From Growth to Global Impact: The Story of Zenith International's Award-Winning Year
Zenith International is redefining what ROI means in content marketing – scaling a close-knit team, delivering global campaigns and embracing tech to drive results. Find out how their bold, human-centred approach earned them the title of Best Medium Content Marketing Agency.
In this series spotlighting the winners of the 2024 International Content Marketing Awards, we’re sharing the stories behind the standout work and the people and agencies driving it forward.
After catching up with the team at Rocket, we’ve turned our focus to another team making an impact on a big scale. This time, we spoke to Zenith International, the Grand Prix winner for Best Medium Content Marketing Agency.
Zenith is the ROI agency. With over 35 years of media planning expertise and the support of the wider Publicis Groupe, the team delivers strategic, accountable media communications across analytics, performance marketing, content and trading. Their content team has grown from five to 23 people in just a year, supporting global campaigns across 85 territories.
Through a combination of integrated planning, smart tech and a culture built on openness and collaboration, Zenith continues to push the boundaries of what content marketing can achieve.
We spoke to the team to find out how they’ve evolved to meet new demands and what comes next for this ambitious and fast-growing group.
Your content team has grown from five to 23 members in just a year. What strategies helped you scale successfully while maintaining quality?
Maintaining quality in a scaling team really comes down to one thing – training. We have a rigorous training plan from day one for new recruits. Much of it centres around “The Golden Paths” (our Business Director is a huge Dune fan, don’t ask!), which is essentially a master document of training split into our core focus topics of copywriting, digital PR, content strategy, technical SEO knowledge and soft skills. This, alongside regular in-person and on-the-job training, means we’re always focusing on upskilling to support our work.
How do you balance rapid growth with keeping a close-knit, collaborative culture?
Culture has always been at the heart of everything we do, and we knew that we wanted to keep the friendliness, care, and small team feel even as our numbers grew. This involved making a few natural touchpoints more procedural.
We settled on a weekly meeting every Monday where we catch up, review tasks for the week ahead and do an emotional check-in with the team, where they’re encouraged to name their emotional state by colour (red, amber or green).
We encourage team members to be as open as possible, creating an honest and judgment-free atmosphere in the team. Making time for moments to come together and collaborate across client teams has meant that even with rapid growth, we’re still that small team that knows and takes care of each other.
With projects spanning 85 territories, how do you manage the complexity of global content creation and localisation?
As part of Zenith International, connecting the dots for global companies and working across many local markets (with very different requirements) is something we do every day.
While we deliver bespoke solutions for each client, there are a few things we recycle. The cornerstone of this is performing truly global keyword research at scale, which we do with the help of a proprietary Publicis tech called Intent Based Planning (IBP for short). IBP allows us to deliver multi-market, multi-language keyword research at scale in a cost-effective manner. We use IBP to do everything, from delivering market-specific insights to producing global content calendars to local content production.
Like most other teams, we can’t escape AI. So, we embrace it. We find that one of the best ways to use AI is to extensively QA work. We work with clients in highly regulated industries, such as medical and alcohol, which are subject to strict, market-specific rules. By using AI – and the right prompt – we can check whether content will be flagged by a regulating body in the local market, all from our central London office (and it takes about 30 seconds).
You’ve built a strong team culture with initiatives like International Women’s Day and Pride panels. How important is this to your overall success?
The success of our team is built on its diversity – something we’re incredibly proud of. It reflects a culture that supports every team member, regardless of gender or sexual identity, race, neurodiversity and more. But it goes beyond hiring practices, management and wider culture initiatives like panels. We’ve also benefited from amazing sessions led by team members who’ve shared personal insights and training based on their own experiences with mental illness and disability.
We know that diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions and deliver 60% better results. Especially in content marketing, it’s important to remember that the audiences our clients want to target are a diverse bunch, so the more our team reflects the reality of the population, the more accessible our content will be!
Retaining talent during a period of rapid expansion can be challenging. What has been the key to keeping your team engaged and motivated?
We’re very proud that out of the few people who have left the team, it’s been for exciting reasons like travelling the world or embarking on a master’s degree! We’ve kept the team engaged and motivated by looking after them, whether it's by keeping a close eye on progression and offering training opportunities or just being unapologetically honest during challenging conversations. It’s important to listen to the team, get feedback, make changes and try again, nip any problems in the bud as soon as they happen and keep the dialogue as open as possible.
What’s the biggest challenge your team has faced in the past year, and how did you overcome it?
We’re a content production team, so one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is the emergence of AI and copy generation tools. Clients see flashy demos from tech companies and think they can replace us, but the truth is often extremely different.
We’ve learned we cannot fight the tidal wave of AI, but instead we need to swim with the current. Approaching conversations around copy quality, tone of voice adherence, legal restrictions, and human oversight with humility and an open mind is key.
How has your agency’s approach to content marketing evolved to meet changing industry demands?
Clients want a one-stop shop for their content needs, so we’ve built our team around that. We have an in-house designer who helps create bespoke imagery to accompany our content, and we expanded our Digital PR function to help clients with link building. These two practices fold into our content marketing team to ensure the tone of voice is never compromised and that everything is aligned under one strategy.
We’ve invested heavily in tech, from developing proprietary tools to help us achieve global keyword research, streamline forecasting and automate amending content against client requirements.
We’re also integrating AI into workflows for efficiency. We aim to empower our people to do their best work by streamlining processes to make room for greater creativity and a human touch.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to agencies looking to scale their content marketing teams?
As AI continues to evolve, take a look at the time-heavy, admin-based or data-based tasks your team is doing and see how to automate them.
A machine shouldn’t replace someone’s innovative or creative spirit – it should free them from the manual, repetitive data crunching tasks that consume too much time. Using AI to automate our keyword research was a huge time saver for the team, and it allowed us to manipulate the data in ways that a human could not have done. But this also freed up the team’s time to get to know the client, understand their needs and create more of a human connection. A win-win all around.
Looking ahead, what are your key priorities for the next 12 months?
We’re focusing on delivering outstanding work for both the new clients we’re onboarding this year and our long-standing brand partners. With five new members joining us this month—and more growth ahead—we're excited for what’s to come, including (hopefully) a few more award wins. Watch this space.
Elevate Your Agency at the International Content Marketing Awards
Zenith International’s story proves that innovation, collaboration and smart technology can elevate an agency to new heights. Now, it’s your turn to showcase your agency’s brilliance at the International Content Marketing Awards.
This is the perfect opportunity to highlight the standout content that sets your agency apart. Whether you’re scaling a growing team, launching bold campaigns, or pushing the boundaries of performance marketing, your moment is here.
Join a network of visionary content creators and strategic thinkers who are transforming the industry. Enter today and take your place among the best.
And if Zenith’s story inspired you, be sure to check out our other agency spotlight blogs for more insights on driving growth and making an impact.