We won Agency of the Year. So what’s next?

Here’s the deal, Awwwards’ panel of designers, developers, creatives and agencies is one of the most respected committees when it comes to web design. It’s full of specialists who have years and years of experience, and thousands of innovative projects behind them. Receiving awards from the experts of this caliber is an honor, but to be named the 2018 Users’ Choice Agency of the Year – well that’s on a completely another level. This title is the biggest recognition we ever received, so naturally, a lot of people started asking me where do we go from here, what’s our next step. Well, there’s a lot to it, so walk with me as I go through all of this.

The first step

Winning this award is a big deal. I mean, Bornfight is a young brand, we launched just a couple of months ago and the agencies that were nominated alongside us were all the agencies we looked up to when we started the process of launching the brand. So, I bet you can imagine how surprised we were when we heard we were nominated for the Agency of the Year with all of them.

The nomination alone was already a huge honor, but then we got the info we actually won. Everybody knew this was big, but I still think we haven’t really grasped how big this award actually is. It’s a funny example, but the first thing our marketing team did was to start counting all of the free PR this could generate. I get it, but I see that as a side-effect. What I see as the most important aspect of this award is that it acts as a sort of a proof that we’re pushing the company in the right direction.

The thing is, as a CEO I’m responsible for all of the people in our team. They look up to me to always look one step ahead, so I’m always testing the path we’re on and trying to answer the question if the path we chose for Bornfight is the right one to achieve our vision and reach our goals. Well, from the moment the news of the nomination got out to the moment we actually won the Agency of the Year title, we got so much support from current partners, clients we used to work with, industry experts and agencies we looked up to. To hear that all of them now know for a brand that just a few months ago didn’t even exist and that they’re following our work – that shows we’ve made a great first step and positioned ourselves the right way. That’s the first thing winning this award showed us. Now for the second one!

Progress never stops

As a company that fully focuses on combining business strategy with tech to create progressive solutions for our clients, like custom software, digital products, mobile apps, websites and interactive installations, winning awards like this one also shows us we’ve created the right approach that enables us to really push the boundaries of what can be done with tech and solve our clients’ challenges, whatever they may be.

All of the projects we worked on last year fully revolved around that approach. When we worked on the e-commerce website for WOLACO, or when we were in the process of creating the websites for Mercury Processing Services International and for our own brand (two advanced WordPress projects that got us nominated for the 2018 Agency of the Year), we stumbled upon challenges we’ve never seen before. But we got the whole team together, found the solution and it resulted in some of our best work ever.

That was also true when we developed Eye on the Goal. This was something completely new to us because our task was to create a platform whose goal was to improve school systems in the USA. And again, we knew we could succeed and we did just that. There’s one more project I just have to mention – creating 33 interactive applications for Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre, the largest museum in the world that opened in Kuwait. Yeah, that’s not a typo, we had to design and develop 33 standalone applications that were placed on giant touchscreens, connected to advanced hardware, used NFC sensors, motion controls, body tracking… We did it all in 1 year!

By promoting that ”fighting the can’t do spirit” mentality within Bornfight, we managed to create a mindset that everything can be achieved and that seemingly unsolvable problems just need to be looked at from a different perspective. Since that mindset lies behind every project we worked on, if my logic checks out, it’s also one of the reasons why we won the Agency of the Year award.

We’re still not done with our main goal

OK, we covered what this Agency of the Year award has shown us, so now let’s get back to the main question – what’s the next step. Well, as I said in the first sentence of the first blog I wrote after we launched Bornfight, all our companies have been created with the common goal of becoming the best workplaces. Ever since we launched iSTUDIO (now Degordian) 10 years ago, this was and always will remain my main goal. When people ask me why, I tell them because it can never be fully achieved, and those kinds of goals constantly push me to be better.

You see, most goals can be strictly defined and achieved. But when you’re trying to create the best workplace, there’s always something that can be upgraded, improved or implemented to make the entire workplace better for all of us. So yeah, after winning the Agency of the Year title I did cross out one of the bigger goals I wanted to achieve, but the main one is still on top of the list. And when people ask me why I do it, my answer is always the same – people are the most important aspect of our business.

People in our team are the ones working on the projects I mentioned above. They are the ones creating all the progress and innovative solutions for our partners and clients. Solutions that ultimately lead Bornfight to winning awards such as this Agency of the Year title. I believe that great, innovative and successful solutions can only be created by people who are happy, free to experiment and try different things, and who know their work brings real change – that’s why my main goal is to create the best workplace, and I’m not willing to compromise one bit when it comes to it.  So yeah, that what I’ll focus on!

As for the team…

Let me use the sentence from the beginning – this award is the biggest recognition we ever received. That is a fact, but winning it won’t make us take our foot off the gas. Knowing the people we have in the team, this award will do the opposite – you’ll still find us pushing forward and digging even deeper to experiment with new tech, come up with innovative ideas and find those right solutions for our clients and partners that’ll help them upgrade their businesses. Why? Because we all believe that’s the only way to constantly achieve progress.

So yeah, this Agency of the Year title is a kind of a supercharged booster that will drive us all to be even better, develop innovative solutions that have never been done before and work towards creating the best workplace and a progressive future. That’s something we can’t wait to achieve!