We've launched GEL Growth Lab.

On Thursday, we launched our first ever GEL Growth Lab breakfast meeting!

The idea is pretty simple: give our team a dedicated outlet for curiosity.

Day-to-day, our teams are naturally focused on their clients. But across GEL Studios, we are constantly spotting new technology, platform changes, interesting campaigns, emerging trends and different ways of doing things.

Growth Lab gives those conversations somewhere to live, outside of the needs of one particular account.

And importantly, ideas don’t need to arrive fully formed. If someone sees something and thinks, “Our clients are going to ask us about this”, “Could we use this differently?” or simply “This looks interesting”, that’s enough to start a conversation. That was exactly the brief discussed in our first GEL Growth Lab breakfast meeting.

For us, that links directly back to something much bigger: passionate people make for a happier, more engaged team, which ultimately means better work and better outcomes for our clients.

Innovation doesn't have to mean inventing something new.

Not everything has to be defined as “innovation”.

Sometimes it’s using existing tech differently. Sometimes it’s testing a different approach, challenging the way something has always been done, or spotting an opportunity before it becomes mainstream.

That’s why we called it Growth Lab.

We want growth for our clients, but in turn that creates growth for GEL too, allowing us to work with more organisations that need us and increase the positive social impact we can have through our give-back ethos.

Digital marketing and website infrastructure don’t stand still. Neither can we. That thinking sits at the heart of the Growth Lab and the original launch brief.

What actually happens in Growth Lab?

The sessions aren't designed around one client or one service.

Instead, we take a step back and ask: What is happening across our industry that could be relevant to our wider client base? What do our clients need to know? What should we be watching? And, where there’s an opportunity, what should we be testing?

That can mean anything from new AI capabilities and changes across Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft, through to recurring client questions, emerging technology, industry research, service improvements or simply a great piece of work somebody has spotted elsewhere.

Our first session gave us plenty to talk about.

Social media is changing... again.

A big area of discussion was the speed at which social platforms are changing and, crucially, what those changes could mean for businesses.

Meta One was one of the developments discussed, alongside the move towards tiered paid features for business accounts. The wider question for us isn't simply “what has Meta launched?” but what changes as a result for the brands we work with?

We also discussed changes around the way links are used on Instagram and what increasing restrictions could mean for organic strategies built heavily around sending users away from the platform.

It forces a more strategic conversation. If simply adding a link to every post becomes less effective or more restricted, the quality of the content, storytelling and reasons to engage with the brand become even more important.

LinkedIn was another one to watch. The team discussed its testing of more connection-focused feeds and how greater personalisation could change what users see organically.

We also looked at the growing relationship between LinkedIn content and AI search, including research discussed in the session suggesting that individual profiles may have more opportunity to surface in AI citations than company-page content. For us, that raises an interesting question around the balance between company content and the expertise being shared through the people behind a business.

These aren't things we're going to react to for the sake of reacting. But they are exactly the things we want on our radar, so we can understand the implications and make sure our clients know when something becomes relevant to them.

And then there's ChatGPT ads.

One of the biggest opportunities to come out of our first session was advertising within ChatGPT and AI-led search experiences.

Search behaviour is changing, so naturally we're interested in what that could mean for paid media and how brands can start to show up in these newer environments.

Rather than sit back and wait until it becomes the norm, we're exploring opportunities to test this across our client base.

That doesn't mean it will be right for everybody. We want to understand which businesses and sectors present the strongest opportunity, learn from real activity and build our understanding from there.

So, if we think your business could be a good fit for an early test, we'll be speaking to you.

Turning observations into something useful.

Growth Lab isn't supposed to become another meeting where interesting things are discussed and then disappear into the ether.

The important bit is what we do next.

An idea might lead to research or a test. It could become something we introduce into client strategy, a new service opportunity, a change to the way we work internally or simply something we tell our clients they need to know about.

During the first session, we specifically discussed using those insights to create shorter, timely client updates rather than feeling every subject needs to justify a full webinar or long-form article.

That's ultimately what we're trying to build: a regular rhythm of spotting, discussing, testing and sharing.

What's next?

Our first breakfast gave us plenty to get stuck into, and that's exactly what we'd hoped for.

Growth Lab gives our team permission to be curious beyond the boundaries of their immediate client work, and gives us a dedicated place to ask whether something could help our clients grow, help GEL grow or simply help us do what we do better.

Look out for future Growth Lab updates on what's happening in our industry, what we're testing and, most importantly, how we can use those developments to keep our clients' strategies tight.

And if your marketing partner isn't talking to you about the changes coming around the corner, maybe it's worth asking why.

Want a forward-looking team keeping an eye on what comes next? Get in touch at hello@gelstudios.co.uk.