Iris PR joint MDs Bill McIntyre and Nick Porter agree 2009 was the agency’s ‘breakthrough’ year. With 76 per cent growth, it is not hard to see why.

The big moment for Iris came in March, when it scooped the consumer PR account for the Home Retail Group, worth £500,000 in fees. Porter says: ‘It’s a massive account. We’ve built a team around it. When we launched four years ago, we had no founding client. This is our big one.’ Iris PR also secured a place on the COI roster at the tail end of 2008, and that started to pay dividends last year. The agency won a two-year-long child home safety brief from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, a drug driving campaign for the Department for Transport and a regional training centres promotion brief for the Schools Food Trust.

Despite these wins, the agency has not been afraid to turn down work – either from existing clients or external briefs – if it is not profitable enough. ‘We are always open and honest from the start about what is possible to existing clients,’ says McIntyre. Nor did the agency chase after the low-value briefs that circulated last year. ‘There are better ways to spend our time,’ he says.

The pair also believe the agency has benefited from being part of an already established full-service agency of the same name. ‘The integrated model has become very fashionable, but we’re not the latest agency that’s just brought someone in to do digital,’ asserts Porter.

He says the last two months of 2009 were spent ‘bedding in’ new clients and making sure staff were happy. But plans for 2010 are now well under way, with the agency ­already hitting its new business target for the year in March. Iris is now looking to grow international capacity.

McIntyre says the agency has consistently grown every year by more than 50 per cent, and believes 2010 will be no different. He predicts a fee income of £1.7m.

Iris PR is definitely one to watch.

‘It’s difficult not to sound like we’re boasting to say we had a brilliant year in 2009, but we did,’ says Pretty Green founder Mark Stringer. He attributes the agency’s 263 per cent growth to the fact that it started off from a small base – the agency was only launched in 2008.

‘We don’t even know what the numbers should be because we’re just trying to get by,’ says Stringer.

It is fair to say he is overjoyed with the agency’s progress: ‘I don’t think it could have been any better. Every day is different and a lot of fun. We’re working with interesting clients, growing a new team and taking on more people every day.’

One reason for the agency’s success is the faith that founding client Red Bull put in Stringer and his team early on. He had worked for the client during his tenyear stint at Exposure.

Other big clients – Cadbury, Nando’s and Trident – followed swiftly. ‘We haven’t gone out and chased new business because I felt that it would be like cheating on a partner. Red Bull gave us the crown jewels when it gave us its account, and to go out and try to find more business felt wrong.’

Stringer adds: ‘All we’ve done is focus on delivering exceptional work for Red Bull. And that has meant that people have phoned us. I don’t think anyone in the team has phoned anyone for new business.’ That, he concedes, is a nice problem to have.

Pretty Green moved offices last year to accommodate a growing number of staff, and is now holed up in Clerkenwell. It has hired more people this year, taking the current headcount to 24. Looking forward, Stringer expects to double turnover in 2010.

‘I’m hoping that 2010 will be the same as last year,’ says Stringer. ‘If we didn’t grow, but did the same as 2009, I’d be as happy as Larry.’

Tetra Strategy continued to carve out a serious space in the lobbying, strategic comms and reputation management market throughout 2009. Since launching a little more than two years ago, the public affairs specialist has more than doubled in size, securing some of the industry’s most coveted and envied accounts.

Chief executive James O’Keefe says: ‘The tough economic conditions of 2009 provided a real opportunity as clients evaluated what they wanted from agencies. We found that overwhelmingly clients wanted an agency that was able to respond with speed and clarity to their issues.’

He adds: ‘Tetra Strategy has never acted like a small agency, which has allowed us to compete with established names on an equal footing. We are often picked to be on pitch lists as the insurgents who can inject new thinking into difficult issues. We pursue the Tetra Strategy “three E’s” – excellence and enjoyment, every day. We believe in career development and all our team receive professional business coaching.’

Tetra Strategy had an eventful 2009. The year saw founders O’Keefe and Lee Petar providing support to the automotive industry in securing the introduction of the scrappage scheme; advising FTSE 100 firm AMEC in winning the £6.5bn Sellafield nuclear contract, and helping to launch online social business network smarta.com with Dragons’ Den’s Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis.

Converting ten pieces of new business in the past six months, including global IT software company SAP, the iconic British brand BSM, New York hedge fund Glenview Capital and the UK’s largest casino operator Genting UK, the agency’s bosses are enthused about what 2010 will bring. O’Keefe says: ‘Our challenge is to ensure that our growth continues to be managed effectively, our high levels of client service do not drop and that the unique culture of Tetra remains sacrosanct.’

‘At the end of 2008, Matt McKenna and Sarah Townsend, founders of McKenna Townsend, were expecting a big 2009. The consumer agency based in Ringwood, Hampshire may not have fared as well as they had hoped, but it still outperformed many of its rivals.

It won Outstanding PR Consultancy of the Year at the CIPR Wessex PRide Awards and picked up two major clients: Norwegian cheesemaker Norseland Brands and Oxford-based boat motor manufacturer Williams Performance Tenders. Fastfood chain Subway has been a client almost since McKenna Townsend’s inception in 2003, and in 2009 the agency began working for its Russian division.

However, existing clients dropped off or reduced their budgets. Turnover grew by just one per cent and profit was static. McKenna is by no means downhearted. ‘Our new business programme is getting some traction,’ he says. ‘Already in 2010 we’ve won as much new business as we did in the whole of 2009.’

The agency also grew in size, hiring Victoria Rose as account manager and Ralph Hewitt as account executive. It also promoted Nikki Haine to head of operations and Nicola Holder to account director. It also took on extra office space.

‘We’ve just completed our five-year plan,’ says Townsend. ‘We’re aiming to become a 50-person agency by 2015. We’ll do that by growing in specialist areas like food and marine, and by picking up local business. We may open an office in London, but more immediately we’re planning to open an Australian office.’

The future looks bright for the team at McKenna Townsend. Over Easter the entire agency spent four days in Las Vegas team-building. McKenna concludes: ‘Confidence is returning. I expect to see growth of ten to 20 per cent in 2010, and I’m certain we’ve got the team who can take us forward to the next level.’

After 2008’s startling growth, 2009 was a year of consolidation for London-based healthcare shop Reynolds-MacKenzie. It lost no clients and won seven new ones, leading to a six per cent growth in fee income.

R-M picked up new briefs from existing clients Servier, Roche and MSD, and won brand new business from Boehringer Ingelheim, Gilead and Yoomi, the first self-warming baby bottle.

The agency strengthened its team by hiring Mark Chamberlain as senior account director. Co-founder and director Alison MacKenzie says: ‘Mark had been freelancing for seven years, and had never found an agency where he was happy to accept a permanent role. So we’re really pleased that he’s chosen to join our team.’ R-M also continued to pick up awards. From PRWeek it won best healthcare campaign, was commended in the specialist agency category and was a finalist in campaign of the year. It was named best small consultancy at the Communiqué awards.

In March 2010 the company relocated to five-star offices in Covent Garden. ‘We’re all really excited,’ says MacKenzie. ‘Inside there are showers, hairdryers and complimentary towels, and outside there’s far more shopping than is safe for us!’

The new office and the development of the senior team is all preparation for the next phase of the agency’s growth. Cofounder and director Eva Reynolds says: ‘Last November we launched our pan- European network and we’re delighted to say that we’ve already picked up an exciting brief from Pfizer. We’re also on several other pitch lists and I expect this side of our business to grow in 2010 and beyond.’

She continues: ‘While we do this we need to keep our eye on the ball with our UK business. I think we’ve laid strong foundations for this: we remain hands-on with client work, we’re careful about who we employ and, perhaps most importantly of all, people like working here.’