The Brief History
Four years in, it’s time to reflect on where we’ve come from and clearly outline where we’re going. If you want Act II: the next few years then head here. This is Act I: the brief history of where it all began…
Four years ago — almost to the day — we were born out of The Eleven. It all came about as we reflected on three observations we were making about the world we were doing business in:
- We were a group of people in our early twenties. We had used social since the days of Myspace and Friendster. We naturally recognised online behaviours that others didn’t, and people wanted to listen to us.
- We could see the potential of social media for brands as the most cost-effective way to market yourself to a completely global audience. This, at a time when traditional routes to a global audience — television, PR etc — were the reserve of those with big budgets. All that, set against a challenging economic landscape.
- We were just naive enough to have a crack at starting a business.
So we launched BORN SOCIAL. We started working with fellow small companies and start-ups. At first they were the only ones willing to take the leap of faith with a small agency like us.
And we were small — if not tiny! We were working off intuition — both in setting ourselves up as a proper outfit, and for our clients.
We looked at the (granted, limited) social media industry at that time. What we saw was not a pretty sight: it looked more like the Wild West than most would dare admit. We saw freelancers fleecing business who didn’t have the know-how to manage social media themselves. We saw agencies guaranteeing “to make you viral”. We saw PR agencies assuming social was the same as traditional media. We saw intern after intern after intern being thrown company Twitter accounts to keep them busy. And through all of this, we saw brands paying the price across the board.
Honestly, we got angry. We knew even the small and medium-sized businesses we were working with could do better. Because for every brand getting it wrong on social, we were seeing others using it brilliantly.
That frustration guided us towards creating an agency model that focussed on creating value for those types of business. At a price they could afford. Without any hidden costs.
We created a product that essentially enabled them to hire a full-time, professional, social media team (who happened to work from a different office) for a fraction of the cost it should have been. We also developed a culture that enabled us to operate in the insanely demanding, fast-paced, and never-asleep world of social.
And it worked and we grew. And we hired and we grew. We worked with hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses. And we knew we had built a product that perfectly filled a (usually intern-shaped) hole in that world.
And that brought us to 2015 — the start of this year, only our fourth in existence — when we began to look at what was next for us. We had a team of 20 of the smartest people we had met on our journey. They were putting blood, sweat and tears into this company that we were building.
Why were so many giving so much to build the company? Read Act II to find out the answer…
