Why We Launched Filter

In this article, our CEO Oliver Morrison, explains the story of why Filter was created.

As we’re hurtling into the second quarter of 2022, it felt like a good time to reflect that Filter has become central to not only my life but also a supportive and enabling foundation for our clients, as well as a positive home for our team to pursue their career ambitions 

I founded Filter in 2016 with Paul Halfpenny, having worked together at my previous and successful digital agency, and a dynamic marcomms agency before that. We understood that the agency landscape was changing yet again and despite being a busy time personally (marriage, child on the way, house moves) we felt we needed to adapt and challenge ourselves to do it again…. but differently.

So, we put all our savings in a pot and set out on our way. We didn’t have a typical agency “new business” function to eke out and endlessly pursue leads, it was always about conversations with people within our network to explore whether there was a fit for us to help them with their digital ambition, or in some instances to make their worries go away. 

Our proposition as a business has evolved since our inception, as we’ve become more comfortable in where we add the most value, but at its core Filter is a business that was created to solve digital challenges for all types of organisations, and this remains so today.

It was always less about the marketing and more about exploring the ‘art of the possible’, giving our clients the fluidity to progress towards their visions, and to do this we quite early on settled on the concept of building an elite team of experienced digital practitioners. The digital world can be scary, it’s often technical by nature, fragmented, whilst moving at pace and to truly harness the best of it we wanted a whole company of people engaging on a very real delivery level (including myself and Paul).

It’s always been less about hierarchy and more about autonomy and service. 

Lots of agencies say it, but most of us have had the sales meetings with the big guns before being gradually passed down the chain for the day-to-day.

This isn’t our model; we are much more what you see is what you get. It’s the day-to-day that’s the bloody important bit! 

Yes, this approach has some challenges as we’ve grown, but we’ve always been comfortable with the notion of being a twenty strong team that clients want to work with (and if there continues to be a queue all the better). 

The changing landscape for us wasn’t so much the concept of external agencies building in-house marketing teams, or the notion of embarking on a full-scale digital transformation that presents itself in year three. It was more about seeing the value in long-term client relationships, where solutions could be applied iteratively, by having trust and commitment to a deeper continual way of working.  

Our values as a business are crucial to how we operate, underpinning our talented team with the best environment for personal and team success. You can read more about our headline values here. 

We know that Filter will never stop developing, as challenges and opportunities will continue to present themselves, pushing us to continually think and adapt. 

Life after all is a marathon, not a sprint right!?

Connect with us

If you want to hear more from Olly, why not connect via LinkedIn or follow our company page to stay up to date on all things digital from the Filter team.