25 years and counting.

At ilk, we love a challenge. Whether it’s a PR launch campaign, a fresh rebrand, or a matter of ongoing consultancy, so much of our work revolves around confronting, and then overcoming, a problem.

But the challenges we faced in 2020 – a global pandemic and economic shutdown – weren’t on anybody’s bingo card. One new board of directors and a few lockdowns later, we’ve got a whole 25 years of problem-solving under our belts.

And if the first twenty years were anything to go by, the last five have certainly helped make our 25th birthday feel all the more special.

A global pandemic, new faces on the board and a big birthday.

What was that we were saying about Crisis #3 happening? By way of experience, we were battle-hardened to the sometimes unpredictable nature of our business… like a big client suddenly going, a crucial member of staff choosing to move on, or some sort of strategic or even financial mistake on our part. That stuff happens. It’s painful (and educational!) but like our previous ‘crises’, generally we’ll dust ourselves down and find a way forward.

What doesn’t happen, at least not until 2020 anyway, are massive, terrifying, global pandemics. The sort that doesn’t just shut down economies, but actually kills people. We didn’t have a playbook for that. We, like everyone else on the planet, were in the hands of a few genius-level scientists working in real-time for a solution.

That said, we were quite quick to see the economic implications of all this, and realise that it was going to be extremely serious. Before any of the lockdowns had been announced, and way before the Government announced any of the business support schemes that would later provide some relief, we were ready to make some big decisions. We knew redundancies were a possibility, but we were desperate to avoid it, so we asked people what sounds like an insane question:

Would you be okay with half wages?

Now, the obvious answer is: no, of course not. Normally, that would also be the correct answer. But nothing about this was normal. Our thinking was that if we could agree to halve wages – for every single person in the company from top to bottom – then that might just provide a buffer by which we could absorb a significant and potentially sustained drop in revenue, which was what we felt was inevitably going to happen. That buffer might mean that we could avoid permanent redundancies – or at least retain as many people as possible for as long as possible. We also promised that if we were able to pay people more in any given month, we would.

We explained that thinking to the full team, and gave everyone a private, confidential, right to reply, making clear that everyone was well within their rights to take their full pay. Amazingly – and also quite movingly – the entire company replied, confidentially, to say they were happy to do it. I know that it may sound off-key to get too misty eyed about this, after all, Covid was a really serious situation, and for many people their primary concern would have been the health of friends and family, rather than work. But even so, as a business owner, I thought it said something quite powerful about both the team and the company culture.

As it happens, we never actually did it. Shortly after we made that decision, the Government came through with its business contingency measures, meaning that we were able to furlough a proportion of the team, and go back to full pay for anyone still working. In hindsight it’s a queasy thought given what we know now about the Government’s approach to the rules they themselves set, but those business measures were an incredible relief for an SME like us. It provided a path by which to navigate our way through something that we (like everyone else) had no precedent for. Everything we were trying (like the wage cut) was an educated best guess. These measures meant that there was that bit less financial pressure to go with all the uncertainty.

Which is not to say that any of it was easy, or that we came through unscathed. Revenue did drop, and we did have to make two redundancies, which is always a horrible thing to have to do. Likewise, I was very aware that furlough – for all that it offered in terms of relative stability, and how it superficially presented as paid ‘time off’ – could also be quite challenging for those on it. It was a time when having work to focus on – as opposed to mentally calibrating an unexpected load of free time when the world is semi-shut down – could very much be a blessing. I know from chatting to some of our team since, that being on furlough was something many found really tough.

Thankfully, we were able to bring most of our furloughed staff back pretty quickly. After the initial impacts on revenue we saw that we were still able to generate new business, and virtually all of our retained clients stayed with us throughout. Within 7 months we had recalled all of our staff from furlough and ensured everyone was back on full pay. Sounds weird to consider that a victory, but it really was.

It’s quite a surreal thing to look back on. It’s hard to remember exactly how we, both collectively and individually felt when Covid was first unfolding, especially before the Government stepped in, and before we had a realistic prospect of a vaccine. But the upshot in regards to this story, was that we got through it. And actually I look back with pride in how well we all seemed to cope: in terms of the attitude of all of our team and the sheer effort, commitment and work we were still able to produce in the midst of it all.

Somehow, while all of that was going on we also made some big changes in terms of the ownership structure. Once Shaun left, I was the only remaining founder keeping the ship running. ilk’s board of directors was just me. That in itself wasn’t an issue, but I did want to look to the future, and it felt like the right time to broaden that ‘board’ – particularly given we had a number of senior team leaders who’d been within the business since well before we rebranded.

So, blissfully unaware of the incoming Covid storm, we began the process of creating a fresh new board of directors made up of myself plus Stew, Lauren and Rich (to be joined by Shauna a few years down the track). We eventually completed the job, officially creating the ilk ‘Group’, in late 2020 (lockdown primetime). While our day-to-day roles didn’t change hugely, the reality was that we now had over 50 years of ilk Agency experience sitting around the table for our board meetings – and those business critical decisions that had for so long rested solely on my shoulders, were no longer all on me. I was still the MD, but I had a committed, invested team to work with. It was a big shift for me, but one I needed to make.

Which brings us, in the most roundabout way, to 2024, and our 25th anniversary. It’s a birthday that makes me personally feel old (as does the realisation that the agency is now older than a good chunk of our employees). And yet the business still feels young. It still feels as though there’s loads more to come – whether that’s in terms of the people here realising the full potential of their talent, or indeed the next big challenges to be dealt with. More broadly, the world certainly feels a bit weirder now. Aside from the pandemic having come and gone, it’s unnerving to think I wrote the first iteration of this blog with Trump coming to the end of his first term, and yet somehow I’m writing this epilogue as he’s about to start his second. It’s hard to comprehend. But one thing I do understand is that 25 years of business is worth celebrating. Not just for the years gone by, but all those yet to come. A quarter of a century deep, I’m still excited about that.