The dawn of a new year. A fresh start, fresh dreams and fresh opportunities- a clean slate. That’s how this new year feels, despite everything that is going on in the world. It’s rather symbolic that for our team’s Christmas dinner on the last working day last year we went to a restaurant ‘Schone lei’, which translates to ‘a clean slate’. During the dinner we spoke about how 2022 was a year of transformation for Wild Digital. From a complete and quite brutal team turnover, to a new office and a new website, we re-examined our strategy, our way of working and our goals. A lot of this was done together with an amazing partner- a strategy and organizational development consultancy- Voorwaarts. But let’s review the past year from the beginning.
Focus on a healthy business
The year didn’t start off that great due to the last wave of the pandemic. Not only the virus but also the lockdown together with other restrictions continued to disrupt office life. The work was overflowing and it was getting more and more challenging to manage everything. I knew the time was high to hire a dedicated project manager.
At the same time, I wanted to focus on building a healthy business in 2022 which led me to embark on a year-long organizational development process along with Voorwaarts. This consultancy, managed by an incredible trio: Teun Visser, Marco Heijstek and Dick de Krijger, offers top-of-class methodologies for strategy & organizational development, developed in-house. Check out their latest book Groeipiramide© if you are curious to know more about their work.
The big shift
Spring was around the corner and receiving an application for a project manager position from Alisa, who was still in Spain at the time, felt like a blessing. She seemed to be the perfect fit for the team and things were starting to look up again. But then something unexpected happened. Just a week before our new project manager was set to start, we sadly lost our business development & marketing manager Gus to nothing less than Linkedin. He was offered an interesting position at the new major Linkedin campus in Dublin, which he accepted. Can’t blame him for that, it sounded like a tremendous opportunity and we want what’s best for him.
But only a couple of weeks later we were up for another ‘shock’, our junior designer Stijn announced he was leaving the company. Then followed Emma, our frontend developer, Hans, our senior designer and Julian, another junior designer. Everyone found an opportunity to move up in their career, which I totally understand and support, but all of this happening in a span of 3 months really shook Wild Digital to the core.
It wasn’t only at Wild Digital though, it seemed like a major shift was taking place in the entire job market as a result of a greater socio-economic change. I knew that despite everything, we had to adapt and move forward, or saying it in Dutch, ‘voorwaarts’.
On the bright side, in April we moved to a new and bigger office. Luckily, our new office is located within Het Industriegebouw, on the same floor as our previous one, which made the moving process a bit less burdensome. Still, it took way longer than we expected (it’s a Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law) but we’ve ordered pizza and brought the task to an end together.
The launch of our new website
While things were still quite wild at the office, hiring being the urgent priority the whole beginning of the summer, we managed to finish and launch our updated website in August. We migrated from Wordpress to a cutting-edge headless solution with Strapi content management system which gave us the flexibility to create a custom Front-end based on a component system. And lastly, we’ve also polished all our website content.
Half a year later, we’re still thinking of new updates for our website because your own work can always be better. We’ll probably never get ‘there’ being a digital agency that lives to build state-of-the-art digital experiences. But we have been continuously optimizing over the last half year and implementing advanced analytics tools which allow us to continue the journey of improvement.
Building a team from scratch
Fortunately, we didn’t have to look far to find new talent and it feels so gratifying to realize that after we have successfully ‘put Wild Digital on the map’ last year, it is a well sought after agency to work for.
We welcomed Nick in August for a half year internship (which is almost ending now, but we’ve asked Nick to stay and work with us), we also welcomed Thijs, our junior digital designer, Amrish, our newest digital designer who just started on the 2nd of January, and last, but not least, Sara, our super-charismatic senior designer who also starts in the beginning of January.
Work
We also managed to improve our customer relationships, which is another great achievement from 2022 that I want to celebrate. We helped 13 clients across different sectors achieve growth via strategy, branding, design and development.
So let’s delve into it.
Awake Movement
Awake Movement wanted to update the website with the new content to reflect their new jewelry collection. We’ve edited the brand video and did an in-house photoshoot of the brand’s new jewelry, handmade from silver and gold.
Curio
Curio needed a teaching hub with a well-thought-out overview of information for their 14 schools in West Brabant. Curio champions blended learning which means finding a thoughtful blend of physical and online interactions. We provided an information structure that facilitates blended learning and a visual design that Curio can be proud of.
Daalder
Daalder is a cutting-edge eCommerce platform released by our Rotterdam partner Pionect. In order to challenge WooCommerce and Shopify, Daalder needed an easy-to-use-and-understand User Interface and a Design System to ensure a consistent and scalable platform. You can read the case on it in our Work section.
433
433 came to us for an upgraded user experience of their football app. They deliver a top-notch experience on Instagram for the biggest football community in the world. 433 wanted to deliver a similar emotional experience in their app. That’s where we helped and can’t wait to share more about it in the coming weeks.
INBO architecten
INBO architecten website was a development project that we were invited to by the incredible Studio Dumbar. Meeting the important client deadline meant that INBO was able to celebrate their 60th anniversary with a beautiful new website that really pushed the brand to the next level.
Leadinfo
Leadinfo is our ongoing client that keeps growing insanely and was taken over by Blue Team in the last quarter. We continued helping Leadinfo to maintain their brand consistency by creating visuals for their biggest billboard campaign in the Netherlands.
MCB Milieu & Techniek
MCB Milieu & Techniek is a very exciting project in the sustainability sector. We helped this producer of recycling containers with strategy & positioning. After setting the course we’ll continue in 2023 with a brand update and a roll-out across different touchpoints.
Orbisk
We helped Orbisk to internationally launch their AI tool that serves to prevent food waste. A successful brand and an engaging website designed to boost conversion. Later in the year we did an additional optimization sprint to improve lead generation.
Soul Survivor
Soul Survivor is a passion project that I have been involved in as a volunteer for years. This Christian youth organization needed some help with elevating their branding in order to reach their target group.
UReason
UReason is another ongoing client that we are so happy to have. We launched their new website in April and continued optimizing until reaching an ultra-customized, state-of-the-art platform. Working together with UReason’s marketing team is a true pleasure.
Van Iperen
Van Iperen is another UI combined with a Design System project we do together with Pionect, only on an even grander scale. In December we conducted an affirmative user test and will continue designing the new platform for the entire 2023.
West Openbaar Onderwijs
West Openbaar Onderwijs was a fun project in which we were asked to come up with an activity for a young target group (6 till 12 years old) for the Week of Open Education. We came up with a ‘Story of a Fish’ activity and asked the West schools to make a book.
Yeaz!
Yeaz! is a fintech company providing business loans to small entrepreneurs. They asked us to help differentiate their brand in a crowded marketplace. Incredibly interesting business case that brought a lot of insights in the discovery phase. Together with Yeaz!! team we’ve formulated a new strategy and provided creative direction for the brand.
Looking ahead
In 2023 our focus will be on quality. Quality is one of our core values and we believe that it takes diligence and hard work to make the work that stands out. Internally this means making steps towards more standardized processes, structure and a proactive market approach. I also want to see our team grow in the sales and marketing department and continue fostering healthy business with big people.
