Cemoh’s Innovative Marketing Agency Model that Helps Businesses Thrive

Simon Dell of Cemoh tells us about outsourced marketing and the Cemoh Marketing Podcast. 

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Simon Dell: We’re doing well. We’re lucky to live in Brisbane, Queensland, where we’ve been back to our normal lives for a few months now.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Cemoh.

Simon Dell: I’m Simon Dell, CEO of Cemoh – ‘Your Outsourced Marketing Department.’ 

I was born in England in the 70s and have spent a lot of my life in beer. Starting at University (where somehow I managed to get a joint honors degree in Law and Politics), I spent a lot of time as the President of the junior common room committee and organizing events where everyone could get suitably drunk. 

After University, I continued the party-themed jobs with management training through Bass Brewers’ venue-side, where I found myself as an assistant manager of a small nightclub in Southampton, England. I then moved to London to continue managing nightclubs, initially with First Leisure and then with the Roadhouse, a famous Covent Garden music dive-bar where Lemmy from Motorhead used to hang out, drink Budweiser and play pinball.

Running venues became supplying venues with a move into the management development program back at the brewing side of Bass Brewers (interesting fact: Bass Brewers is the world’s oldest trademark). From there, I took on a BDM/sales role that covered regions from the south coast of England right up to the East End of London. 

Eventually, in 2003, I found my way to Brisbane, where Heineken Australia snapped me up in a BDM role, and then a few months later, I became part of Lion Nathan working at the XXXX Brewery in Milton when they bought out the Heineken business in Australia.

I moved from sales to marketing at XXXX, became a trade marketing manager, and worked with XXXX Gold, Tooheys New, and Tooheys Extra Dry. From there, after brief stints with DB Breweries (Tiger, Monteith’s) and 9-months trying to run my marketing consultancy (Straight Edge), I formed a partnership with an existing web development agency owner and founded TwoCents.

TwoCents ran for six years, and in January 2016, I sold the business. From there, I spent time consulting in the digital marketing space on my own before joining forces to launch the digital marketing consultancy service Paper Planes. In July 2020, this evolved into the current format Cemoh. 

During my agency time, I pretty much crossed every discipline, including creative, branding, strategy, digital, and so on. I’ve built brands, directed videos, created a TV show, run social campaigns, and everything in between. My focus now is the digital space because it’s the best way to grow a business and because it’s more measurable. My areas of interest include overall digital strategy, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Advertising, and user experience.

I also host the Cemoh Marketing Podcast, where I chat with high-performing CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and marketing experts about all things marketing.

How does Cemoh innovate? 

Simon Dell: Our mission is to get high-performing marketing experts to work inside businesses to help them achieve growth and success. Our innovative model helps Cemohs; our marketing consultants understand the businesses better because they are in the office, which helps with decision making, advice, team building, and faster delivery of marketing activities. 

This model also helps companies reduce the costs of employing a skilled marketing team, as they receive both the ‘doing’ side of the marketing and support in their strategic direction.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Simon Dell: Coronavirus has brought us many challenges, but it also gave us many opportunities to grow. For example, as many businesses were forced to shut their doors, they got some help from the government, such as getting the Queensland Government’s Small Business COVID-19 Adaption Grant Program. Some of them used this grant to come to us to leverage their marketing online, which gave us great new clients and the opportunity to build long-lasting business relationships.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Simon Dell: I try to balance work and personal life by spending time with my family and myself outside of work hours. I try and run every other day and have recently started swimming again. I also enjoy a bit of Call of Duty now and again!

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Simon Dell: We don’t have any direct competitors, as I believe Cemoh is the only labor-hire marketing agency in Australia. Indirect competitors would be any marketing agencies, especially digital marketing agencies here in Queensland and Australia in general.

We plan to stay in the game by continuously exploring innovative solutions, training our Cemohs (our outsourced marketing consultants), and always ensuring that the Cemohs is delivering results to our clients. We also focus on customer service as well as offering personalized support to our clients. 

Additionally, we streamline our workflow through active communication to make sure that we all understand what’s happening on the clients’ side and our side as well.

Your final thoughts?

Simon Dell: Covid-19 has produced many challenges, but good businesses have seen this as an opportunity to rationalize, grow, or explore new models. If you come out of this stronger, you really do have a good opportunity for long-term success.

Your website?

Cemoh.com

cemoh.com/marketing-podcast