From the
bottom up

It all starts with a dream. We don't want to sound romantic, but it really started with a dream when one of the founders dreamed of our future agency's name. And here we are, writing this Marketinger story which, however, is all but a dream. But it’s a story about us. Real and authentic.

Let's start with a shocking fact. Marketinger was a dreamed-of name but initially not intended for an agency. It was a name for a Facebook fan page meant to inspire people by providing superinteresting info about advertising and marketing we’ve been reading which inspired us to grow professionally. As we watched the increasing interest in this topic and also in our view of digital marketing, an idea was born. The idea to leave our comfort zone and our job at a stable online agency and start something of our own. Something of our own with our own perspective on the digital world. And it, indeed, happened.

Quitting our jobs, bureaucracy with the incorporation, first offices, customer acquisition, finding the first team members... Believe us, it was all but easy. It's hard to recruit a skillful man or woman if you can't offer astonishing pay, free time activities at work, and free breakfast every morning. In reality, the only benefit was a desk and a computer which he or she had to bring from home. A dream job, really. Not to mention the far-from-cool working area. A small office in a shady building in Bratislava, where we almost got robbed, was no walk in the park.

But you will find soon enough that it is not the fancy place and equipment what makes a great work environment, but the people in it. And the handful of crazy people brought together only by their eagerness to learn and start from scratch to create something so positively unknown realized this in no time. Our dark, tiny offices suddenly became cozy and filled with joy. Despite the fact that there was no time for playing, there was only hard work. Day and night. And this is when we started to form our own online story. As an independent agency with no funding, supported only by a handful of our friends from the branch who helped us get things up and running. The year was 2015.

There’s so much we could write a novel (all right, a short story), so let’s move on.

After many small projects, something incredible happened. We won the first tender for a large client, giving us a chance to show the world all we have. Full-scale. The shipper DHL Parcel Slovensko. Even though, if we think about, we didn’t want to show everything, really. When the DHL’s CEO offered us to walk us out to the car after the meeting, we froze. An old Opel full of dog hair parked in front of the building is not very presentable. Don't get us wrong, we were not ashamed, but... OK, we were.

But what we were not ashamed of and were (and always will be) hundred percent sure about was our set of skills, creativity, and determination to work harder than required. Besides the online, we also made successful video spots, audio ads on Spotify, and outdoor campaigns. The digital was, however, where our hearths were. And so we grew to the company which we are today.

But not to talk only about work and clients, find out more about our free time fun stories. For instance, if you decide to go and raft the Little Danube, you may hear stories about the first squad which sank half of the crew alongside the catamaran. Yeah, that's us.

And if you spot a guy dressed as a medieval swordsman, eating lunch at the shopping center, don't be surprised and say hi. It is most likely our programmer who designed his own CMS system called EDI.tor which we’ve been using for years.

So, there were our memories in a nutshell. But since you didn't stop reading up to this point, you would probably like to know what's up with Marketinger as of today. Do you have one more minute?

Nowadays, the times have surely gone better for us. We moved from a dull office to a wonderful house with garden and also expanded our team with new talented and hard-working colleagues. There are 20 of us at Marketinger. Twenty marketing and advertising enthusiasts who, despite their otherness, share the same work and moral values.

Of course, we are not just co-workers but also friends, spending great time together not only at the desk, but also in the garden at work, playing video games at work, drinking coffee at our 24/7-in-operation coffee machine at work, playing ping-pong at work, or watching premieres of our favorite series at work. And we are excited about what happens next. We don’t mean the series, however, but what happens next with us because there is a lot more ahead of us.

Today we keep our feet on the ground, we know who we are, we we’re heading, and we will do our best to improve the perception of digital marketing in Slovakia by our approach.

So, for now, that’s about it from our Marketinger (short) story. Who knows, maybe one day we will have enough for the novel.

Yours faithfully
the Marketingers