Heist PR will be an independent division of b2b consultancy CCgroup, focusing on web3 and promising to help clients capture some of the huge amounts of money flying around the still-emerging sector.
Chief executive of the new venture is Peter Bowles, who co-founded Dynamo PR in 2011 before becoming chief creative officer at Clarity after the latter bought the former in 2019.
“Heist is moving PR into a cutting-edge space,” Bowles told PRWeek.
“Web3 is absolutely at the forefront of where technology is moving. It’s just so new and very exciting.”
Web3 is described as an ‘evolved internet’ that uses tokens and decentralised technology to disrupt centralised intermediaries. Classic web3 examples include cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and NFTs.
It’s attracting rapid investment, with Pitchbook reporting that venture capital investments in web3 start-ups were about $30bn in 2021, up from $7bn in 2020.
“NFT is an even newer area than crypto,” said Bowles. “In a way, NFTs are almost like the opposite of Bitcoin, because what you’re creating is usually a piece of artwork. So rather than a fungible token like Bitcoin, it’s one that can just get sold as a unique piece of art and keep selling on and on. Some of these pieces are going for millions and millions and being auctioned at Sotheby’s.”
An emerging issue is NFT forgery, but Bowles said NFT allows the originality of artwork to be made plain and secure. However, he added, “there are people out there that are brand new to NFT, and that’s one of the reasons it’s good to have a PR agency in that exact space”.
“Web3 seems like a mystery at the moment, but it’s going to be unlocked over the next few years,” Bowles said. “That’s why the agency is called Heist: it’s about unlocking that potential in terms of ideas and helping our clients. We are trying to give them that energy and dynamism to really achieve their sales goals.”
Heist PR will draw on CCGroup’s experience supporting fintechs in the consumer tech, crypto and digital asset space.
CCgroup, which won PRWeek’s Best Places to Work Awards Small Agency category for 2021, counts BT, Opennet and Opera Software among its clients.
“Heist is backed by CCgroup, which means I’ve got access to CCgroup team members, so we can set up bespoke teams to work with clients that way,” added Bowles. “It’s great to have the backing of an industry titan to help grow the agency.”
CCgroup chief executive Richard Fogg said over the past 30 years the consultancy had built a “strong business and reputation in the b2b technology PR and marketing sector”. “We felt it was the right time to build a consumer technology proposition, but also to push further and faster into the worlds of web3 and crypto,” he added.
“It’s a pleasure to be working with Peter and to launch an exciting proposition that evolves CCgroup’s offer and addresses challenges faced by clients in huge, growing global markets.”
