1 IAS is an SME – a small to medium sized enterprise. To what extent do you think the principles and practices of HRM are applicable to SMEs? The UK business‑to‑business marketing agency IAS (Industrial Art Services) was formed in 1973 before the acronym ‘B2B’ was coined. Founder Tim Hazelhurst was among the first to identify business brands as in need of specialist marketing support (IAS, 2012).

Hazelhurst was the first winner of the B2B Marketing lifetime achievement award and helped IAS become a pioneer in the industry. However, IAS encountered a number of challenges due both to the recession at the end of the first decade of the twenty-

first century and to changes in marketing brought about by the rise of social media.