Who are GRM Marketing? The agency Inverness Caley Thistle have enlisted to drive the club forward with new investment?
The off-field saga at Inverness Caledonian Thistle continues to rumble on, with the proposed takeover by Seventy7 Ventures suspended and former chairman Alan Savage returning to take control of the club.
A statement from interim chairman Panos Thomas said that Savage had “taken the initiative to oversee the organisational restructure of the club as they seek to remedy their financial issues, with Chief Executive Officer Scot Gardiner leaving his role with immediate effect”.
Later, the same statement said that the club had enlisted “Scottish sports marketing agency GRM Marketing to engage with a number of investment leads and commercially drive the club forward”.
Given the turbulence in the balance sheets over not just recent months, but recent years at the Caledonian Stadium, that is no small task to hand to the company, but who are GRM Marketing?
Their website lists a number of areas they work in, including marketing and social media, project management and sponsorship on projects like the Clyde Green Freeport Bid.
The agency is based in Glasgow, and run by chief executive officer Gordon Ritchie.
Ritchie has a media, marketing and PR background, having managed Stakis and Hilton brand sales and was responsible for the marketing and concept of Malmaison group. He was also head of marketing, advertising and promotion for News-International and the marketing manager for Scotsman publications.
On top of all that, Ritchie managed Dunblane Primary School’s crisis following the 1996 tragedy and assisted with the world’s largest media campaign for a missing person, Madelaine McCann.
In sport, Ritchie has helped drive the success of International sailing teams Team Maverick and the GB youth development Diam team, put young Scottish athletes into the ISF Winter Games and facilitated Conrad Colman’s solo sail around the world with a zero-carbon footprint through GRM Marketing.
Before the company started, he was also responsible for all corporate marketing for Glasgow City Council and the setup of Glasgow city’s marketing bureau which dealt with such projects as the Special Olympics 2005, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup, the Commonwealth Games and the year of Architecture and Design.
On paper then, with a combination of financial, marketing and sports communication backgrounds, GRM Marketing should be well placed to understand what Caley Thistle require and help them along the path to new investment.
