How the aftermath of 9/11 helped transform a Worcestershire business into a £68m global creative communications powerhouse

Global events can have powerful local consequences. For DRPGroup, the Worcestershire communications agency founded in a garden shed, the shockwaves from 9/11 almost ended the business. Instead, they became the catalyst that helped transform it into a £68m global creative communications group.

International events can send shockwaves through even the most local businesses. For DRPG, the creative communications group rooted in Worcestershire, the aftermath of 9/11 nearly brought the company to its knees.

At the time, the business worked with leisure companies and a couple of airlines. When the attacks in the United States sent the global travel and events industries into turmoil, much of that work disappeared almost overnight.

By the start of 2002, the situation was stark.
“The person who was looking after the money just said, ‘Look, we should go into receivership. We’ve got no money, and the market isn’t picking up as we thought it would’,” says DRPG founder and CEO Dale Parmenter.

For many businesses, that would have been the end.

Instead, it became the moment that ultimately reshaped DRPG and helped turn a small Worcestershire firm into the £68m-a-year global creative communications group it is today.

But the story of how the company reached that turning point began decades earlier in far more modest surroundings — a back garden shed in Bewdley.

There are plenty of business growth stories that begin with a bold vision and a neatly drawn plan. DRPG is not really one of them.

When Dale started the business in 1980, he was simply a young man who wanted to be in business but had not quite worked out what form that would take.

After dabbling in everything from horticulture to working as a mobile DJ, he spotted a BBC competition for Young Filmmakers of the Year. Despite never having made a film before, he borrowed his father’s camera and made a comedy film with help from the local community.

He ended up a runner-up but, more importantly, discovered what he wanted to do with his life.
“I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to make films,” he remembers.

That instinct would eventually become DRPG.

At the time, corporate filmmaking was expensive and largely the preserve of major businesses in London. Film was costly and the barriers to entry were high. But commercial video equipment from Sony and Panasonic was beginning to make a different kind of business possible, and Dale sensed an opportunity.

He went to the bank to borrow money for equipment. The response was not encouraging.

“The bank said to me, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No one will ever make money out of video’,” he remembers.

So he borrowed money from family and friends instead, bought his first kit and started making videos. At first that meant wedding videos, because hardly anybody else was doing them at the time. Then came a local marketing push and a first corporate job with Brintons Carpets in Kidderminster.

From there, the work began to snowball. The move into events came almost by accident. DRPG had been producing films for events and exhibitions when clients began asking a simple question: why not do the whole thing?

“Okay, we’ll do that,” Dale says.

That willingness to adapt quickly would become a defining feature of the business. Over time, what began as a film company evolved into a fully fledged communications agency.

Yet for its first quarter-century, DRPG remained, in Dale’s words, “very much a Worcestershire-based small business,” employing around 20 people.

Then came the crisis that changed everything.

Dale still speaks about the period after the attacks of 11 September 2001 with the clarity of someone who knows exactly how close the business came to the edge. At the time, DRPG worked with leisure companies and a couple of airlines. Overnight, much of that work disappeared.

By the first working day of January 2002, the company was virtually at the end of the road and the finance manager was urging Dale to put the company into receivership.

For many businesses, that would have been the end, but for Dale it became the catalyst for a different future.

He gathered the team together and told them the truth. The company had a serious problem. Half of them might lose their jobs. Then someone suggested a pay cut. The idea was put to a vote, and the team backed it.

“That was the day, the second of January 2002, that made the difference,” he says.

What followed was not a quick fix but a long reset. Over the next few years, the business examined what had gone wrong. The product was good. The clients were good. The team was good.

The commercial thinking, Dale admits, was not.

In 2005, after several years of reflection, DRPG relaunched. The company took another risk, borrowing money from the bank to stage a major event at West Midland Safari Park in Bewdley for around 1,000 people.

The thinking was simple: if they wanted the market to see them differently, they had to behave differently.
“We just wanted to punch above our weight, that we were bigger than we were.”

It worked. The event shifted perceptions and the business began to grow again. Within a couple of years, debts were paid off, profits were flowing and confidence returned. London was next.

DRPG opened an office in the capital, initially with just one person, while much of the real work continued to be done back in Worcestershire. It was a canny move. Clients wanted the reassurance of a London presence, but the engine room remained local.

That tension between perception and reality still fascinates Dale. For years, many clients assumed the best work had to come from Soho or Covent Garden. The answer was not to complain about that assumption, but to outmanoeuvre it.

“If we can’t beat them, let’s join them,” he says.

Even now, with around 30 people in London, much of DRPG’s work is still pulled back to Worcestershire. Covid, he believes, helped shift attitudes. Location matters less than it once did, he thinks. Capability matters more these days.

That evolution has carried DRPG far beyond the county. Today the company turns over £68m a year and employs around 400 people. Around 300 are based in Worcestershire, with others spread across London, Manchester, Birmingham, Germany and the United States. Its clients include major corporates such as JLR, BT, Tesco, Nationwide and Lloyds Bank.

The global ambition was deliberate. Once DRPG had proved it could scale in the UK, the next question was how to become a truly international agency. Research showed one thing clearly: if you are not in the United States, you are not seen as global. DRPG first worked through a partner there before buying a business in North Carolina. In Europe, Brexit sharpened the company’s thinking, prompting it to establish a business in Germany and later acquire one there too.

The next frontier, Dale says, is likely to be the Far East.

And yet, for all that expansion, DRPG’s identity remains rooted in this region. Dale talks warmly about his family’s long connection to the area and the importance of returning home after travelling. He still sees the company as an extension of that original idea.

“We’re just in a bigger shed in a bigger garden in Worcestershire.”

That rootedness has mattered not only symbolically, but culturally. DRPG has built long-term relationships locally and grown its own talent over decades. Three board members, Dale notes, first joined on work experience at 16 and are now in their 50s. The company works closely with the University of Worcester, Kidderminster College and local schools, and runs an active apprenticeship programme. Qualifications matter for some roles, but attitude and natural ability matter just as much.

“We’re not necessarily interested if they’ve got a degree. That’s not important, or if they’ve got lots of qualifications. It’s more about their attitude and their natural ability.”

That community connection has also helped DRPG navigate other tricky moments. The collaborative spirit forged in the early 2000s became central again during the banking crisis of 2008, when the company invested in marketing and sales rather than retreating, and during the pandemic, when speed of response once again made the difference.

Dale had been returning from Sweden in early March 2020 when he began sketching out a survival plan. His instinct was that if people could no longer meet physically, they would still need to communicate. DRPG needed to move quickly into virtual production, not as a basic online call but as a professional broadcast experience.

Within days, the company had written a script, built a set and sent out invitations to clients. Around 800 logged on. The business moved faster than many competitors and built a £9m revenue stream in virtual meetings in a matter of weeks.

“We used to do about five a year,” Dale says. “We ended up doing 750.”

Again, the pattern was the same. Crisis created uncertainty while DRPG looked for the opportunity inside it.

“You’ve got to keep an eye on the threats, but you’ve got to keep both eyes on the opportunity,” Dale says. “Out of recessions or downturns or disasters, there is always an opportunity in there, and if you hunt enough for it, you’ll find it.”

That philosophy now sits at the heart of one of the region’s most impressive business stories. DRPG is global in footprint and local in spirit. It is a company with clients, colleagues and capabilities spanning continents, but with its centre of gravity still a few miles from the shed where it all began. It is a story of expansion, certainly, but also of loyalty, transparency and long-term investment in people close to home.

For more about DRPG visit
https://www.drpgroup.com/