We took our lateral flows and stood awkwardly as a temperature gun was aimed at our foreheads in the lobby of the Met Hotel. To our delight, Corona didn’t say no this time and the Fox Agency ten-year celebrations could commence.
FOX X presented the stage, quite literally, to look back at Fox Agency’s journey so far. With impressive comedic timing, Director Ben Fox walked through the business’ history. From the initial enrolling for the bank account to the onboarding of co-directors and team members, the gaining of offices, the losing of offices (not our fault), to entering a pandemic, exiting a pandemic, and winding up where we are today – a 50-strong hybrid remote team with a plethora of global B2B tech clients and no plans to stop growing any time soon.
The creature that is Fox Agency
With all this growth going on, we’re conscious to maintain the Fox Agency DNA, thinking smart and delivering greatness, making Mondays great again and aching on a Thursday after the PT bootcamp. Director, Nelson McConnell presented on Fox Agency culture, discussing our integrated ways of working with ‘smart teams’ and unpacking our agency values to pinpoint exactly what makes us, us.
On the topic of agency values, Directors Al Fox and Darragh Woods took to the stage to present the Fox Agency Colleague Awards. These awards went to individuals deemed by their colleagues to embody a particular Fox Agency value. These values include being real, honest, intelligent, positive and channelling a growth mindset. We also voted on Best Newcomer awards for those who’ve made big impression in a small amount of time with the agency. We won’t go into detail on the winners as that’s coming to a blog near you soon. But the ultimate take away is that we’re all pretty awesome and everyone deserves an award, if we’re being really honest.
Inspo from the outside
After some sterling performances, the Directors could retire from the stage and handover to brilliant speakers in the shape of Reuben Milne, Owner of Spark Creativity, Nathan Anibaba, Founder of Agency Dealmasters and awesome podcast host, and David Crawford, Founder of The Digital Strategy Unit. We discussed our optimum environment for creativity, gained valuable insights from globally successful marketeers who’ve been there and branded the T-shirt, and explored being smart, humble and hungry. And just like that, it was lunch.
Driving to victory
All fuelled up, we were let loose on a brilliant team building activity. Having only met some of our colleagues virtually, what better way to get to know each other than by creating a Formula 1 team, building a raceable car and wearing a branded cap and boilersuit? We flexed our creative muscles, and in some instances our dirty minds, and developed F1 brands including, Wolfpack F1, McFux and DragStar. After a nail-biting race, complete with pitstop and tyre change, team Red Bullshit were crowned the winners.
Time for a break, and possibly even a nap for some, before we reconvened in the hotel bar. What followed was a delightful and extremely civilised dinner which may have featured us being furiously shushed as we celebrated the brilliantly timed news that we’d won B2B Agency of the Year at the European Agency Awards (more on that to come). It seemed rude not to raise an extra glass to that achievement and the rest can surely be left to the imagination. We were totally all in bed by nine…
Future gazing
We realise we’ve planted the seed for a number of future blogs so on the note of looking to the future, we’d like to steal a little from Ben’s presentation. He quoted, ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ And as much as FOX X was about looking back on ten years of Fox Agency success, it was also about looking to the future, inspiring upcoming projects, gearing up for the next challenge and setting our goals for another ten years of delivering greatness.