Wirehive 100 – We’re now an award-winning agency

The Wirehive100

Thursday night saw the seventh annual Wirehive100 awards at the O2 Guildhall in Southampton. These awards celebrate the best digital talent that the southern region (outside of London) has to offer – and there is a lot of it! This year also saw the addition of some new categories, taking the total of number of categories to sixteen, plus the overall Wirehive100 league table of the top one hundred agencies.

This was the second year that 10 Degrees had entered (and attended). Last year we were over the moon to get shortlisted in the ‘Fastest Growth’ category. This year we were shortlisted in two categories:

1. Agency Leader

“Judges will be looking for an agency owner, MD or individual in a board level leadership role who exemplifies the best of agency leadership. Consequently this award is about more than the leader’s impact on their agency’s financial performance.”

The team and I secretly nominated Jonny for this award. Those of you that know Jonny will know he is very modest about both his own abilities and the achievements & success of 10 Degrees. You can read more about why we nominated Jonny in our previous post about being shortlisted.

2. Agency for Good

“This is an award for agencies who do more than just good work but have a genuine passion and ongoing commitment to doing good as part of their operating principles.”

At 10 Degrees we consider ourselves a not-just-for-profit organisation. At the heart of our business is a strong ethical belief in the sustainability of our business, our community and our environment. This belief forms our ‘Full Circle’ ethos, to give back to all facets of the community that our business impacts and engages with. Again, you can read more about our submission for this category in our post about being shortlisted.

And the winner is….

Agency Leader

Winner: Tom Head – Lab

Runner up: Laurent Maguire – Kyan

Whilst it wasn’t to be for Jonny this time, honestly, just seeing his name up there with this remarkable spread of great leaders was enough for us. Huge congratulations to Tom & Laurent for taking the two top spots.

Agency for Good

Winner: 10 Degrees!! ????

Runner up: 3 Sided Cube

Firstly, an honourable mention to the runner-up and our table-mates for the evening, 3 Sided Cube. Their business strap-line is ‘Tech for Good’ which demonstrates how their entire business mission is built around good causes and “creating social impact on a global scale through life-changing, life-saving technology.” This has seen them work with incredible clients such as The Red Cross, RSPB and Save the Children (to name a few). It was a pleasure to share a table with them on the evening!

Also on the shortlist were (our new twitter BFFs) Studio Republic. Like 3 Sided Cube, their entire day-to-day business is focussed on working on projects for good causes (‘Creative for good’) and their very comprehensive sustainability policy is something to be envied.

Kyan were shortlisted for their work in promoting women in tech and addressing the gender imbalance in our industry. Something we wholeheartedly agree with and have talked about previously in our blog post on why we don’t employee female developers.

With Lab, Strawberry Soup and Why Digital making up the rest of the shortlist, this was an extremely strong category of amazing agencies making an incredible difference to our industry, environment and communities.

Honestly, with a shortlist like that, we feel totally humbled to have walked away with the top spot. There’s a fair amount of imposter syndrome going on in the office today!

Why did we win? I’m really not sure! Having taken the weekend to think about it, I think it probably came down to the variety of small initiatives that we have going on, which is perhaps unusual for an agency as small as ours. Unlike some of our fellow short-listers, the work that we do on a day to day basis is not driven by a business mission to work with good causes, but we will turn away clients that we feel do not adhere to our overall ethical beliefs. We are driven by being a responsible employer, playing an active part in our local & professional communities and being environmentally respectful. We care.

We are still overwhelmed to have won this and thank the Wirehive100 judges for valuing the small efforts we are making to leave a positive impact on this world.

Does 10 Degrees sound like the kind of company for you? Want to join our award-winning agency? We have some exciting new job vacancies to join our growing team.

The Author

Lynda Harvey

Managing Director. Leading our business strategy and culture.

The 10 Degrees Team