Lonsdale forms partnership to drive investment

Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi is ex­pand­ing its re­gion­al reach through a part­ner­ship with Ocean Cross, a Caribbean-fo­cused busi­ness plat­form de­signed to con­nect com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties with in­vestors, ex­per­tise and strate­gic part­ners.

In a news re­lease sent yes­ter­day, Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi (LSS) an­nounced the part­ner­ship, which com­bines the agency’s strate­gic, cre­ative and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­pa­bil­i­ties with Ocean Cross’ re­gion­al busi­ness de­vel­op­ment net­work and re­la­tion­ships across Caribbean mar­kets.

Ocean Cross was of­fi­cial­ly launched in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ear­li­er this month by Caribbean tourism and busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive Glen Beache. The plat­form aims to help busi­ness­es, in­vestors, gov­ern­ments and or­gan­i­sa­tions iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties and move them from con­cept to im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Julie Har­ris, strate­gic plan­ning di­rec­tor at LSS, de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as more than a brand­ing ex­er­cise, point­ing to its po­ten­tial to con­nect peo­ple, ideas and com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties across the Caribbean.

“For LSS, that meant bring­ing our strate­gic and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­per­tise to a vi­sion with re­al po­ten­tial to strength­en re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and cre­ate new av­enues for growth,” Har­ris high­light­ed.

An­dre At­tale, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of LSS, said the part­ner­ship re­flect­ed the grow­ing need for busi­ness­es to col­lab­o­rate across mar­kets and com­bine lo­cal knowl­edge with re­gion­al ex­per­tise.

“Mar­kets are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly con­nect­ed, clients are seek­ing more in­te­grat­ed so­lu­tions, and the abil­i­ty to com­bine strong lo­cal re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al ex­per­tise is more rel­e­vant than ever,” At­tale said.

He added that the arrange­ment would build on the agency’s re­gion­al work while cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide strat­e­gy, cre­ative ser­vices and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­port to busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing to ex­pand across the Caribbean.

The part­ner­ship al­so draws on a re­la­tion­ship be­tween Beache and LSS span­ning ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 years. Their pre­vi­ous work has in­clud­ed tourism mar­ket­ing, des­ti­na­tion brand­ing, pub­lish­ing, re­gion­al tourism pro­mo­tion and in­vest­ment-re­lat­ed ini­tia­tives in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Ocean Cross will op­er­ate across sev­er­al sec­tors, in­clud­ing tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, in­vest­ment at­trac­tion, in­fra­struc­ture, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, mar­ket en­try and the cre­ative econ­o­my.

Its fo­cus is to con­nect Caribbean op­por­tu­ni­ties with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­vestors and in­sti­tu­tions that can help ad­vance projects and com­mer­cial ven­tures.

Beache said the plat­form was de­vel­oped to ad­dress a re­cur­ring chal­lenge in the re­gion: op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist, but busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions do not al­ways have easy ac­cess to the in­vestors, ex­per­tise, mar­ket re­la­tion­ships and im­ple­men­ta­tion sup­port need­ed to pur­sue them.

“The Caribbean can­not be ap­proached as one mar­ket. Un­der­stand­ing the nu­ances of each ter­ri­to­ry, know­ing where op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist and hav­ing trust­ed re­la­tion­ships on the ground are im­por­tant,” Beache ex­plained.

Ocean Cross po­si­tions it­self as an “Op­por­tu­ni­ty Ar­chi­tect”, rather than op­er­at­ing sole­ly as a con­sul­tan­cy or bro­ker­age ser­vice. Its ap­proach cen­tres on three ar­eas: iden­ti­fy, con­nect and de­liv­er.

The mod­el is in­tend­ed to iden­ti­fy vi­able op­por­tu­ni­ties, bring the rel­e­vant par­ties to­geth­er and help move projects to­wards im­ple­men­ta­tion.

For LSS, the part­ner­ship forms part of a broad­er ef­fort to strength­en Caribbean re­la­tion­ships and de­vel­op so­lu­tions that can op­er­ate across mar­kets while ac­count­ing for the com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties of in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries.

At­tale said the agency recog­nised the im­por­tance of lo­cal in­sight while seek­ing to con­nect that knowl­edge across the re­gion.

“LSS un­der­stands the im­por­tance of lo­cal in­sight, but we al­so un­der­stand the val­ue of con­nect­ing that in­sight across mar­kets,” he said, adding that Ocean Cross of­fered an­oth­er av­enue for Caribbean busi­ness­es and ideas to gain re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al reach.

Beache said the plat­form’s ob­jec­tive was to turn the re­gion’s po­ten­tial in­to vi­able part­ner­ships and tan­gi­ble out­comes.

“There is tremen­dous po­ten­tial across the Caribbean. Our role is to recog­nise where that po­ten­tial ex­ists, con­nect the right peo­ple around it and help cre­ate a path­way that moves the op­por­tu­ni­ty for­ward,” he added.