All grown-up

The team and clients celebrated in some style last night at the London EDITION. Many people were kind enough to say how proud I must be of reaching agency ‘adulthood’.

It set me thinking. Of course I am proud – proud of our work, proud of the incredible brands that put their trust in us, proud of the friendships that now transcend the idea of ‘work’. Who wouldn’t feel proud?

But the thing that cheers me the most is something less immediately visible to the outside world – and that’s pride in the ability of our team to adapt to a world which has seen business change on a scale unprecedented since the industrial revolution.

We started in print back in 1996: two FT journalists and a couple of friends in a Soho loft office. We were people who really didn't know anything apart from print – and for whom the fax was still cutting-edge technology.

And of course, we still love print today. It will never die and remains a central plank of what we do.

But now it is only one plank. And Wardour would be a very different, less exciting place to work without all the digital planks that adjoin it.

Eighteen years ago, if you’d told me I’d be running an agency in 2014 that would be helping brands such as Heineken, EY, Barclays, the British Heart Foundation and Hays with everything from video, to magazines, to social media, to animations, to the development of personalised web portals, I wouldn’t have believed you.

And we’ve only been able to deliver this awesome array of outputs because the team has kept in step with the changing world around us. They have embraced the forward-thinking, non-luddite world view. For that I am truly thankful, because if we hadn’t, I’d probably be looking for a job elsewhere by now, and I’m starting to suspect I’m unemployable…

So here’s to the next 18 years and the myriad of – as yet unknown – marketing and communications developments that will help keep us fresh and young at heart as we progress through adult life.