Rowdy Digital: a partner and an inspiration

9 May 2016

At YWCA Canberra, we are fortunate to have built strong partnerships with organisations that support us with their expertise. Rowdy Digital, formerly ‘Goosebumps’, is the Creative Partner of the 2016 She Leads Conference, and is responsible for the branding and design of a number of YWCA Canberra projects, including Relationship Things Online, the redesign of the Relationship Things program and Respect, Communicate, Choose, and the She Leads Program. Here we chat to Managing Director Jess Salvage about their origins, ethical philosophy and ongoing goals.

What was it like to become a businesswoman at the age of 22?

When I first got into business I was young and very fresh, but I was fortunate to have a great business partner and some fantastic clients, so my confidence quickly grew. I’m not particularly tall which made me look even younger than I was! That did cause some concerns with some clients at first. But I’d usually prove myself pretty quickly and they took me seriously after that! We currently have a young trainee at Rowdy, and it’s great to see someone else following a similar path to myself, and developing her skills in a supportive and dynamic environment.

Tell us about what you do at Rowdy Digital.

We are a digital agency with five staff, who focus on design, strategy and development. In addition, we bring in external specialists to help our clients achieve their communications and marketing objectives as needed. Rowdy was co-founded by three owners – myself, Judy Waters and Llewella Jago. Three women at the helm is certainly unique in our industry and we all bring a lot of diverse experience. We aim to be collaborative with our clients. We don’t live and breathe their business like they do – so while we are the experts on what we do, we work to find the solution that works for them as well as us. Most importantly, we deliver high-quality work for our clients with flexibility, a great attitude and a lot of passion.

And what about the rebrand, from Goosebumps to Rowdy?

We felt that Rowdy Digital was the perfect fit for what we do! We decided that it was time to rebrand to reflect new ownership and put our stamp on the business, but we also wanted a name that better reflected the work that we do and our way of doing things. Our approach is to do everything with a digital-first mentality: We still do branding, we still do print and campaign work, but we start with digital and consider its impact on every project we do.  We’re in our soft launch phase at the moment, but we’re really excited to hit the market later in April with our full service offering.

Tell us about the ethical philosophy that drives Rowdy?

In a nutshell, it’s about wanting to do good things. I’ve worked in the industry for nearly 20 years on a huge range of interesting projects, but what I particularly enjoy is when we can use our skills to help clients (particularly in the not-for-profit sector) to do their jobs well and make their organisations successful.

What are some projects you’ve finished or are hoping to take on?

While the not-for-profit sector is an area that we’re certainly focusing on, we also work with a range of clients from property developers to Government. Having said that, we’ve recently done some great work with UN Women, Karinya House, Post and Ante Natal Depression Support and Information Inc (PANDSI) as well as our ongoing work with the YWCA. Through commonalities like this we’re looking to create communities of like-minded people. For example, a lot of the not-for-profits that we’ve worked with focus on women – we hope that through working with them we can create connections between their organisations so that they can benefit from each other. We’re also looking into how we can support these organisations with the development of business systems in an affordable and scalable manner – so watch this space! We love what we do, and we love that we get to contribute to our community in our own way!

You can check out Rowdy Digital’s work at getgoosebumps.com.au including the fantastic relationshipthings.com.au branding.

 

Tags: community, Partnerships, relationship things, she leads