ buying power.
“As businesses become more and more aware of this, they want to make sure that their story aligns with the values of their target customer. That’s where I fit in the middle to provide that conduit between business, sales and the customer.”
Sam works with a diverse clientele, but he has a particular passion for non-profits. Even as his business has grown, he continues to offer pro bono charity support, allocating a set number of hours per month to charitable organisations. The third sector is notoriously underfunded and communication budgets are often the first to be cut. However, marketing is also one of the most important things non-profits can do to raise both their profile and funds.
Over the past two years, he has worked with charities supporting a wide range of causes, including organisations working within the Scottish prison system, therapy groups and addiction recovery. A successful campaign for the baby loss charity Held In Our Hearts saw the Scottish organisation reach 2 million people. But it’s not just the large-scale projects that Sam is excited by. Telling the stories of small, local brands is equally as important to him.
“A lot of the smaller brands have incredible stories, but don’t necessarily have the leeway to shout about them,” he explains. “I really want to work with those businesses and really challenge the conventional way of doing things.”
Sam wants to challenge the status quo in marketing, putting empathy, social consciousness, and inclusivity before profit for businesses and their stories to connect and resonate with their audience.
But while the bottom line may take the backseat in the planning room, facilitating growth remains the aim. The company’s ability to develop impactful communications strategies have shown to generate awareness and drive engagement again and again.
It is this business model, “blending socially conscious work with a tenacious spirit”, that makes the company unique and stand out from the competition.
“I think empathy is really vital when you work in marketing,” he added. “I see a lot of marketing companies that I can tell are so focused on the bottom line, but they’re not focused on making a difference.
“I really want my business not to just make money, but to also make a difference. I want to leave my little mark on the world and leave it as a better place after I’m gone.”
Sam got his first taste for social media and marketing at the age of 17, volunteering for a health watch group. After moving to Holland for university he launched his first business, a club promotion agency that catered specifically to international students and young professionals. Working with six clubs across Holland, he brought in £80,000 collectively over the course of a year.
After graduating from his degree in politics in 2019, he returned to the UK “full of hope and optimism”, with aspirations of working for the Foreign Office. Sadly, Sam was among the thousands of graduates who found themselves crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unemployed for a year, he applied for a staggering 276 jobs, securing four interviews and receiving no job offers. The worsening state of the job market over the first year of the pandemic had a detrimental impact on his mental health.
“There was me thinking I’m going to get an amazing job in the Foreign Office, but then the pandemic happened and it was horrendous.”
“Looking back at 2020, I don’t even recognise who I was that year and I think a lot of people feel the same. I was going through so much anxiety and depression. From finishing the year and starting the new year, I was in a completely different place. I look back now, and I can’t believe that it was me.”
Sam knew he wanted to make a change, so when a volunteering opportunity arose with a charity-focused venture capitalist he took it. After a couple of months working in kind as a social media manager, he asked himself: “why would I want to work for someone else when I could work for myself?”.
“I just woke up one morning and I thought, ‘you know what, I’m going to set up my own agency’ and I really went for it. The same day, I signed up to Companies House and by January 2021 I was incorporated.”
With a limited portfolio, few connections and no financial backing, Sam faced a challenge ahead, but it was this tenacity that shaped his work and success over the following two years.
“I didn’t have anyone in the industry to give me a leg up, I didn’t have any connections to paying clients, I didn’t have a real portfolio and so with everything I’ve done, I’ve had to prove myself and work hard to get where I am,” he continues.
Having established Marriott Communications in the North East and nationally, the company is now embarking on expansion plans into Europe in 2023 with two new clients based in France and Italy.
The company also intends to expand its current one-man team over the next year.
“There’s a real tenacious business spirit here, where there’s enough success for everyone and no one is trying to stab anyone in the back,” concludes Sam. “There’s a piece of the pie for everyone.”
“The North East has an amazing history, and I think it has shamefully been overlooked in terms of funding and investment. Now we have such an incredible, dynamic and innovative business community, and I think we’re going to end up showing the rest of England. It’s an exciting time to be here.”
