What do a Bristol-based integrated marketing agency and a team of world-leading wet blasting experts have in common?

No, this isn’t the start of the world’s worst joke. It was, however, a topic of discussion at Proctors HQ recently, as we talked about a series of surprising discoveries during Vapormatt and Proctors’ first year of working together.

But what similarities could there possibly be between a business who engineers and manufactures technology for some of the world’s most high-tech sectors; motor racing, aerospace, additive manufacturing/3D printing, medical implants and surgical tools; and a business whose bread and butter is creating marketing campaigns with a gut-punching impact?

40 years of expertise

Vapormatt and Proctors’ working relationship started in 2020, otherwise known as The Year We All Want to Forget (But Can’t). Rather than this challenging 12 months compounding the pressure placed on our first projects together, it instead highlighted a number of the incredible qualities shared by both businesses.

From our ethos, to our team spirit, to our niche specialisms – there’s a lot to be said for what we share. And one of the most apparent surface-level similarities between our businesses is our age.  

Both Vapormatt and Proctors have more than four decades of expertise, cementing both companies among the longest established within their respective fields. 

Stewart and Terry Ashworth founded Vapormatt in 1978, growing quickly after a move from Guernsey to Taunton. Before long, Vapormatt had outgrown their new facility and discovered their niche: they wanted to build their own machinery, to their own high standards, so it matched the teams’ exceptional skill and proficiency.

This shift marked the true birth of Vapormatt’s wet-blasting business as it looks today. Vapormatt is a true pioneer of wet-blasting technology, offering world-leading tech complemented by unrivalled capability.

Similarly, Proctors has spent the last four decades refining its knowledge, practice and gaining unrivalled experience in the marketing sector. From the heart of Bristol, our 70-plus team is made up of award-winning creative, strategy and technology professionals – all of whom are experts in their own specialisms.

Measured and controlled success

For those not in the business of marketing and advertising, it can seem as though concepts are produced at random. A unicorn promoting an energy company? Meerkats pushing insurance products? There is, in fact, method among the madness. Every marketing decision has been researched and calculated in order to create the desired impact on its audience.

At P+S, we like to think we take things even further. We take a learn > build > measure approach to marketing strategy – meaning our work doesn’t stop when the campaign has launched. Instead, we continue to refine our marketing efforts on an ongoing basis. 

And Vapormatt are much the same with their approach to engineering the right technology for each of their customers. Their design philosophy is ‘if you can measure it, you can control it’. And as a result of this focus, Vapormatt are leading the way when it comes to repeatable and reliable processing.

If you don’t already know, at its most basic level, wet blasting is a precision-driven process which uses water and slurry to refine an object’s surface with microscopic accuracy. It leaves nothing to chance. And the reason for Vapormatt’s esteemed reputation is largely due to their measured approach and exceptional attention to detail, powered by their understanding of every clients’ business.

Vapormatt’s patented technology and Proctors’ meticulous marketing strategy have a similar foundation: eliminating error and achieving the best results for our customers.

Our relationships set us apart

Any business worth its salt knows it’s not just a single product or function which is responsible for success. And both Vapormatt and Proctors value their customer relationships above everything else.

Vapormatt may be a world-leading technology business, but it’s their aftermarket service which offers the most value to their customers.  

Because Vapormatt’s technology is highly specialised, much of their machinery is custom built – meaning it can take more than just ‘plug and play’ approach to use it. But Vapormatt's promise is that they will work with every single client, offering hands-on guidance and remote assistance, individual expertise and teams of professionals to support every project. In fact, once the team have committed to a project, they don’t just find their clients the right tech and leave them to it: they stand by their side at every step of their production journey until they’re satisfied.  

It’s a similar relationship to the one Proctors has with its clients. We don’t just push out marketing campaigns for our clients and leave. In fact, we view every job as an opportunity: to build deeper relationships between our clients and their customers, to open up new channels of brand-customer communication, or to simply assess what we can change to make our communications even more powerful.

And testament to the strength of our relationships? We’ve been working with many of our clients for decades, as we continue to bring them new ideas, fresh proposals, and identify innovative, relevant opportunities for their businesses.  

For both Proctors and Vapormatt, our success lies in not just serving our clients: but in helping them realise new potential beyond what they ever thought they could be capable of.

‍Never afraid to be bold

‍When it comes to surface treatment and finishing, dry blasting is still the world’s dominant technology. Even companies who do offer more advanced, precision-driven wet-blasting processes will still offer dry blasting as a service in order to try and secure a larger market share – to capture those customers who may be resistant to trying something new.

However, Vapormatt focus solely on wet blasting – for today and for the future. And rather than seeing this as a limitation, the team knows it pays dividends. As a result of focusing purely on wet-blasting technology, Vapormatt are world leaders in their field. They’re the go-to name for wet-blasting machinery across the globe. And as a result, the team have complete confidence in both their ability and their technologies, so they can guarantee the quality of their machines’ output for every single project.

And at Proctors, we’ve never been afraid to be bold either. Whether through larger-than-life messaging or extraordinary creative, our mission is to make our clients stand out from the crowd, whatever it takes.

From implementing brave B2B messaging, to innovating with Augmented Reality, digitalised direct mail and interactive online content. Whether the brief is to create a simple email or to discover the most effective way to market a new product, we dedicate ourselves to finding more exciting ways of engaging our clients’ customers and showing off their products and services.

Building the world of tomorrow, today

As it happens, this particular integrated marketing agency and Vapormatt’s world-leading high-tech wet blasting business have more in common than you might think.

No matter how niche, technical or specialised your business is, you deserve to get more from your marketing. So if you have an ambitious marketing plan, big dreams for your next product launch, or just need a bit of a boost when it comes to a creative social strategy, talk to Proctors. We’ll be more than happy to put our heads together with yours and see where the year takes us.