First and foremost, all of us at Shaw + Scott hope this holiday season has been filled with joy, laughter and beauty. As we look back on the year, there is so much for which we are truly grateful.
More than anything, we are most proud of the wonderful Shaw + Scott family that passionately delivers innovation, quality and value to our ever-increasing roster of clients all around the world. Their collective expertise, energy and joy is our secret recipe for success and the reason our clients hire and stay with us. It’s because of them we did so many amazing things in one year, in addition to another year of record growth, fueled solely by reputation and word of mouth.
First off, we expanded our presence on the East Coast of the United States with multi-discipline teams in Chicago and New York City. We opened an office in London to serve as our gateway to Europe and beyond as well as a location in Budapest to serve as our global technical and production hub. We have expanded our partnerships to broaden the many ways we can help our clients and our partners’ clients. We’ve also established a close relationship with the highly regarded digital agency, Intaface, in Buenos Aries to expand our reach into South America. Finally, we acquired Lift Science to create Shaw + Scott Labs, which enables us to craft software and data solutions for our clients to help overcome their challenges in ways our competitors simply cannot.
This past year also marked the beginning of our evolution from a niche email agency, to a full-service digital agency. This journey will continue for many years to come and it may not always be easy. But, just as the customer journey does not begin and end in email, the same holds true for us. Our goal is to help our clients embrace the client experience across all channels. We do so by building a cohesive brand across email, social, web and mobile, making it easier to engage customers. The future for us is a holistic, customer-first approach and we’re taking our first steps in this long journey with our multi-faceted labs solutions and a UX practice. We strive to help our clients craft a better experience, driving both customer satisfaction and financial returns.
Most importantly, in a year of political challenges and turmoil across the globe, we decided our internal values of diversity and equity should also become our external values. A recent blog post outlined why we created a second version of our logo by adding a safety pin to clearly state what we care most about: people. No matter how you spin it, businesses are people working towards a common cause. Our common cause is to deliver outstanding marketing solutions to our clients, and we simply cannot do that without our team. They are our most precious asset and we have a responsibility to protect and support them so they can achieve their full potential. As we’ve said before, “When all your employees feel safe, valued and equal, the rewards and dividends are bountiful.”
As we head into the new year, we are more energized and driven as ever to continue our evolution. Our focus will be making sure the many seeds we’ve planted grow and blossom for many years to come. We’ll also continue to stand firmly behind our values and push ourselves to be our very best.
Best wishes for the new year. May it be filled with success and prosperity for all.
Julian Scott & Melissa Shaw
Co-CEOs