Growing Creston Picks International Partner

Marcoms holding group Creston has reported a 5% increase in half year revenue to £37.3m, and announced an international partnership with German-owned Serviceplan Group.

Creston says the recent launchof its Creston Unlimited brand - which has added the suffix to the names of all its group companies including insight agencies ICM and Marketing Sciences - means the Group no longer operates on a divisional basis. One result is that its former Communications and Insights divisions are now reported as one offer called Communications & Insight (C&I), accounting for 72% of group revenue.

For the six months to end of September 2014, C&I reported a 4% revenue rise to £27.0m (H1 2014: £26.0m), but a one-off charge from co-locating the group's London based companies, all of which sit within the C&I division, meant Headline PBIT declined from £3.6m to £3.2m. Financial Director Kathryn Herrick (pictured) says the division nevertheless had a strong first half compared to the same period last year, and that the full year forecast for Insight is in line with estimates. Last year, the Insight division reported a 10% H1 revenue rise to $6.1m, while Headline PBIT was £1.1m, up from just £40k the previous year.

In Creston's other division, Health, revenue was up 6% to £10.3m.

C&I's revenue from international work was up 4% to 20% of the division's revenue, and Creston said it hoped to extend the international offer under its recently announced partnership with Serviceplan. The deal offers access to Serviceplan's teams of brand strategists, creative professionals, media/online specialists, web designers, CRM experts, market researchers, PR consultants and sales specialists in more than 30 locations worldwide. In a statement, Creston said the firms have worked together for a number of years, and have already partnered together to win CRM assignments in Germany and the Middle East.

Web sites: www.creston.com and www.servicpelan.com .