Absolute Agency

Applethwaite is a house builder based in the northwest of England, providing quality homes across Lancashire and Cumbria and in 2008, they became a part of the Eric Wright.

Applethwaite provides a range of quality homes on select sites across Lancashire and Cumbria. They are committed to providing customers with homes that meet the demands of today’s lifestyles, whilst harmonising with the local environment and providing a sound investment for the future.

Following the successful company rebrand carried out by Absolute, the Applethwaite team commissioned Absolute to help them overcome some of the challenges they faced with their current website.

The Idea

The previous Applethwaite website was developed in WordPress and was heavily dependent on custom fields, which together, led to challenges with security, flexibility and scalability. The website has become tired, difficult, and costly to maintain the client found that the website was struggling to support the continued growth of the Applethwaite business.

The Applethwaite team asked Absolute to create a website solution that put them back in control. They wanted to reduce the dependency on external support, whilst empowering them to add their own content, manage home developments, and plot availability using a bespoke, tailor-made solution to deliver their requirements.

The Delivery

Working with the team, Absolute created a fresh, bespoke website, built on a modular framework to provide more control for the Applethwaite marketing and sales teams. The design carried through the clean new branding whilst providing a user experience that complimented the unique Applethwaite approach.

Absolut Agency wanted to give the user an individual, premium feel, at the same time as making it easy to browse and search for the perfect home, with a clear focus on lead generation.

Seddon is a forward-thinking company with extensive experience in delivering new build, refurbishment and fit-out projects across a range of sectors. So, when Seddon approached Absolute for a bold new website, it needed to reflect Seddon’s culture, personality as well as the key delivery streams of construction projects, housing partnerships, property services and engineering services.

The Idea

As Seddon offer such a wide range of services across so many sectors, Absolute felt the best way of reflecting this would be to create a website that acts as a hub for all construction and engineering projects. The new website would give Seddon the opportunity to showcase the work they do, for example, the mental health awareness project with Jordan’s Conversation through to their many partnerships with community support schemes.

The new website would embrace Seddon’s distinctive tone of voice, being contemporary yet paying homage to the company’s strong history. The main sections of the website would be kept accessible by ensuring the page hierarchy remained minimal. Absolute wanted users to see a top-level view of all the services Seddon have to offer, with the option to view further details within each section. They also wanted to create a central point for company news, events and insights, as well as a route for apprentices and graduates to join the company.

The Delivery


Having tried various “off-the-shelf” content management solutions, the team at Seddon were impressed with their Absolute Control CMS, which could be completely customised to suit their needs. The simplicity and ease of use of the system meant minimal training requirements and Seddon’s team could begin producing content immediately.

Working closely with Seddon, they composed a series of user stories. This helped Absolute to fully understand the common tasks that Seddon would perform. From this, Absolute defined a suite of modules that make up the building blocks of the web pages. Combining and reusing the modules enabled them to build unique page layouts without the need for extensive web development work.

The team wanted to showcase the projects that they had completed, so Absolute created a “project” module for them, allowing Seddon to upload details, photos and renders of their projects quickly and easily. Absolute Control’s modular architecture means users can enhance the projects page with statistics, videos, client testimonials and much more from content stored anywhere within the system. This flexibility means that new projects can be added to the site quickly and evolve over time. These modules can be used to create distinctive news pages to show focused and personalised content.


The Result


Seddon’s new website successfully delivered on all the objectives that were set out at the beginning. The new website brings together Seddon’s delivery streams, construction expertise as well as their personality and strong brand.

Absolute Control’s ease of use meant that the team at Seddon were comfortable updating the site within a few hours. Absolute look forward to following their journey.

Finding the right university for you can feel like an emotional roller coaster ride. With their supportive, caring and friendly student support services, York St John pride themselves on helping you get through this overwhelming process and into a university where you can truly be yourself.

Following on from the brand development project and website launch, York St John came to Absolute Agency to create a visually impactful recruitment campaign which communicates what makes them different from any other university.

The Insight

To uncover what makes York St John unique Absolute needed a greater understanding of why any student should choose to study there. Heading over to York, they conducted an Absolute Clarity workshop with existing students to gain first hand insights.

Absolute discovered the university is all about embracing the eclectic. The city itself is a melting pot of old and new, green spaces and city life. It’s because of this that they attract an array of characters from both the local area as well as internationally. The small scale of the university also means there’s a greater sense community, it’s a place where students feel supported, nurtured and celebrated for their own unique personalities. It’s a university where you can really feel like you belong.

The Idea

All these aspects became the focus for the messaging, which was then neatly tied together with ‘York St John is The One’ campaign line. This was visually communicated with the number ‘1’ as a graphic device, which also incorporated the brand patterns Absolute created as part of the re brand. All these elements combined give the campaign the energy and impact it needs to cut through the clutter of the higher education sector.

The Delivery

The rollout of the campaign was undertaken through a phased approach, from the initial launch to the UCAS events. Absolute created stand graphics and collateral for the recruitment fairs that were held at the start of the year. The Covid-19 pandemic led to ‘YSJU Open Days’ online events only, featuring virtual campus and accommodation tours.

A different approach to their Undergraduate prospectus was adapted for this campaign too.

Rather than an academic-looking and heavily worded document, containing all the course information you would normally expect from a prospectus, Absolute focused on telling the story of the university itself, encouraging potential students to go online to the new website to find out more information.

Carrs Pasties are a Bolton bakery with BIG ambitions. Absolute Agency began working with them in September 2020 on a remit that as well as PR, included brand, campaign, and digital. A fully integrated approach.

Established in 1938 and now in the hands of the third generation of the family, it’s a well-known and well-loved brand in Bolton.

Absolute Agency’s task from a PR perspective was to tell the Carrs Pasties story to relevant press titles beyond its Bolton borders, as it eyed national expansion via growth in trade partners and nationwide delivery of its frozen products.

The Strategy

There was a great story to tell – a family business with a strong heritage, quality products, and owners with personality and passion for its products, people and community, as well as bucket loads of ambition.

It was these elements that Absolute Agency focused on for their media outreach strategy, supported by timely creative video content generation.

Targeting wider North West publications – Carrs Pasties immediate target area for growing its trade partners – as well as grocery trade press and national press, they embarked on a program of intensive media relations to raise the profile of Carrs Pasties.

The Result

In just six months, Absolute Agency achieved 33 pieces of press coverage, with a circulation of 790,000, coverage was viewed 834,000 times and resulted in 1.25k social shares.

Print press coverage had a media value of 42.1k.

Impressive results for a local bakery.

The Highlights

• A full-page interview with the Carr brothers in the Metro newspaper – featuring four brand mentions as well as key messages throughout including its stores, trade partners and launch of the nationwide delivery service. And a huge picture of its famous pasties in all their glory!
• Established a relationship with trade title British Baker (part of The Grocer) achieving five pieces of coverage, which included an interview with the Carrs brothers for the titles ‘Born & Bread’ feature, resulting in another full page of press coverage.
• Regional and trade coverage for Carrs Pasties Halloween activity – a spoof on horror classic, Poltergeist devised and delivered by Absolute’s creative team.
• This was also supported with digital spend across social channels and resulted in an uplift of 11% in retail sales and an 81% uplift in doorstep delivery sales week on week.

The future is bright for the Carrs Pasties brand and they are just getting started. Keep your eyes peeled for future activity…