Pivoting to AI: The Crowd Group’s Journey to Product Innovation
From global marketing agency to AI pioneer, Bournemouth‑based Crowd Group is scaling with Innovate UK Business Growth support—delivered by Business West in the South West.
The company, which works with some of the world’s most recognisable brands, such as Costa Coffee and Nike, has developed an AI platform that converts brand rules into fast, on-brand slides.
The new platform, Consistica™, was born out of the frustration that presentations should help teams tell their story, not cost hours fixing fonts, spacing, colours or outdated assets. Most teams rely on manual effort to keep slides consistent, which leads to late nights, formatting errors and the risk of off-brand material reaching clients or leadership.
Consistica™ embeds brand guidelines into an automated workflow. Users create or upload a presentation, and the platform applies approved typography, colour, layout and security defaults instantly. The platform also enables collaboration on presentations.
The result is a presentation that is consistent, secure and ready in minutes.
A product shaped by Innovate UK research
Consistica™ is the result of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Crowd and Bournemouth University, funded by Innovate UK. The KTP brought together agency practitioners, AI engineers and academic specialists, allowing Crowd to overcome typical SME barriers, such as access to specialist research and the cost of high-risk R&D.
Through the project, the team were able to prototype, test and strengthen the system to meet the performance, quality and compliance standards expected by large organisations.
However, the company still faced challenges in bringing the technology to market, and that’s where Innovate UK Business Growth, delivered by Business West in the South West, stepped in.
Working closely with Innovation & Growth Specialist (IGS), Jayne Bradford, Crowd received tailored support to identify go-to-market opportunities, secure its IP, and navigate the commercial road from prototype to product. This hands‑on relationship provided direction at critical points and, in Jamie’s words, acted as “a complete enabler for the growth of the business.”
Intellectual property readiness
As Crowd shifted from services to product, IP triage sessions demystified protection options, streamlined next steps, and ensured the team was “a lot better geared up” to engage IP lawyers—avoiding significant cost and delay at an early stage.
“The help around intellectual property was vital because, for the business, this is new territory. Going it alone would have been very, very expensive.”
— Jamie Sergeant
Security and compliance acceleration
To meet enterprise expectations—especially for a generative AI product, Crowd underwent a Secure Innovation Security Review (SISR) that confirmed a strong security posture and mapped out next steps for secure growth. Following the review, Crowd was granted a Cyber Essentials voucher, which has proved particularly key as many of its clients are corporates and public sector organisations, and require high levels of cyber security.
Next steps for Crowd
Consistica™ is the first in a planned suite of products, marking Crowd’s deliberate transition from a service led model to a scalable product business, a shift that, according to Jamie, would not have been possible without Innovate UK Business Growth support and the KTP.
Looking ahead, Jamie anticipates headcount growth beyond Crowd’s 50 person global team, as the company hires product owners and support roles to scale Consistica™ internationally.
Jamie highlights the support from Innovate UK Business Growth as a "complete enabler" for Crowd and he looks forward to working with Innovate UK for the journey to come.