The moments that matter

20 years of running an agency

true recently reached a significant milestone – 20 years since we started out.

We celebrated with a sparkly, and rather wonderful bash a few weeks back at the amazing Clifton Observatory.

How the heck did that happen? It seems like only yesterday we met surreptitiously at The Royal Hotel (now Marriot) on College Green to scheme and plan our new agency venture together. The very same hotel where Queen Victoria, Churchill, and Chaplin once stayed.

As the great Ferris Bueller once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”.

So, allow me to take a self-indulgent moment or two to do just that. When we first started out, life seemed a lot simpler, so much has changed in the past 20 years, but the reason we’re still here and still thriving is fundamentally down to what hasn’t changed, not what has. The immutable twin engines of our long, and twisty journey so far.
Great people.
Great clients.
Without both, we are nothing. That was the case on day 1 as much as it is on day 7,305.

Those are what we have always built our agency around. They are interconnected, and really both about good people. We haven’t always got it right on either front of course, there were a small number of times when we didn’t deliver well enough, we hired poorly, we let someone down. But those were few and far between, and I know we have learned from these mistakes along the way.

Great people. Ambitious people who care about doing a brilliant job, recognise the difference they can make to what we create and achieve together, are always looking to learn and improve, and be part of something with purpose. I can recall so many examples of people demonstrating that greatness, from humble teamship when the whole client team stayed until the early hours entering content and testing to ensure a launch deadline was met, to being fearless in sticking by our strategy and work even when the initial results aren’t meeting targets, knowing it will come good, to having each other's backs, to passionately enthusing the next generation of young talent, to winning more effectiveness-based awards than I ever thought possible. I could go on.

Great clients. Clients with ambition and integrity. Clients who value us, and who we value. Genuine partnerships. I still remember one of our first clients, an ex-client of mine from pre-true, calling me and asking if they could work with us. We didn’t even have an office, barely 4 or 5 of us at that point, but they had bought into us as people, our ambition, our ethos. They were prepared to take a risk in moving their digital business to us from a huge marketing services group. They believed in us and wanted a genuine partnership that mattered to us as much as it did them. That initial relationship lasted many years, and the original connection brought us another major relationship with a large telecoms client when they moved on.

Great people and great clients, and as a result we’ve endured. That alone is quite an achievement. But we’ve more than endured, we’ve grown, and shrunk, learnt and forgotten, won and lost, laughed and cried. 
Many businesses don’t stand the test of time. It’s hard, its relentless, and I’m hugely proud of what we have achieved so far. 
I’m also grateful for the last 20 years.
Grateful to Havas, our previous employers who forced our hand, and gave us the opportunity to take a chance on our own thing.
Grateful to Carolyn and Paul, who also took the risk with us at the start, and helped mould true in the earlier years.
Grateful to the commitment and hard work of long termers such as Fiona and Chris who always gave their all and cared deeply.
Grateful to my co-founder, Tim, for being braver than I will ever be and for backing me.

But most importantly - Grateful to our team of amazing people past and present, and our fabulous clients who challenge us every day to be the best we can be. We are nothing without all of you.
Here’s to the next 20 years!