Canela, the Iberian communications agency with offices in Barcelona, Lisbon and Madrid, has reported one of its best years ever in 2022, thanks to unprecedented business growth in Spain and Portugal. In addition to achieving a 46% increase in revenue, Canela has almost doubled the size of its team, in a year in which its design department, Studio, was created and in which it received B Corp certification for its environmental and social responsibility efforts.
Doubling the number of employees
With the aim of continuing to offer the best communication, PR, digital strategy and design services in the two Iberian markets, during 2022, Canela strengthened its team by 45% – it currently has 42 employees in the two countries – while maintaining an internal promotion policy in place.
“With the current volume of business and taking into account our objectives, at Canela we have understood that it is essential to maintain a team that can support this growth. In this way, we can offer a quality and specialised response to the needs of our clients, while at the same time balancing the workload of the team”, explains Deborah Gray, founder and managing director of Canela. “The addition of new talent has not affected one of Canela’s core strengths: organic employee growth within our organisation and work policies that value and benefit our employees’ work-life balance”.
Thanks to a new business strategy that pursues partnerships with brands aligned with the agency’s values, this year Canela has added brands such as Locus Robotics, Taxfix, Veeam and VELUX to its client portfolio, joining other leading companies such as Adyen, KONE, Pipedrive, Palo Alto Networks and Sony. At the same time, the agency has strengthened its positioning as an Iberian agency, with 6 of its top 10 clients having its services in both Spain and Portugal.
Strengthening the areas of design and creativity
In this year 2022, Canela wanted to strengthen two areas, digital and design, to continue evolving in parallel to the market. First, Canela decided to strengthen its digital area with the appointment of Arantxa Aguilera as the new Director of Canela’s B2B, Corporate & Digital areas. On the other hand, the agency unveiled Studio, the business unit that has reinforced and improved its offer of audiovisual services, creativity and design. With the launch of Studio, the company offers audio, branding, design, video and web design services, being present in all stages of the creative process: from consulting, concept and design, to implementation.
B Corp and recognition of an employee-friendly human resources strategy
On the corporate side, Canela joined the list of B Corp companies by demonstrating daily its social and environmental commitment and after passing a rigorous evaluation process of its good practices. Some of them are: a “people-first, values based” corporate philosophy, a 100% female management team, the development of numerous welfare initiatives for its employees, the implementation of the series of regular donations to non-profit organisations #CanelaCares and the Canela Forest, in which trees are being planted continuously to help reforest the Catalan territory.
In this line, for the sixth time, Canela has been included among the five Best Agencies to Work For in EMEA, according to the ranking prepared by the prestigious specialised publication PRovoke Media. Thanks to its commitment to internal and external training, temporary talent exchanges between offices or collaborating agencies and activities such as physical exercise and English classes, Canela has once again been ranked among the best agencies by PRovoke Media.
