This award-winning entrepreneur created a successful business at the age of 19, despite being Dyslexic and Dyspraxic, protected his business and its staff throughout the pandemic, and as the world opened up, invested in it to create a stronger future.
After catching the eye of the judging panel for many reasons, Oliver Bruce of PinPoint Media was announced Gloucestershire Live Young Business Person of the Year at the prestigious ceremony in 2021. Here is a brief summary of his journey to the point at which when he entered the category last summer.
Key business points:
- Oliver Bruce is CEO and founder of PinPoint Media, a content creation agency, producing no nonsense, smart thinking content that unlocks possibilities. They call this “Data-driven, Human Inspired”
- Cheltenham Head Office with secondary offices in London and Manchester.
- A talented team of 32 includes; Account Managers, Creative Directors, Producers, Filmmakers, Strategists, Producers, Editors and Animators,
The winning entry:
Oliver, aged 27 at the time of his award entry, started his first ‘proper’ business aged 19 whilst at University of Gloucestershire with only one GCSE. Being Dyslexic and Dyspraxic education he says has never been “easy”. Here he started PinPoint Media with the simple mission statement to ‘make film accessible to all’ and in his second year he hired his first member of staff and it grew from there.
Working with blue-chip clients and brands, Oliver could clearly see that whilst video was important to his clients, animation was a medium that was becoming ever more prevalent. Animation, being a non-contact service, exploded during the pandemic as it could be done from anywhere and still looked professional and on brand. When filming literally stopped overnight and spend on most marketing halted, Oliver managed his staff’s expectations, calling numerous team meetings, presenting a clear roadmap, and prioritised looking after his staff throughout the pandemic.
An opportunity arose to assist with the sales of compliant facemasks in the UK from a contact in China and led to Oliver forming a business called ‘EasyBreathing’. He landed a deal with Amazon for £13million procuring and manufacturing facemasks, with staff from PinPoint Media transitioning into EasyBreathing to assist with logistics. Over 30million facemasks were shipped from China and delivered directly to the NHS as part of the contract Amazon held directly with the Government. The small profit made was reinvested into PinPoint Media to assist with continued growth.
After some planning time during lockdown, Oliver invested his Directors Loan into a rebrand (circa 2020) whilst undertaking the hiring of three new staff members to be based in London, as well as a larger Head Office in the heart of Cheltenham. He also diversified the service offerings to include podcasting, content strategy and photography. In February 2021 PinPoint Media had their largest sales month on record.
In terms of innovation PinPoint Media was one of the world’s first content agencies to accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. They are both environmentally and community focused, with their pledge to be a totally carbon neutral business by the end of 2022 and are undertaking B Corp Certification to underpin this.
Oliver also mentors for the Princes Trust and students at the University of Gloucestershire. His podcast called ‘Success Is In The Mind’ was ranked at the time of the award entry in the top 50 entrepreneurial podcasts in the UK on Apple Podcasts and he has won multiple awards.
