Midas: Communications agency working at the heart of the arts, culture, and heritage sectors

“Experts in communication, passionate about the arts”

The world is full of competition and how should one observe the existence of your company and take advantage of your services when they are unaware of your presence? This is when promotion and advertising comes to play; the biggest benefit of promotion today is that you make use of various online platforms for marketing your promotion. You have blogs, social networking websites, video hosting websites etc. where you can spread the news about your promotion.

We present to you Midas which provides PR, business strategy, communications expertise, digital media focus to arts, culture, and heritage sectors and sticks to the responsibility of the overall growth of its clients.

We have Jason Bartholomew, the CEO with us to enlighten us more about the firm

Q. You could update all your content and website features and still not find that your site has improved. Is it possible to promise results?

Midas can never promise results.

However, the upside in hiring Midas is the exponential growth a client will potentially achieve. In that sense, we hope that the fee a client pays Midas is more than covered with the increase in their business because of our work.

Of course, the potential downside is that Midas cannot guarantee specific results across media outlets.

For instance, Midas would never tell a client that we will land them their targeted and coveted front page headline coverage in The Guardian. Nor would we guarantee to a client that if we did land The Guardian that the result of this high-profile media hit will lead to a specific percentage increase in sales.

Despite our success rates over thirty years in business, we can’t promise a media outlet will agree to the pitch we present to them.

What we do guarantee, though, is our expertise, years of contacts, thirty years of experience, and a relentless energy to work on behalf of the client.

Q. How do you manage to understand a company’s operations before devising a branding strategy?

Midas is all about communication. Before we draft a proposal to present to a client, we will have an initial no-strings-attached consultation meeting. This initial meeting is an honest and open dialogue to enable Midas to better understand a potential client’s KPI’s. We need to ask the direct and honest questions upfront to be able to build a proposal specific to a client’s needs.

Our team then spends about two weeks writing a detailed proposal which will showcase our creative ideas and strategies in how best to deliver the client’s KPI’s within their specified budget.

If we are hired, and this is most crucial, Midas maintains a constant stream of honest dialogue with the client. If at any point we’re not landing the desired results from the initial proposal, our job is to alter our methodology to improve on the deliverables.

“As an agency we push boundaries and create new norms.”

Q. What does the future hold for Midas and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Midas works in the Arts. Our client base is a mixture of books, events, festivals, artists, museums, B2B businesses, and an array of institutions across writing, visual arts, theatre, music, and beyond.

There is no doubt Covid wreaked havoc on the Arts world in several ways. From the shuttering of galleries and museums, the closure of the West End, to the cancellation of annual festivals, Midas had to work relentlessly during the pandemic to offer affordable and creative new approaches to clients with massively decreased revenues unsure if their businesses would survive.

In the UK, however, the past few months have shown a welcome resurgence. West End shows, galleries, museums, and festivals have nearly completely reopened. Initial trepid public attendance has slowly progressed where audiences are again embracing the myriad of beloved institutions across the Arts.

I don’t believe it is wishful thinking to state that the collective hunger for the Arts has only been emboldened by Covid.

In the next year, I predict a storming return to the Arts as a whole. Audiences are weary of being stuck at home, they are hungry for light-hearted entertainment, for escapism, or simply to spend an evening enjoying a live cultural event rather than via Zoom.

The Arts have always been a deep part of civilization, and the past fifteen months have reminded many of us that artistic endeavors can serve as an antidote to whatever tough times we all face.

As we have done for the past thirty years, Midas will work hard to provide whatever support we can to the clients who hire us.

Q. Trust is a difficult attribute to measure and a delicate dynamic to maintain. How do you maintain this with your clients?

My approach is simple. I believe in constant and honest communication.

Clients hire Midas for work which can span two weeks to twelve-month retainers. No contract renewal is guaranteed in our business. We understand for many clients that hiring Midas is a significant outlay on their financial constraints. We do not take this lightly.

It is therefore crucial that for every client and each project, regardless of the fee, that Midas is ready to adapt to a client’s needs. If the initial plan we agreed with a client is not working, then Midas will pivot and redraw our approach.

So, ultimately, our job is to ensure each client believes the money they spent was worth it.

My hope is that each client is satisfied that Midas delivered not only positive results and exceptional work, but more crucially, outstanding customer service.

Meet the brilliance behind Midas

Jason Bartholomew is the CEO of Midas. He is also the co-founder and Director of The bks Agency. Jason became the CEO of Midas in 2018 and founded The bks Agency in the same year. Originally from America, Jason spent ten years working in New York publishing, primarily for the Hachette Book Group. Jason moved to London in 2008 and worked for ten years in various Director roles at Hachette UK.

In his career, Jason has worked with global bestselling authors such as James Patterson, Sophie Hannah, David Beckham, Melanie Blake, Malcolm Gladwell, Martina Cole, David Sedaris, Noor Hibbert, and John Grisham, amongst others.

Jason graduated from University of Rochester in 1996 with a BA in History, and from Imperial College London in 2017 with an MBA.