So here we are at the start of 2021, and contrary to what we might have believed back in the early days of the pandemic we probably have at least another full year of COVID-affected professional and personal life. But that mustn’t mean that it’s more of the same. The beginning of a new year is always an opportunity to change gears, and this January is no exception. If people had told me in March 2020 that we’d have 98% of our teams working from home, that large parts of the world would be in some degree of lockdown for over a year, and that whole industries – travel and hospitality in particular – would be effectively dormant I’d have anticipated effects on our business results much more profound than in fact turned out to be the case. Financially last year was a strong one for Hogarth. True, we didn’t see the level of growth that we’d planned – but neither did we see the reduction in revenue that one might have anticipated. A lot of our clients are in resilient sectors, and for every client who reduced budgets, we had one who increased activity and overall, this created positive momentum for the business. We all learned a lot about resilience last year, and we all overcame significant hurdles. Now we need to push on. Whereas 2020 might have been about ensuring that we kept delivering for our clients in the teeth of uniquely challenging circumstances, 2021 has to be the year of sustained innovation. If last year was about execution, this year is about driving forward structural and strategic change to bring ever more value to our clients, to embrace what new technology can enable in a post-COVID world and to use a period of profound change to accelerate those innovations which will change the shape of our industry permanently.

Over the past 18 months we’ve all had to be very nimble, resourceful and adaptable to deliver for our clients and keep our teams motivated and effective. Now as we look forward the challenge is to look at what change was inevitable but accelerated, what innovations have had unpredictable or exceptional benefits – and crucially also to focus on what we lost while we were working remotely. We’ve adjusted to a different cadence of life and have found our way to success – but we’ve missed shared joy and celebration, informal inspiration and mentorship, spontaneous conversations that head in unexpected directions. Whilst there will be people who have some apprehension about returning to the office – and knowing the way we work will be changed permanently – there is going to be a surge of energy, excitement and emotion when we can finally bring our teams together physically and remember all of the reasons that we love being surrounded by our friends and colleagues. I can’t wait for that.

2021 was a record year for Hogarth in several ways; we recorded our highest ever revenue, profit, and new business. We beat all targets we set for ourselves over the past 12 months. And we made great progress in other ways as we significantly reduced our gender pay gap, hired new talents, and our Mexico office got awarded as the best place to work for LGBTQ+ employees. It’s tempting to say this was all achieved ‘despite COVID’ – but actually, I don’t think that the pandemic was the most important element of our operating context in the year. COVID continues to take a terrible toll around the world and on a human level, it clearly remains a real concern. We were delighted to be part of WPP’s $5 vaccine initiative enabling people to buy vaccines for people in need to help the global gap, and as a community, we need to continue to look after each other. From a business standpoint, however, it’s those communication trends that COVID has accelerated which we have had to really respond to, and which have stimulated the development of our business. We have always operated as a single, globally-connected team – bringing the best talent together for our clients. We have always embraced technology to drive quality, speed to market, and effectiveness, and thought about our clients’ content needs across all platforms and audiences as being part of an integrated whole. As we, hopefully, move into a post-pandemic world we are convinced that the adoption of ways of working that have been accelerated by COVID are here to stay, and will continue to drive our growth into the future.

I am not sure many people anticipated the economic circumstances we’d be seeing this year: and clearly the terrible events in Ukraine have reverberated around the world in so many ways. 2022 could only possibly be considered a return to business as usual if we now believe that we’ll always be operating in a highly dynamic environment and a constantly unpredictable global context.
And I think that is an assumption we have to make. Technology is changing at an extraordinary rate. Clients need to produce ever greater quantities of high quality content addressed and personalized to global audiences and to be able to deploy, measure and optimize that work across a multitude of channels. The relationship between brands and consumers changed dramatically with the advent of social media, and the arrival of Web 3.0 will only accelerate that.
Hogarth was born in 2008: the year of the financial crash. Economic upheaval acts as a catalyst for wider change. We are a company founded in a belief that there is always a better way of doing things, and a conviction that the communications industry needs to disrupt itself and evolve with a strong sense of purpose. That’s the real business as usual, and we are looking at the coming year with a strong sense of optimism, and a sense of opportunity.