Interview with George James, Founder and CEO at Digital Agency: Be-Hookd

Be-Hookd Digital is an award-winning digital agency creating campaigns for talent and brands from entertainment, culture and fashion sectors, specialising in brand development, growth hacking and high-level partnerships.
 
 
Be-Hookd Digital
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
One of my first jobs was working on One Direction’s social media platform where I was able to develop extensive expertise galvanizing fans online and generating platform growth. It was here that I noticed that there was a lack of social media agencies specialising in placing fans at the heart of campaigns, developing activations that nurture fan bases and communities, create superfans, use content to reward, nurture, monetise and ultimately grow social media engagement and results.

It was then that I founded Be-Hookd developing digital campaigns for entertainment talent and brands: growing artists into international superstars, partnering musicians with global brands, creating trends and culturally defining moments and harnessing and growing fanbases.

Eight years on, I’m proud to say Be-Hookd has delivered campaigns for the likes of The Script, Tinie Tempah, Sean Paul, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well the BBC, ITV, Activision, JW Anderson.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
The pandemic has certainly forced us to push the boundaries when it comes to creating innovative digital-based campaigns, such as our recent work campaign partnering VR experts Photonlens with Gary Barlow to deliver intimate experiences and connected to his loyal fanbase during lockdown.

We’ve also kept our fingers firmly on the pulse to maximise opportunities for clients such as fashion powerhouse JW Anderson, together we capitalised on Harry Styles’ fashion zeitgeist and the COVID-19 anxiety-busting knitting boom by releasing the knitting pattern for Harry Styles’ favourite JW Anderson cardigan, in turn setting tik-tok alight.

The pandemic has also enabled us to focus on building a bespoke tool to help measure our clients social media output. It’s been a big focus for us over the last year as we were growing frustrated with the tools that were available on the market, we decided it would be best to build our own. We will be able to offer this to clients very soon.

In addition, this year we have been expanding the business, opening offices in New York and Los Angeles with 40 staff, we’re ready to take on the rest of 2021 with some exciting projects in store.
 

What can we hope to see from Be-Hookd in the future?

 
The ambition for the future is to continue to grow on a global-scale to enable us to offer clients services across multiple regions and to keep creating epic partnerships between brands and talent.