An open, tell it how it is approach

Who we are

Founder

Spruce was set up by Jim Millward. Jim has had a successful travel marketing career, notably heading up the marketing team at Audley Travel, and seeing the business grow from under 20 employees to over 750, becoming market leader in its sector. As well as travel marketing experience at director level, Jim has a strong interest in sustainability and wrote and executed Audley’s sustainability policies.

Partners

We’re able to draw upon a number of business partners covering insight, CRM, video, design, content, digital and finance. We’re also happy to draw up a brief if you’re looking to recruit an agency or freelancer.

Values

We have an open and honest, tell it how it is approach to consultancy. This equates to keeping advice impartial and as straightforward and jargon-free as possible, and not being afraid to challenge. We want to work closely with you, although we recognise that your time is precious, so we’re also happy to work at arm’s length.

Finally, we have a competitive streak, we enjoy success. And we love travel.

Jim has a real eye for what works in travel marketing from a customer's perspective. From assessing brand values and how these translate to marketing communications to optimising lead sourcing across digital and traditional channels, he is comfortable working at all levels and project sizes. With years of hands-on experience, he has a true passion for travel combined with brilliant attention to detail. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Spruce - there's no doubt that Jim will add immense value to your marketing project.

Loic Robertson, Chief Marketing Officer, Cruise.co.uk

We have four holiday cottages on our farm in the Lake District, recently bought as a going concern. We massively renovated and soon attracted customers (and repeat business) in the school holidays and from April to October: a great start, but not yet a sustainable business.  Having no background in marketing, we were unsure how to secure off-peak bookings without going through a big agency (with a big fee) and were using the scattergun approach to marketing. 

 Having understood our product objectively as well as delving into our setup and future plans, Jim gave shape to our marketing strategy, collaboratively guiding us toward specific actions to drive revenue growth in the quieter months.  In particular:

  • Focussing our minds on what we do well, what is good about our product and remind us what we take for granted but others value highly;

  • Helped us think about the pros and cons of each of our future growth ideas;

  • Helped us understand what impact each aspect of marketing has on the potential, current and hopefully repeat guest, and therefore where to best focus our efforts.  His input was helpfully realistic, given that we are a small business with limited time and marketing expertise;

  • Showed us which KPIs are useful; and

  • Problem-solved specific areas we weren’t sure how to address.

Joanna Butler, Owner, Fornside Farm Cottages (fornside.co.uk)