It’s not every day that you turn the big 1-5! To celebrate our 15th birthday in style, our whole team headed to a rooftop terrace in Royal Exchange Square for a very special version of our annual summer barbeque.
The rain stayed at bay while the team enjoyed music, food and the odd trip to the bar, all the while reminiscing about 15 years at the top of our game. The centrepiece was a presentation recapping our past year, celebrating our achievements and setting out our goals for the year ahead. Here are some of our highlights.
A bumper year of new clients
From retail to banking, construction to food and drink, we’ve been collaborating with some of the biggest brands in the country over the last 12 months. Our team transformed Next’s store management process, streamlined the Northumbrian Water Group’s field reporting, and revolutionised Aggreko’s field operations with a host of new apps. We also expanded our reach into the drinks sector with new projects for William Grant & Sons, Scotland Food & Drink, Britvic and Edrington-Beam Suntory.
Altogether this year, over 200 projects have passed through our studios.
Adding to the trophy cabinet
It wasn’t all hard work though – this year our team were well recognised too, adding no less than 11 awards to the trophy cabinet. We had a fantastic year at The Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards, where our Aggreko technician app scooped the Best Mobile Application Award, and we won the Digital Agency Award for the 6th time.
Our Human Test project for Alexa and Google Assistant for Channel 4 picked up the Consumer Engagement Award, starting a run of major awards throughout the year, from the Lovies to Creative Circle and even a D&AD Pencil.
Besides the awards, we were invited to speak at the Amazon Alexa Vendors Day and share our experience in building a successful voice practice. It was an honour to have our whitepapers referenced by Amazon as benchmark for industry education tools, and to be able to showcase our work as one of the first companies in the UK to develop for voice assistants. With all that in mind, it’s no surprise that this year we also caught the eye of publications, being featured in Campaign, The Drum, and Creative Review.
Travelling far
In the past 12 months we travelled further than ever before, racking up those airmiles and expanding our international horizons. Members of the team jetted off to Denmark to attend Umbraco’s Codegarden, Germany for Connected Voice 2019, and the Netherlands for the Vue.js Summit.
Re-branding
This year we went through major re-brand as we grow the range of services we offer and the clients we offer them to. To sustain our position as a leading UK Design and Technology consultancy, we recently launched a major refresh of our website alongside stunning new credentials and informative whitepapers. There is much more to come so keep watching this space.
People Development
At the heart of our success is our investment in people. This year Screenmedia members upskilled in Prince2, Scrum, Udemy, Xamarin, Umbraco and Azure, ensuring we’re always up to date with the latest technologies. Our investment in R&D also brought us face to face with emerging technologies – visual and facial recognition, natural language speech, and Azure bot service.
This year we also welcomed 9 new full-time employees to the studio. We saw 10 interns stop by, many of them through the Inspiring Digital Leaders programme. Sleepless nights were aplenty as our team parented 9 babies (one slightly furrier and more dog shaped than all the others). Meanwhile 5 of us bought our first homes, and a further 5 tied the knot. Congrats, everyone!
It’s been a fantastic year here at Screenmedia, and we certainly celebrated our 15th birthday well. We’re already planning our 2020 summer barbeque, and there’s lots of room! We’re always on the lookout for skilled, enthusiastic talent to join our team, so if we sound like the place for you and you want to join us at our next summer barbecue, have a look at our careers area to see where you could fit in.
Andrew B
Senior Producer