Shady Dolphin marketing agency set for expansion in the new year

Three 20-something young men from Magherafelt who started a creative agency in their bedrooms has expanded into a full team of creatives challenging the content marketing industry.
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The journey from a family bedroom to a fully-fledged agency wasn’t an easy one for John Beattie, Fergal and Tom Hughes but when their paths crossed only a few years ago the prospect of a creative agency just made sense and has since proved to be a worthy venture following impressive year-on-year on expansion.

Currently a content-led agency, Shady Dolphin Studios’ latest production was their biggest to date. The mini-movie commercial, named ‘The Battle of Flong’ took two days to film, required a cast and crew of over 55 people, was filmed using cinema-standard equipment and had a score that was designed and produced in the LA Studio of legendary composer Hans Zimmer.

Content production wasn’t always the plan for the Shady Dolphin team and is far from their only valuable offering as an agency, with speciality in web-development, branding, digital marketing, and graphic design to name but a few.

In the beginning, the focus was web-development as John, the current Account Director, had just graduated with a degree in IT and struggled to find work without experience so decided to find his own by creating sites for small local businesses.

Fergal, the now Art Director, soon joined this venture assisting in the design of the sites which naturally progressed into offering branding and graphic design as its own service. Tom, who is now the Creative Director, originally started work with the team after working in the film industry on films for HBO, Warner Bros, and the BBC, and was keen to use his skills to develop the marketing industry.

They knew in the early days that they didn’t want to be “just another marketing agency”. Striving for creativity on all accounts, the three entrepreneurs have been assessing and testing industry and market trends since their inception five years ago, knowing that there were so many ways to innovate the industry in Northern Ireland; starting with staff.

As the demand for their work grew so did their team, and it has been one of the key values of the company from the beginning, to create an agency where team-members could be creative, innovative, and not just another cog in a machine; directors included!

Set for further expansion in 2022 with a larger team and exciting projects, the Shady Dolphin team are proud to be setting a new standard for creativity in Mid-Ulster and Northern Ireland.

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