Interview with Kevin Gibbons and Darren Kingman
Organic visibility is no longer won through isolated channels or short-term tactics. In this interview, Kevin Gibbons and Darren Kingman explain why e-commerce SEO and digital PR now move in lockstep, how consolidation reflects changing buyer behaviour, and what senior leaders must prioritise to build authority, trust and long-term organic growth in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Kevin, as a founder who has scaled an agency through multiple shifts in digital and commerce, what leadership principles have stayed constant as the industry has evolved?
“There are two constants I come back to. Firstly, everything has changed, and nothing has changed. I’m in my twentieth year in digital marketing, and from day one, the goal has been the same: to deliver revenue, ROI, and real business outcomes for clients. That has never shifted. What has changed is almost everything about how you get there. Platforms, technology, algorithms, and the intensity and sophistication of competition are in constant motion. The leaders who endure are the ones who anchor on outcomes, not tactics, and who are willing to continuously re-learn how those outcomes are achieved.
Secondly, leadership fundamentals have stayed remarkably consistent.
At a senior level, the job is still about hiring great people and creating the conditions for them to thrive. That means finding talent with strong core experience, but also deep curiosity and a genuine willingness to keep learning. In digital and commerce, roles evolve faster than job descriptions ever can. As a leader, your responsibility is to build a culture that attracts adaptable people, gives them the right tools, and allows them to grow alongside the industry rather than be disrupted by it.”
Darren, you have built Root Digital by delivering outcomes that go beyond traditional marketing metrics. What leadership choices were most critical in positioning the business for long-term relevance?
“In our industry – perhaps more than most – you can grow quickly by making a lot of noise. However, that can create a lot of challenges too, both for clients and within the company itself.
I intentionally went down a different path. I wanted to create a company that thrived on consistency. In my mind, it helps us offer a more ‘known’ quantity when it comes to client performance and also creates stability for our team and new hires who have probably never experienced an agency culture like it before.
Building a company that is determined to have long-term success, requires the sort of consistency we’ve been able to achieve.
This has allowed us to stand out and create a foundation that’s built on performance data and campaign successes, which we’ve replicated time and time again. We’ve maintained working relationships with clients, most of whom we’ve been working with for over five years and we’ve got numerous team members who are celebrating over four years at the company. For a small team like ours, that feels extremely significant.
For me, building a company that is determined to have long-term success, requires the sort of consistency we’ve been able to achieve. A roller-coaster style company with numerous ups and downs won’t last very long in a service driven world, and I think focusing on consistency is the best decision I could have made for our clients, team and myself.”
From a leadership and growth perspective, why does combining ecommerce SEO and digital PR make strategic sense now, rather than later?
Darren Kingman:“Ecommerce SEO and digital PR belong together now because brand has become a primary driver of search visibility, AI trust and revenue growth.
Digital PR delivers a clear triple benefit that works hand in hand with SEO for several reasons Firstly, it strengthens brand and link reputation. High-quality coverage, links and brand mentions remain some of the strongest signals for SEO performance. They help search engines understand which brands are credible and authoritative, directly supporting rankings and organic revenue growth.
Second, it builds brand awareness, which increasingly shapes how people search. As markets become more competitive, users search less for generic terms and more for brands they recognise and trust. Digital PR fuels that demand, while SEO captures it efficiently, creating a virtuous cycle between awareness and performance.
Thirdly, digital PR improves how brands are represented in AI search and LLMs (large language models). AI systems draw on widely referenced, authoritative sources to form responses. Digital PR expands a brand’s footprint across trusted publications and platforms, increasing the likelihood of being cited, recommended or used as a reference, while SEO ensures owned content is accessible and coherent for those systems.”
AI search, social commerce and visual platforms are changing how customers discover and evaluate brands. What risks do senior leaders face if they continue to treat SEO, content and PR as separate functions?
Kevin Gibbons: “The core risk for senior leaders is creating a glass ceiling on organic search performance by operating in silos.
Today, organic growth depends on three things working together: strong technical foundations, genuinely useful content, and a trusted brand reputation.
Leaders who integrate SEO, content and PR remove that ceiling. They build brands that deserve visibility.”
Authority and credibility are increasingly influencing rankings, conversion and AI visibility. Why should brand authority now be viewed as a board-level growth and risk consideration?
KG: “Brand authority now directly affects growth, resilience and downside risk, which makes it a board-level issue, not a marketing tactic.
On the growth side, authority increasingly influences rankings, click-through rates, conversion and AI visibility. Search engines and AI systems prioritise brands they recognise, trust and can confidently recommend. Strong authority compounds performance across channels, while weak authority limits scale regardless of spend or optimisation.
Authority increasingly influences rankings, click-through rates, conversion and AI visibility. Search engines and AI systems prioritise brands they recognise, trust and can confidently recommend.
On the risk side, low brand authority creates fragility. When algorithms change, competition increases or AI intermediates the customer relationship, brands without credibility are the first to lose visibility. That exposes revenue concentration risk and increases reliance on paid channels to compensate.
For boards, this makes brand authority a strategic asset that needs deliberate investment and governance. It underpins long-term organic growth, protects against platform volatility, and directly impacts enterprise value.”
We are seeing more consolidation among independent agencies to compete with integrated global groups. What does this signal about the future structure of the marketing services industry?
Kevin Gibbons: “The consolidation we are seeing reflects how client needs have changed, rather than a race for scale alone.
As discovery, commerce and brand building converge, clients increasingly want trusted partners who can integrate strategy, execution and measurement across disciplines. In Re:signal’s case that is still very much centered around providing business-led outcomes for ecommerce brands.
Longer term, the industry is likely to polarise. On one side, we’ll see large integrated groups with broad capability. On the other, there will be fewer but stronger independents built through consolidation, focused on specific growth problems and sectors, who are able to operate at global scale without losing expertise.”
Looking ahead, how do you expect organic growth to be measured and valued by leadership teams over the next five years, and what capabilities will become non-negotiable for brands that want to stay competitive?
Darren Kingman: “Organic growth should always be measured by business-led outcomes. In ecommerce that is primarily revenue growth.
Looking ahead, there are many areas that will be less trackable compared to past metrics. What’s more, SEO and digital PR are likely to have a much more holistic impact on the wider marketing mix.
Over the next five years, leadership teams are likely to move away from viewing organic growth as a set of isolated channel metrics and towards valuing it as a strategic growth engine.
Measurement is already shifting from rankings and traffic to indicators of brand strength and commercial impact. That includes share of organic market visibility, brand-led demand and ultimately contribution to revenue and profit.
Organic growth will increasingly be assessed on how well it compounds over time and reduces dependency on paid media.
As for capabilities, several will become non-negotiable. Brands will need strong technical foundations to ensure visibility across traditional and AI-driven search, high-quality content that genuinely helps customers make decisions, and a credible brand footprint across trusted third-party publishers.
Those that build these capabilities will treat organic growth as an asset that appreciates. Those that do not will find it harder and more expensive to compete.”
