Ryan’s Year of Two Halves
I don’t mean to begin with a sports pun, but my first year at Fifty Digital has quite literally been a game of two halves. When I joined last October, I was welcomed by a sea of friendly faces in an office in Covent Garden with fridges filled top to bottom with Diet Cokes. Fast forward six months to March and I was adapting to the new norm that was working from home. Six months on from then, I am currently sitting in my new office that is located one metre away from a fridge filled with anything but Diet Cokes, mainly hummus.
I joined Fifty Digital in the midst of possibly their busiest period of the year with the Rugby World Cup 2019 in full swing and the World Athletics Championships in Doha under way. Although everyone was crazy busy, there was an immediate energy from the team, one I hadn’t experienced before, that gave me the impression that I’d joined a very special team.
The hard work put in by the team was counteracted by regular socials; a few drinks, play some darts, ping pong, beer pong, a chance to let our hair down and unwind. That culture element to Fifty Digital made getting to know everyone a lot easier over a few beers rather than in a meeting room for 15 minutes over a coffee.
My first six months were great, and I was given incredible freedom and autonomy working across paid activity for all of Fifty Digital’s clients as well as project managing the redevelopment of the Fifty website, the latter a first for me. From developing paid media strategies and implementing large client budgets, to leading website development and working in parallel with our design team, it was a challenging but rewarding time to kick-start my journey here.
With things across the agency going from strength to strength, celebrating two award wins, attracting new and exciting clients, as well as a Christmas Party ‘Bake Off’ win for Nick and I, we were then thrown into lockdown…
The world went into quarantine and everyone was urged to work from home for the foreseeable future. It was a difficult transition to work from home, I had spent the last six months getting to know my colleagues, developing routines, not to mention nailing my walk from Waterloo to the office in 13 minutes flat. But we all learned to adapt and with regular check-ins, surprise pizzas and weekly Thursday socials we’ve made the most of not being together in the office.
It has been a strange induction into my first 12 months here but one that has been filled with exciting challenges and learnings. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 12 months has to offer.
