Public Funding for Seven Brands Global Limited

**We want to explore the development of an algorithm that mimics the human creative processes used by ad agencies to create an app that SMEs can use to automatically produce tailored and effective digital advertisements to help them survive, prosper and adapt, to an advertising landscape suddenly re-shaped by COVID-19\.** COVID-19 has made many traditional forms of advertising such as billboards and posters less effective by moving eyeballs indoors. This has forced companies to move advertising online to follow the eyeballs. SMEs must learn to take their advertising online if they are to survive beyond the pandemic. COVID-19 has also led to a massive change in consumer behaviour with many previous non digital shoppers gaining confidence in online commerce. By offering a complete, affordable and intelligent app, SMEs will be better equipped to address COVID-19 challenges and to compete more effectively at home and abroad. Our team have worked in some of the largest agencies in the world such as Saatchi & Saatchi and understand how powerful advertising works. We believe we can translate this knowledge into an algorithm that can deliver tailored, effective advertising for SMEs at a fraction of the cost of having an ad agency but at many times the efficacy of what they could achieve on their own with existing apps, none of which are in any way "smart" (able to tailor ads, target specific audiences or leverage the secrets to creating really effective advertising). Once we have written the algorithm, we will build a web app that would put an ad agency in the pocket of every SME in the UK, allowing them to create advertising using nothing more than a mobile phone in a way that was affordable, accessible, effective at driving demand, measurable and transformative. Our algorithm is different from all state-of-the-art services out there in that it is not a template service where SMEs without knowledge of how to create effective advertising select ads for their business. Ours will translate our own knowledge of how strategy and creativity make advertising more effective into a recommendation engine for creative ads that combines the best of creativity with machine learning. **In the UK small businesses represent:** * 99% of businesses * 50% of jobs in the UK * 40% of UK revenues * 18% of total advertising spend _Sources: The Federation of Small Businesses, IFC & Forbes_ Giving small businesses access to effective digital advertising (advertising that genuinely drives demand for their products & services) would drive profits, create more resilient businesses that are able to remain competitive in a post-COVID-19 world, protect jobs and rejuvenate the economy.