Digital SHIFT

I founded Digital SHIFT by bringing together the talent, clients and resources of three existing local agencies, then acquiring a highly successful fourth agency for its established brand, client relationships, experience and premises.

The idea was to create something significantly stronger than simply adding four businesses together.

Small agencies often have excellent people but are constrained by capacity. A major new contract can overwhelm the team, while maintaining enough permanent staff to cover every possible discipline creates overhead when demand changes. I wanted Digital SHIFT to combine the credibility and breadth of a larger full-service agency with the flexibility and responsiveness of a smaller one.

I brought the different capabilities together around a permanent multidisciplinary team and changed how we resourced projects. Rather than expecting the internal team to provide every skill required for every contract, we built a trusted extended network of specialists who could be brought into projects when their expertise was needed.

That model developed further when I took over not only the acquired agency's offices, but the entire 13-room building on a five-year lease and began developing it into the SKYLAB Centre for Innovation.

Digital SHIFT and the newly created SKYLAB business operated from the same building alongside professional photography, video and audio facilities, coworking space and independent specialists. It meant that additional developers, designers, photographers, filmmakers, marketers and other expertise could effectively sit alongside our permanent team without having to become permanent overhead.

Our internal team grew to more than 12 full-time people, but the practical delivery capability was considerably larger. We could scale a project team up around a major contract, bring in specialist expertise for a particular stage, then scale back again when that work was complete.

I also deliberately broadened the agency's collective credentials. Bringing together the portfolios, client histories, expertise and specialist capabilities of the businesses gave us a much stronger proposition when competing for larger opportunities. Instead of presenting ourselves as a small agency with a narrow discipline, we could demonstrate credible experience across strategy, branding, design, digital, development, marketing, photography, video and other areas of commercial delivery.

That changed the type of work we could pursue.

Digital SHIFT began winning opportunities with nationally and internationally recognised brands including Clipper Teas, Thomas J. Fudge's and Whole Earth, while also becoming a trusted overflow resource for larger national agencies that needed additional specialist capacity during busy periods.

My role was to design and drive that transformation. I founded the agency, brought the constituent talent and resources together, identified the acquisition and expansion opportunities, shaped the operating model, developed the physical infrastructure, built the extended talent network and led the commercial activity that moved us into larger accounts.

The growth of Digital SHIFT then created enough capability, infrastructure and commercial momentum for me to establish SKYLAB alongside it, giving us a second business focused on innovation, technology and more ambitious bespoke digital projects.

What changed most was not simply the size of the team. I had changed the way the agency could operate: a strong permanent core, specialist capability available on demand, shared facilities and infrastructure, and enough collective experience and commercial credibility to pursue opportunities that would previously have been beyond our reach.