All About Manchester

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If you want to be at the forefront of the digital wave, you'd better be in Manchester. Bold statement indeed, but considering the fact that it belongs to Michael Flynn, chief executive of Fast Web Media, whose Manchester-based company counts Carling, Nationwide, UEFA and the Premier League among its clients, dismissing it is not advisable.

Michael Flynn has every reason to be smiling as he leans back in his chair talking business in a small meeting room in his head office - an inconspicuous, 4,500 sq ft space on the 12th floor of Sunlight House on Quay Street. His company, Fast Web Media, has been through a fascinating journey and emerged as an industry beacon, able to take on the big boys in London in website development, online marketing and social networking.

He likes working from Sunlight House, he says, but is not looking forward to the summer because the office is not air-conditioned. The irony of working on the cutting edge of digital technology from an old office building that uses fans to keep the staff alive in the summer months is not lost on the 45-year-old CEO, who laughs heartily before collecting his thoughts and starting at the beginning.

Founded in Manchester in 1995 as a digital media company, Fast Web Media's most significant early achievement was 4thegame.com, which is now one of the oldest and most popular British football websites. It wasn't long before the company was snapped up by Fast - a Norwegian enterprise search leader, which developed many of the web's original search technologies in the mid-90s. If the name sounds familiar, it is probably because the company has recently made headlines with its acquisition by Microsoft for £1.2 billion.

Under Fast, Fast Web Media operated as an R & D division and had just nine employees at the time Manchester-born Flynn joined as chief executive.

"I worked at Bass Brewers, now Coors Brewers, who own Carling," he recalls. "As the sponsorship director of the Carling Premiership, I became involved with Fast Web Media when we sponsored its website, 4thegame.com. In 2001, I left Carling to join this company because I saw a great opportunity there."

Two years later, the ownership of Fast Web Media was transferred to Oslo-based holding company Total Sports Online, in which Michael Flynn is managing director, marking a new era in the company's history.

"Fast Web Media became a company in its own right, with three main areas of operation. The oldest area is digital media. Our website, 4thegame.com, is one of the two oldest football websites on the web today, with 700,000 unique users a month.

"In addition to developing our own media, we also work as an agency in two areas. One is the digital area, where we apply the knowledge gained from 13 years of developing our own websites to create websites for clients such as Coors, Nationwide and Bravissimo among many others.

"We also have a division within the company that offers PR - we are sport through and through in this company, therefore we can talk the game as well as deliver it on a digital platform.

"So we offer a comprehensive range of services, but the one area that I think is fair to say we can blow our own trumpets is in search engine marketing. That's partly because our ex-parent company, Fast, develops search engines so we have a very good understanding of them."

Indeed, Fast Web Media's expertise in search marketing has been recognised nationally with a number of high-profile accolades. Last year, the company won the Big Chip Award for Search Targeting for its work on the Premier League and in 2006 it scooped a Revolution Award for its Carling project.

Critical success has been coupled with commercial triumph - Fast Web Media now employs 31 staff and has enjoyed a year-on-year revenue growth of 60 per cent over the last three years. Flynn predicts further growth, as the company prepares to launch some exciting new products, as well as continuing to work for high-profile clients.

"We have a new website called maximumrugby.com, which is a network of rugby clubs up and down the country, allowing the coaches to contact the players and the players to talk to each-other about social events. This is in test at the moment and will be owned by Fast Web Media. There are a lot of similar projects in the pipeline."

According to Flynn, maximumrugby.com and other work will contribute to a projected £3 million revenue for Fast Web Media this financial year. But though the company is growing fast in a booming industry, he claims it will never be too big for Manchester.

"As a company we see Manchester as our home and it will remain that way. We see growth in London and Edinburgh, where we have one-man offices at the moment, but our base will remain here."

Flynn explains that one of the reasons why there are no plans for relocation outside Greater Manchester is the company's good, long-standing Mancunian staff. Indeed two of the people who first launched the company, content director Stephen O'Malley and chief operating officer Stephen Frater, are still here. But he admits the company also has many other incentives to remain true to its roots.

"Manchester is definitely the place to be; it has so much going for it. It has its own character and it isn't London. In terms of communications, it has a very good international airport, London is just over two hours away by train and you can drive from the Midlands in just over an hour.

"In terms of recruitment, we have a very good relationship with the University of Manchester, which is second to none, so we don't have any problems recruiting excellent technical staff - we currently have four people from the university on our technical team.

"Plus Manchester has a great shopping centre, excellent restaurants and two top football teams - one arguably the best in the world. If you were to draw up a blueprint of what you'd want in a city, you would realise that Manchester ticks a lot of the boxes and the ones it doesn't tick, it's working on now."

Manchester may be shaping up into a formidable business destination, but unfortunately big clients with big marketing budgets are still reluctant to venture up North, so Flynn works from London two days a week to pull in business.

He explains: "This is a very, very new industry and the majority of the big companies in media have always been in London, so that's where the clients go.

"On the whole, it's probably fair to say that we haven't punched at our weight here in Manchester in the digital industry, considering that the world's first computer was built here. But a lot of that is because of the inertia that's been there from big companies utilising existing London agencies to deliver all of their marketing requirements and not really taking stock and looking elsewhere."

There are currently very few Manchester-based digital agencies on the radar of big clients, so London need not panic just yet. But fast forward to 2010, when mediacity:uk bursts onto the map, and Flynn says that change will be inevitable.

"The digital industry in Manchester is quite disparate at the moment - you hear about a small agency doing well here or someone else winning an award there. mediacity:uk will change that by creating a focal point, which will have a rub-off on the whole of the North West area. It will bring design, build and management all together in one place."

Fast Web Media is currently talking to MIDAS, Manchester's inward investment agency, about relocating to the UK's first purpose-built media city - a 200-acre state-of-the-art waterside development in Salford Quays, which will host the BBC's new regional headquarters and a raft of media companies - and Flynn makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm about the move.

"Let's face it, Silicon Valley could have been in New York but it wasn't. Silicon Valley became the leading high-tech hub because the focus was there, the density was there. Perhaps mediacity:uk won't be a mirror image but it's that sort of focus and density in one area. It's like anything, I mean if you want to go and buy shoes and there is an area with ten shoe shops, you will go to that area because that's the best place for shoe shopping.

"I think that those London agencies that don't look at setting up an office here will probably not be at the forefront of the digital wave. Our ex-parent company, Fast, were vying with Google for the search space in the late 90s and I think it's fair to say that the reason why Fast didn't succeed as Google did is because they weren't in the right place. They were in Oslo and it was all happening in Silicon Valley. Fast has been sold for £1.2 billion but there's a bit of a difference."

So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth: If there ever was a right place and time for the digital industry, it is here and now.

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