Behind the curtain on our Agency Of The Year nomination 2023
“Absolutely amazing”
“Unbelievaaaaaaable”
“Get in there, my son”
“Oh… cool! Er… have you seen my doughnut?”
Just some of the reactions from the team when it was announced Digital Radish have been nominated for B2B marketing agency of the year 2023 — having won Gold in 2021 and winning bronze in 2022.
Winning B2B marketing agency of the year in 2021 felt like recognition for everything that had gone into Digital Radish since it was formed in 2013 by Lorna and Renaye. Recognition that to win agency of the year you didn’t need to be some heaving traditional agency behemoth with decades of history and a series of surnames in the brand name.
Being nominated last year and winning bronze was almost a bigger achievement than winning it in 2021. It’s almost unheard of to get on the podium the year after having won it. And in doing so it reflected that in 2022 we didn’t just sit back after winning, we used the success of 2021 as a launch pad as we continued to prove that success is so much more than just profit.
And now, here we are in 2023 nominated again. Wowzers. What can we say? Well, quite a bit really…
So said Pulitzer prize winner Annie Dillard, and it was this quote that sparked Digital Radish to ask the question: how do we support our people to do the best work and have the best experience of their lives?
As an agency we believe that happiness is the most important factor in business success, and so our business decision making is guided by our proprietary happiness analytics, rather than the P&L, and our commitment to creating memorable experiences.
With this guiding principle we set about creating unforgettable, genuinely meaningful and innovative experiences for employees, clients and the wider community.
It can be easy to throw out powerful, impressive statements and phrases. And it’s even easier to then promptly do nothing about them.
What’s tricker is actually implementing them. So, how did DR bring to life unforgettable, genuinely meaningful and innovative experiences?
Work anywhere in the world
We want our people to have the best experience of their lives and that means giving them the freedom to work where they choose.
Radical empowerment
Our cultural ethos means we never use the word ‘mandate’ and challenge traditional thinking around hierarchies and trusting our people to do what’s right.
Individualised wellbeing
Personal wellbeing fund for use on what matters to every unique person, from gyms and counselling to massages or spas.
It’s clear that the impact on our culture has seeped into the work we’ve done for our clients, with 2022 being our most creative year yet.
We’ve harnessed the power of Netflix thrillers to promote staffing solutions, created original songs to show how impact the General Counsels are, and developed an intelligent ABM campaign as innovative as criminals… All of this work has, co-incidentally, (alongside some other corkers) been nominated for B2B marketing awards, too.
We also put ESG at the heart of our marketing strategies, including removing direct mail and finding new ways to engage based on shared ESG principles.
And we’re even looking at how we can create experiences in virtual reality as we use the Metaverse to take client ABM experiences to the next level. But perhaps of greater importance is how we’ve used it to help children at a local hospital.
We’ve been hosting VR sessions for young patients at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (GOSH) to give them the chance to discover worlds beyond the hospital doors, encouraging movement, play and creativity.
All of this, both the work and culture internally and then what it allows us to do externally, outside of our norm, has resulted in a spot on The Sunday Times Best Place to Work list, winning two awards at Ignite USA, plus 94% in our happiness analytics.
Of course, there’s so much that goes into agency life it’s impossible to cover it all in one blog. But hopefully this acts as a quick snapshot of DR and how we’ve managed for the third year running to get a nomination for B2B agency of the year.
Ultimately we think everything we’re doing results in better work, a nicer culture, and happier clients. And they seem to agree, with one comment from a recent client project neatly reflecting our work in reality and beyond:
“The agency was asked to scale mountains, and scaled galaxies instead.”