Our Team's 2021 Highlights

2021 has been one hell of a year at First Internet.

2021 has seen us expand our team hugely, with new additions to our Marketing and Client Services teams. This fresh new talent has helped us take on the challenges this year has posed to the business, and truly thrive.

We were already elated after taking home Digital agency of the year (up to 25 employees) in 2020, but we had no idea what was in store for us this year. Just one year later with 20 award nominations and 5 wins (more ceremonies to go next year!), we think we might have smashed it even further!

This year we’ve taken on new clients, as well as developed new projects with our existing clients, strengthening these relationships.

To celebrate and look back on 2021, we asked every member of our team to tell us their favourite moment from 2021 – unfortunately, some of them didn’t cooperate and gave us multiple! Check out what they thought below.

The Development Team

Scott

It was so exciting to be seated at Prolific North’s Winners Roundtable alongside a selection of other industry leaders across the North of England, I was invited here after we took home our two Prolific North Champions awards to discuss the future of work for our industry. It was an excellent discussion and it was great to hear stories from other agency owners about how the last year has been!

Dan

My highlight would be building and delivering the Peak Content Hub. This project was a real technical challenge but I learned a lot and the client was very pleased with the result. This project was made even better when we won a Prolific North Champions award for this work and attending the awards ceremony in person.

Joe

Building a brand new site for existing client Motor Fuel Group was definitely my big highlight of 2021, the project was exciting to work on, and seeing the finished project was extremely rewarding!

Jordan

My 2021 highlight has been working on Fragrance Oils as my first roots.io project. Roots.io is a WordPress workflow solution that consists of 3 tools: Trellis, Bedrock, and Sage. You can use them together or separately, depending on what you need for your project.

(For non developers:)

Trellis = Let’s you set up a complete WordPress server including the possibility of local, staging, and production environments.

Bedrock = Allows you to manage the WordPress core installation, updates, and management of plugins and also templates using composer.

Sage = a WordPress starter theme.

Paddy

Building the brand new PZ Cussons corporate site was a great project to work on. It was also really rewarding to build our awards page and feel the pride of adding the awards. Similarly, it was great to update the team’s email signatures with all the awards we have won!

Jonathan

Redesigning First Internet’s marketing material was definitely a highlight for me – after joining the company in 2021, it was a great way to find out all about FI’s development projects and award successes. It was also a really exciting design brief to work on!

The Client Services Team

Kat

Welcoming new staff to the FI family! Winning new clients is great, and expanding the team and bringing in new skills, experiences and personalities is always fun! 

Getting the team back together in the office was of course amazing! We missed these faces!

PN champion awards – it was an honour to win TWO awards at an award ceremony for CHAMPIONS! – need I say more?!

Our first national award win (UK search awards) and a great trip to London!

Of course, coming back to the office after my maternity leave and introducing P to the team has to rank too!

Louise

Launching fantastic websites such as Food Alert, PZ Cussons Corporate, and Motor Fuel Group. Receiving great feedback from clients too makes all of the hard work worth it! 

Continuing to work with clients on an ongoing basis, whilst building our professional relationships.  

The Prolific North Awards ceremony was great fun and to come away with two awards was such a great achievement for everybody at First Internet! 

Catherine

Working alongside Peak AI to develop their website. We’ve worked on some big projects for Peak this year and it’s really rewarding seeing the success of our efforts. Being invited to AltitudeX (their AI summit) was also really exciting! 

The launch of the Fragrance Oils website! This project was nine months in the making and everyone involved worked extremely hard to take it to the finish line – we’re proud to show it off!

Anyone who knows me knows I love a party, so the parties thrown by the leadership team at our office, as well as attending the Prolific North awards ceremony in real life are definite highlights. The day after, not so much!

Marketing Team

Julaine

Getting everyone back in the office and getting together for team meetings was definitely the highlight of 2021 for me! 

Andy

Helping secure the golf trio clients (CBD, Golf Today, and Druids) was a personal favorite!

Watching the team bond and grow at the multiple parties/awards nights but then all show up to work the next day and pull each other through with food, laughs, and the special FI team glue. 

Ben

As my first agency role, my biggest highlight has been getting to work with such a wide variety of clients, whether that be on proposals, content creation, or planning. It means no day is ever the same!

It was also amazing to get to attend the Prolific North Champions awards, seeing FI winning awards alongside brands and leaders I’ve admired for some time, it’s been an amazing year!

Elliott

It’s been a mad year and then some! Little did I think that by November I would help us win the Best Local SEO campaign (small) at the UK Search Awards! Without a doubt the best moment of my marketing career to date and I can’t wait to see what more 2022 brings for this great team! 

Kieran

Winning the Best Local SEO campaign (Small) at the UK Search Awards has to be the highlight of the year for me. Having the opportunity to be there in person and celebrate with my new team at a swanky London venue was the icing on the cake!

Harriet

A big highlight for me was my trip to the London Coffee Festival, only a few weeks into the new job! Ben and I went to meet with a new client and capture live content for their social media, we found the world’s best coffee and didn’t get lost, which was a plus!

Jon

2021 at First Internet has been epic in terms of winning awards, celebrating success, and bringing in new clients, with AMR, GrantTree, Studio Alliance, and another super-secret client recently joining us.

We’ve been working on some fun creative campaigns for our new and existing clients, alongside doing our usual technical SEO wizardry, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of our work heading into the New Year.

Team FI

It’s fair to say we’ve accomplished a lot this year, but we want to push this even further. We’ll be working hard in 2022 to achieve even better results for our clients, build the business even more and – of course – win more awards!

See you all next year!