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There was never a dull moment in 2022. The Student Debt Relief Plan was announced, Patagonia’s owner stepped up to fight climate change and Swifties got a new album. And Corporate Ink had an absolutely rocking year. Let’s take a look at all CI has to be thankful for as we enter 2023.
Onward and Upward: Rapid Growth & The Inker Awards
Growth. Everywhere. That’s the biggest story of Corporate Ink in 2022.
More than 40% of our team earned promotions in 2022. The biggest ones: We have two new vice presidents with 12 years of Corporate Ink experience combined – veteran Abbie Holmes and me.
As employees climbed the CI ladder, we welcomed significant new talent to fuel our growth. We added tech communicators, industry analysts, marketers, interns and more – growing our team by 50% since Q4 2021. We hired from everywhere – tech, the media and analyst space, internal marketing and comms, universities and of course, B2B tech PR agencies.
We also rolled out our inaugural Inker Awards this year. When you have a team filled with rockstars, it can be hard to choose a few winners – but Lane Kearney, Elle Lynott, Jake Scearbo and LB Waschak won for going above and beyond each and every day. Their excellence, accountability, and above all, the impact they have on our clients businesses never goes unnoticed. Congrats, guys!
A Winning Workplace: New Perks to Drive Culture
This year Corporate Ink pushed the envelope on what being a people-first agency really means. In the spring, we launched Inker Fridays – our spin on a four-day work week. At its core, the program encourages our team to recharge and work less. It’s been wildly successful. Our latest data shows:
- 100% of employees value the benefit
- 100% rated their happiness and engagement at Corporate Ink as a 4 or a 5 (on a 5-point scale)
- 92% of the team rated their productivity a 4 or 5 (also on a 5-point scale)
This is only one of the benefits that’s led to our 100% retention over the last 22 months. Our culture taskforce has planned incredible team bonding events – like a summer sailing trip in Newport, virtual wine tasting happy hours, and an absolutely amazing EOY party (as shown below). We introduced new holidays, important health benefits and new processes to streamline workload and boost satisfaction.
We’ve also rolled out new ways to get engaged outside of our typical workday. Our cooking club has been a hit – with our own culinary leaders teaching the team how to make amazing Christmas cookies, their grandmother’s meatballs or a cobb salad that makes healthy eating fun. We rolled out a book club, an internal team newsletter (dubbed Inker Insider) and so many other ways to nurture relationships within the workplace.
Client Growth: Tech Providers Changing the World
2022 may be known as the year of record inflation, mass layoffs and a looming recession – but our clients continued to grow and thrive under pressure.
More than a third of our clients secured significant funding rounds. Many became the leading voice and brand in their respective markets. And most grew substantially – with some even doubling ARR.
One of our best growth stories is EcoVadis – the leading provider of business sustainability ratings – which raked in $500M in funding, becoming a sustainability impact unicorn. We started working with EcoVadis when they were a small, pre-funded startup. We helped break them into North America, create the market for supply chain sustainability ratings, and scale. Now, they are the undisputed global leader in their space and this summer closed the largest equity raise ever for a sustainability data SaaS company.
We welcomed many new B2B tech and SaaS leaders to our portfolio, deepening our expertise and experience in supply chain and procurement tech, enterprise and third-party risk software, workforce management and HR, and emerging tech (including AI, digital assets, data and analytics, and more).
Our impact resulted in expanded programs with many existing clients. Overall, we’ve grown our business by 50% this year. As always, a huge thank you to our clients for their partnership and trust in our team.
Personal Wins to Shout About
At Corporate Ink, our people are everything – and this year, we had so many life events to celebrate outside of the “office.” Melissa McDonald and Stef Lima had breathtaking destination weddings, while Abbey Blythe planned her wedding in under two months. Jake got engaged, Greg Hakim bought a house in the ‘burbs and Abbie moved to Chicago. We had new family members to celebrate – Taryn Breton got an adorable puppy, and I will be welcoming a baby boy in May (surprise!).
On and offline, this year was one for the books. It will be a hard one to beat – but after our in-person 2023 planning meeting in Boston earlier this month, I have a feeling Corporate Ink is up for the challenge.
Thank you to everyone who made this year so great. Have a happy and healthy Holiday and New Year!
Sincerely,
Tori and the Corporate Ink team
