A Brief History of BEING

Gosh, five years goes fast!

To mark our fifth birthday month, we’re taking you on a trip down memory lane. (Lots of people take birthday months, there’s nothing weird or wrong about that, leave us alone.)

In addition to being a nice exercise for our team, reflecting on our company history can help us navigate our future.

2015

Tired of toxic corporate cultures, our Principal and Founder Kerry decided to do something about it. Wanting to create a positive space for people to work, she took a chance creating her own company — and a baby Being Brands was born.

2016

From two-person staff meetings on the grass outside the Museum of Contemporary Art, to development workshops around the dining room table, the early stages of BEING were fun and exciting — if somewhat impromptu.

In March 2016, Being Brands got its first office! Construction was a team effort — though evidence suggests our now photographer James built basically everything.

We thought our plant wall was so advanced.

The office pet tradition started with Hoppy in April.

Our terrific trio expanded to a fab four, and then to a fab five. By the end of the year we had two designers, a copywriter, a web developer AND an office manager!

2017

2017 was a year of stretching to grow. We expanded our team and capabilities — taking on a range of challenging and exciting projects. What had once been a huge office to us started to feel kind of small!

We designed and built a new website to talk to this expanded offering. Fun fact: our fun facts made their first appearance.

This is about the time our birthday parties began to ramp up. We talked about toning things down, but let’s be real. That was never going to happen.

We welcomed the Mini to the BEING family. Everyone was immediately forced inside of it.

We ended the year on exciting projects, future plans and bad karaoke.

2018

We moved down the corridor into larger offices, taking our plant collection and polaroid wall with us.

Inspired to grow again, we expanded our service offering to include video — one of the best decisions we ever made!

Our brand evolved from warm, wooden tones to black, white and yellow.

The birthdays got out of control. IKEA personal shopping service, fine dining, paparazzi on the red carpet, clubbing in the photo studio and a league of superheroes were just some of the themes we celebrated. Production value was high. We practically started performing improv comedy.

Midway through the year, we had some exciting announcements. In keeping with our diversified services, we transitioned from Being Brands to Being Agency, and joined Being Consulting under The Being Group.

Oh yeah — we also opened our presence in London.

We said hello and see you soon a few times.

We were finalists for two B&T Awards; Best Employer and Emerging Agency of the Year.

In keeping with company tradition, we played the infamous never-ending game of pass the parcel. We learned. Three hours is too long.

2018 is best summed up by this awkward Christmas card photo.

2019

The start of 2019 saw another shift in our look and feel. Still BEING, just streamlined.

We held our first-ever event, providing six talks on being more human in every aspect of work.

We went through real lows. Though unpleasant, our experience taught us a lot about our resilience as a company and a team.

This experience led to development of our Strategic Objectives, and the tradition of nominating noteworthy people and projects at monthly progress meetings. We worked. We learned. We bounced back.

Our international lunch tradition began in October 2019, courtesy of a special Russian web developer.

We said hello and see you soon a few more times.

We celebrated our accomplishments for the year by being very, very silly.

2020

We took on 2020 with fresh energy, big projects and a new website. (We love our new websites, leave us alone.)

When the pandemic hit, the team switched to working from home. In keeping with BEING culture, we managed to pull off two virtual birthday parties AND a virtual international lunch.

After seven weeks, we came back together with kilos of sanitiser and a COVID distancing stick in place.

We continued to work on interesting and meaningful projects, expanding our abilities yet again.

We traded our Mini for the Maxi.

We said hello and see you soon a couple more times.

We were shortlisted for Creativepool’s Best Agency to Work For Award.

We celebrated five years of BEING.

As this year has shown, we can never know what the future holds.

At The Being Group, we’re grateful for all the time we’ve had, all the moments we’ve shared, all the projects we’ve worked on, and all the people we’ve met.

Here’s to the next five years! We’re just getting started.


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