Koobr and Balls2 Marketing came together in 2024, after the two Derby marketing agencies found themselves increasingly involved in the same kinds of conversations, just from different starting points.
Koobr had grown from a graphic design agency into a much broader creative and digital business, while Balls2 Marketing had built its reputation around PR and communications, with particularly strong experience across glazing, home improvement and construction. Both had established client bases, different specialist skills and their own ways of working, but there was enough crossover to make the potential fairly obvious.
Before the merger was made official, the two agencies had already worked together on projects and seen what happened when those different disciplines were brought closer together. A PR idea could lead to a stronger campaign. A website discussion could expose a problem with how a business was positioning itself. Digital insight could tell us more about what customers were actually interested in than assumptions ever could.
So the attraction was never simply about becoming a bigger agency or adding more services to a list. It was about being able to look at more of the picture before deciding what a client actually needed.
As Koobr Director, Craig Barker, said when the merger was announced:
“By joining forces, we’re creating an agency that’s going to bring even more value to our clients, and unlock many more doors for us.”
More expertise only helps if you know when to use it
One of the most obvious results of bringing the two businesses together was the breadth of expertise available in one team.
Brand development, graphic design, websites and digital marketing had long been part of Koobr’s offer, while Balls2 Marketing brought extensive PR, communications and strategic experience. Together, that created a much broader agency, able to genuinely add value across the full marketing mix.
The important bit, though, is that having all of those things available did not, and does not, mean Koobr throws all of them at every client.
A business asking for a new website might actually have a problem with its proposition. A company wanting more PR may already be getting plenty of coverage, but not for the things that will help it grow. PPC can be delivering ‘clicks’ perfectly well while the quality of the enquiries tells a completely different story.
A commercial, investigative approach has become a much bigger part of how Koobr works. We have the ability to bring strategy, creative, digital and communications together, but the service is not the starting point. The business problem is.
That’s where our core idea of Meaningful Marketing comes from. Marketing should be measurable enough that you can hold it accountable, commercial enough that it connects to what the business is trying to achieve, and relatable enough that you can understand what is being done and why.
Creative, digital and PR work better in the same room
The original Koobr business had strong creative roots, and those have never disappeared. Branding, graphic design, websites and campaign creative remain a significant part of what we do.
The difference is that creative decisions can now be shaped by much more than a design brief.
If research tells us customers do not understand the offer, that should affect the copy and the creative. If search behaviour shows people are looking for something completely different from the language being used by the business, the website needs to reflect that. If a PR campaign is designed to establish authority around a particular subject, the rest of the marketing needs to support it rather than tell a different story.
The same applies to digital. SEO, PPC, social media and websites can all generate plenty of numbers. Some of those numbers are useful and some simply make a report look busy. What matters to us is being able to trace the work back to something the business cares about – better enquiries, stronger demand, more sales, a clearer reputation or evidence that a particular market is responding.
It is one of the reasons the merger made sense. The more of that information and expertise you can combine, the more confidence you have in your marketing, and the more it deserves a seat at the table when the big commercial decisions are being made.
Sector experience you can’t build overnight
Balls2 Marketing had built a particularly strong name in PR and communications, especially within glazing, home improvement and construction, where its sector knowledge and relationships had been developed over decades.
That experience added something Koobr could not simply recreate overnight. It also changed the way PR could sit within the wider marketing mix.
Rather than treating PR as a separate stream of press releases and media coverage, we could connect it much more closely to what the business was trying to achieve. If a company wanted to enter a new market, change how it was perceived, establish authority around a particular subject or strengthen confidence in its brand, those aims could influence the stories we developed, and the audiences we prioritised.
The story still has to be interesting. The journalist still has to care. The customer still has to want to read it. But there should also be a clear commercial point.
Derby gave us our base, not our limits
Both Koobr and Balls2 Marketing were firmly rooted in the East Midlands, so bringing the teams together at Koobr’s central Derby office gave the combined agency a natural home.
That local base still matters. Derby has a varied and ambitious business community, and being a marketing agency in Derby means we can work closely with local businesses, and are also perfectly placed to access those further afield. There is still real value in being able to sit around a table with a client, get into the detail and have the chats that just don’t fit into an email or a monthly report.
But neither agency saw geography as a limit before the merger, and bringing the teams together created more capacity to support businesses nationally and internationally. That ambition was part of the original rationale for joining forces, and it remains a key part of Koobr’s future.
Mergers are easy to describe in terms of capabilities, services and growth, but most of the value sits in the experience people bring with them.
For Koobr, combining the teams meant bringing together people who looked at the same business from very different angles. Someone working in PR will notice something different from a designer. A PPC specialist sees customer behaviour in a different way from a strategist. A copywriter may spot that the problem is not the product at all, but the way it is being explained. And when those different perspectives come together, the results can be very powerful for any business.
Balls2 Marketing founders Andy and Sarah Ball were an important part of that story too. They had built a respected agency with strong client relationships and considerable sector expertise, and although they stepped back from the day-to-day running of the business following the merger, they remained involved in strategy and support during the transition.
The point was never to erase what Balls2 Marketing had built. It was to bring that experience into something broader.
What the merger really changed
It would be easy to describe the merger by listing everything Koobr can now do, but that misses out the more useful part of the story. What changed was the number of ways we could look at a problem before recommending an answer.
Clients have come to us talking about SEO and ended up with a much clearer view of their whole business proposition. A conversation that starts out with a sole focus on lead generation can sometimes expose a real weakness sitting much further down the sales process.
Sometimes the answer will be a new website, a PPC campaign, a piece of research or a stronger PR strategy. Sometimes it will be a combination of several things. And sometimes the most useful thing we can say is that the business does not need to spend more money yet.
That is a far better reflection of Meaningful Marketing and the business that Koobr is today than simply calling ourselves a full-service agency.
We still have the breadth that came from bringing Koobr and Balls2 Marketing together. What has become clearer is the thinking that sits behind it – understand the problem properly, be clear about what marketing needs to change and use the right expertise to make it happen.
