70 people from three different countries decided to spend 24 hours in the office in order to work on two separate projects from scratch. Result? One fully designed product ready to be offered to our clients who want to improve employee satisfaction and a social responsibility campaign for the Center for Eating Disorders BEA.
The same 70 people had little to no sleep but mostly had big smiles on their faces. Were the happy faces a result of the feeling of achievement or just something that happens after the logistics team served delicious pancakes all night long?
A little background about Startup in 24h
We started Startup in 24h nine years ago with a core idea to create a working digital marketing product of our choice from scratch in just 24 hours. It is also a unique chance to gather all Degordians from our Zagreb, Belgrade, and Mostar offices and they all have an opportunity to work on totally different tasks than they usually do.
Last time, motivated by one of our colleagues, we decided on a specific cause – a digital platform for autism experts.
Two projects at the same time
This started a trend we continued in 2022 when we decided to connect with the Center for Eating Disorders BEA and work on a campaign focused on preventing the development of eating disorders.
But, considering we had 70 people on board, it seemed like we could do more.
In Degordian’s classic fashion, we decided to jump on that thought and focused on developing an online platform for an employee satisfaction survey – Stethoscope.HR, in collaboration with the University of Zagreb – Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Startup timeline
The first ten hours flow by fast — you simply don’t feel it. It’s a mixture of hanging out, brainstorming, discussing the campaign ahead of us, still thinking about what we’re about to do. In other words, it’s a form of team building. And let me tell you, if HR decided to give us a survey about our company in those ten hours, our employee satisfaction would probably be at 100%, which, to be honest, is not far from the current state anyway.
About halfway through, just when you feel like you’ve done a lot, all the teams gather – Social Media, PR, Creative, Logistics, Performance, Design, and Business Development, and you realize that indeed, we’ve done so much, and yet there’s so much more left to do. But, motivation multiplies when we are all in the same room. Suddenly, working for 24 hours straight for a good cause is not that hard.
It’s a fact that we, as marketers, don’t always get to work on projects aimed at helping the vulnerable groups. But it kind of is our duty, right? If there’s something we’re best at, it’s marketing, and if we can use that to make a change and impact a better tomorrow at least once a year, we’re definitely going to do that.
End of Startup – are we really done?
Despite all the laughter, connecting with colleagues from other offices, playing with dogs, and eating delicious snacks, 16 hours of focusing on your PR strategy does its thing. On the bright side – there are 8 hours to go, and some of the teams are done, which doesn’t mean all people went home.
They spontaneously rearranged to other teams and help them out. Because that’s what a positive company culture looks like. Even our clients from BEA stayed.
At the end, which quite conveniently is the start of another day, we realized – we did it!
We actually did. We created Stethoscope.HR a fully ready-to-use tool ready to use, and made a whole social media and PR strategy for preventing eating disorders based on our original creative solution. All that we did together. And just like that…Startup in 24h was done, and despite the tiredness, we can’t wait for the next one.
