How and when was Vu Digital founded and with what idea/goal in mind?
Vu is 15 years old now. It was originally founded by a development team and a design team who had collaborated on a few digital projects and decided to come together and formalise the partnership. Back then, the web was a lot less cluttered than it is today. Over the years, we’ve worked with organisations to help them cut through that noise and find their voice and audience. More recently, we’ve been helping organisations understand and communicate the impact of their work. The modern consumer wants to align with brands on values, so we support organisations in articulating their impact and building digital communities around those shared values.What is your approach to digital marketing? What are some key factors to consider when trying to grow a brand online in 2025?
Our approach starts with helping clients understand the deeper purpose behind their organisation. We often begin with customer research and interviews to create a campaign strategy that’s genuinely customer-centric. By aligning with your customers’ values, you can understand what they want from your brand. It could impact your product/service lifecycle, packaging and delivery, your treatment of staff and the wider community, and even what you do with your profits. Create customers who think you have an awesome brand, and you have loyal customers who return again and again and promote you to others. And it’s not just sales. Ultimately, if you want to attract the best talent, you need people who are passionate about the work, so you need to communicate the impact of why you do what you do beyond making a profit. And if you want to build a community of raving fans, your customers, staff, and extended network need to feel engaged and care deeply about what your brand stands for.What can you tell me about your video production work?
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? For charities in particular, trying to communicate their impact, video lets you feel what it means to someone whose life has been changed. That emotional connection is hard to capture in writing alone. Video is also more accessible than ever, it’s no longer big-budget. We’re all more used to consuming video content across social media, so it just makes sense. When we film a brand story or explainer, we often capture loads of great B-roll footage at our clients’ sites that can be repurposed for social media content. So it’s not just a one-off investment, it keeps giving.What other services do you offer?
We’re WordPress specialists and part of the G-Cloud framework, which means we build web applications for large government organisations. We also do a lot of brand strategy work, helping organisations define their mission, vision, and values, and then communicate those visually. On the marketing side, we support marketing teams with tactical outreach. So, things like marketing campaigns, advertising, content creation, and newsletters.What does the future hold for Vu Online? Are there any upcoming projects you’re involved in that we could be looking forward to?
Right now, we’re midway through a lodge project with the NHS, and we’re also working on several exciting initiatives with purpose-led organisations doing genuinely impactful work. You can check out our latest case studies at vudigital.co.uk or follow our socials to see what we’ve been up to.What does the future of AI hold for the marketing industry?
We’re on the cusp of radical change, just like when the internet first arrived. Think about the fall of Blockbuster, they couldn’t adapt fast enough. AI will have that level of impact for those that can’t adapt. I recently gave a seminar on AI and its implications. There are obviously some big concerns. Employment, data protection, ethical usage, and environmental impact are some obvious ones. We’ve already seen deepfakes like Bruce Willis’s face being used in a Russian telecoms ad, and chatbots are replacing human call centres. In the US, the COMPAS AI system is used in the justice system to help make data-informed decisions, but its dataset had racial bias. And training GPT-4 (just that one model), used 10 gigawatt hours of electricity, that’s enough to power over 2,500 UK homes for a year. So we need to make some decisions about how AI fits into our work and businesses, and what frameworks or guardrails we want in place to guide those choices and mitigate their impact.Can you tell me about your sustainability credentials?
We’re a certified B Corp digital marketing agency, which means we’re part of a global movement to use business as a force for good. That includes prioritising staff wellbeing and environmental responsibility, not just profit. The reality is that we’re in a climate crisis. And, the uncomfortable truth is that digital uses over twice the energy of the aviation industry, yet, when we talk about carbon footprint, we measure them in flights, not YouTube views. We all have a role to play, and we feel it is our place to try to help organisations adopt digital best practices along with hitting their goals. Our services are built around helping brands prioritise people and our planet alongside profit. We host websites on 100% renewable energy, design lightweight websites, and focus on targeted, efficient campaigns, so the message reaches the right people without shouting into the void.To learn more about Vu Online, you can visit vuonline.co.uk
