SME Profile: Oculus

Oculus is an exciting young Reading (UK)-based SME – but one that has been operating since 1992. Founded by Karen Eden, Debbie McCarthy and Dave Hasler - they wanted  to keep up with customer demand at the time. Oculus found it difficult throughout the recession but has climbed back up to 22 employees at its UK offices.

 

The company works in integrated design and digital marketing, builds Apps, websites, provides marketing and many more services. Their flagship product is a web platform that allows customers to manage their own content. 

 

Dave tells us how the company was founded, how the company remains competitive in a rapidly competitive industry, and why MBAs are an attractive demographic to hire!

 

 

Currently we have 22 heads here in the UK. The recession has affected us so our headcount has gone down. But we are currently building team back up and looking at new additions to the team this year. We added a digital project manager to the team, added another senior account director and we are slowly developing.

 

 

IT, Education, transport and telecommunications – including B2B, B2C, external and internal communications. Although we also work in other sectors, they are not as key.

 

 

Oculus is an integrated design and digital marketing agency. Our core competencies are design, creativity, digital services from Apps to websites, and marketing. 

 

Our flagship product is Kentico CMS, a web platform, as we are gold partners. Kentico is really the basis for building websites and it allows the content to be managed by the individual rather than going back to an agency to get things updated on a website.

 

 

Competiveness in terms of wealth is hard to define, its more about value for money and giving clients more than they expect. Its about understanding their industry pain points, being proactive, and being more consultative these days - being an extension to your clients marketing team.

 

 

We have no CEO but I am the Managing Director, Karen Eden is Client Services Director and Debbie McCarthy is Creative services Director. 

 

 

All three of us founded the company back in 1992. We founded Oculus because of the need of a key IT player at the time to outsource its marketing requirements.

 

We all worked together before at a leading IT company, which doesn’t exist anymore, and at the time we were developing in-house marketing. Within a few years, it didn’t change its offering quickly enough to meet the changing needs of the market.

 

They were downsizing and we said to the bosses, we still need this service, how about if we take it and do it outside of the company? After months of negotiations, we got an agreement to do so. We began with about eight of us at the time. 

 

 

From the Thames Valley outwards, to London, to the South, to the UK and to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. We are used to producing marketing information in varies languages.

 

 

One.

 

 

It depends on what our need is at the time. We’re talking to our current MBA employee at the moment about developing him into a more accounts-role. Often the problem with hiring MBAs is work permits.

 

We try to keep an open mind and the MBA route is a logical one for us. We look for people with a background involved in marketing in some form. It obviously allows us to bring someone to fit into our industry sector, which allows us to work out where that person might fit.

 

An MBA might fit into business development or accounts. That’s where the key potential is. The other half of the businesses is the creative side and we haven’t explored MBA students for those roles yet.

 

 

Me: d.hasler@oculus.co.uk

 

 

We are based in a grade II* listed building, that provides a great working environment for the team and a great place for clients to meet up. We also work with big-brand names, such as Canon and Adobe in the UK.