The end of an era: Nathan McDonald steps down from We Are Social
As you may have read in Campaign or spotted on LinkedIn today, We Are Social’s co-founder and Group CEO, Nathan McDonald, has stepped down from the agency after 16 years of leadership. Here, he shares his thoughts on the journey of We Are Social.
As I reflect on my journey as CEO of We Are Social, I’m filled with a huge amount of pride, and overwhelming gratitude for everything we’ve achieved together. So as well as giving thanks, I want to take a moment to celebrate.
When Robin and I founded We Are Social in 2008, the world of social media was still in its infancy. In that year Facebook surpassed Myspace as the most-visited social media website, passing the 100 million user mark. Which seemed like a very big number at the time. Instagram was still two years away.
Our first client, Skype, was still owned by eBay, and a lot of our work for them was focussed on tech bloggers and forum users. These were the early days of influencer marketing, before the term existed.
The community of marketing professionals that understood social media was still small (and could all be found on Twitter). We did our best to help educate the industry, openly sharing the knowledge we were gaining, and when we saw other agencies doing great work we celebrated it. Every new social agency that launched to compete with us further validated the category that we were the leader of.
Special thanks must go to the individual team members and clients who trusted us with their careers in those first few years: nothing that followed would have been possible without you.
The small team worked hard to get our own great work out: we launched a car across Europe for Ford by inspiring design bloggers, and promoted niche ‘little breaks’ on the Eurostar with influencers. We created a secret society of Marmite lovers for Unilever. We censored Twitter to stop spoilers from your favourite streams, and personalised cans of Heinz soup. We put the World Cup football on Twitter for adidas, helped you learn Spanish from a drug cartel boss, and enabled a bank to fund music projects through a virtual currency earned by streaming music.
All this laid the foundations for the incredible work that was yet to come: bringing Pride to Animal Crossing, Cannes-award winning effectiveness work for Audi, and viral moments for Barilla and Four Seasons. We’ve helped the likes of Lionel Messi and Patrick Mahomes mark the biggest moments of their careers and collaborated with Sydney Sweeney for Samsung and Brooklyn Beckham for Booking.com. And much more, every year.
Fast forward through the years to 2024 and the tiny startup in east London is now a global network of more than 1,300 people. Our reports and thought leadership are referenced by millions. As a global social and influencer AOR we deliver social at scale and speed for the world’s biggest and best brands.
We joined forces with Socialize, Kobe, and The Narrative Group – like minded partners who have helped us grow and offer our clients even more. We’ve launched our own brands, and a number of specialist practices that provide the network with deep category expertise from gaming to innovation, sport to production. Having pioneered the category of social-first marketing, we are a benchmark for the industry.
But beyond the global scale, the work, the many awards, the thing I’m most proud of is our people. Passionate, curious, determined and collaborative, I am grateful and humbled by the extraordinary talent who have chosen to work under the banner of We Are Social over the years. We’ve built an incredibly talented team with exceptional leaders, and I know that the agency will be in safe hands. It’s the right time for a new leader to build on the vision, but I know we will all be celebrating We Are Social’s ongoing success.
So to everyone who has been part of this journey of a lifetime: THANK YOU. Your hard work, insight, creativity, passion and commitment have built something extraordinary. Here’s to the future, and to all the incredible things you will achieve next.
You should take a moment to be very proud. I certainly am.