The Start named 2026 Digital Agency of the Year

We’ve been named Digital Agency of the Year at the 2026 Campaign Brief WA Awards.

The award was presented at the annual Oasis Ball, where we were nominated alongside Social Meteor, Juicebox, Bang Digital, Bloom Digital, Bonfire, Living Online, Unify, and White Chalk Road.

A Record Year

Our growth in 2025 was the product of a deliberate push to diversify what we do and who we do it for – and the numbers reflect that. We brought on 49 new accounts across hospitality, arts and culture, education, energy, aviation, property, technology, and not-for-profit, while retaining 94% of our existing clients from 2024.

Perhaps more telling than the headline figures is what sits underneath them. In 2022, 93% of our revenue came from web development. By the end of 2025, that split sat at 52% web and 48% marketing – a genuine diversification that reflects a business no longer built on a single discipline. We also completed a full rebrand during the year, evolving from Start Digital to The Start. It was a change made from a position of strength, and one that better reflects what we’ve become: an integrated creative, technology, and marketing agency

International Recognition

The moment that defined our year publicly came in May 2025, when we became the first Western Australian agency to win a Webby Award. Widely regarded as the most prestigious international recognition in digital, RTRFM was named Best Music Website in the World – chosen from nearly 13,000 entries across 70+ countries, ahead of Apple Music, Lady Gaga, SoundCloud, and Splice. We accepted the award in New York alongside Snoop Dogg, and Walton Goggins, which remains one of the stranger sentences we’ve ever had to write.

Beyond the Webby, 2025 brought six further wins and four finalist nominations across the Australian Web Awards, Good Design Awards Australia, and the Indigo Design Award in Amsterdam.

Client Results

The work we’re most proud of is the kind that moves the needle for the businesses behind it.

For Nexus Airlines, a performance marketing overhaul brought cost-per-booking down from $64 to $10.80 – a 62x ROI – while website users grew 54% and every flight route keyword climbed to page one.

For Joondalup Festival, a strategically led multi-channel campaign became the most successful in the festival’s history, driving over 65,000 event attendees.

And for RTRFM, the Webby-winning redesign delivered a 39.8% increase in active users and a 41% drop in bounce rate – showing that an award-winning site can also do the commercial work it was built for.

Proprietary AI Products

Alongside client work, 2025 saw us bring two proprietary AI products to market – a deliberate investment in capability that lives beyond any single campaign or retainer.

Voodu.ai is a live AI website assistant, currently running on three client sites. At Touchwood Mushrooms it drives an average of 25 direct purchase conversions per month. At Pacific Energy it handles complex enquiry routing that previously required manual triage.

Solais is an AI search visibility platform that tracks and improves brand prominence inside AI-generated responses. With 12 active clients, it’s one of the only productised AI search services on the market in Australia – measured, reported, and built to give clients a clear read on a fast-moving channel.

Team and Culture

Behind all of it is a team of 16 people, and an intentional approach to how we invest in them. In 2025 we invested over $200,000 into team development and industry participation, formalised four senior leadership roles to give the team clearer ownership and direction, and made three internal promotions. Our weekly Creative Challenge program – where the whole team pitches live ideas against real client briefs – launched in August with 100% team uptake and 90% client adoption.

We also invested $206,800 in pro bono and reduced-rate work for eight arts, culture, and industry organisations – including Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth Festival, PADC, and State of Social. We treat this work with the same creative ambition as anything else in our books, because when WA’s creative community shows up at a world-class standard, everyone in it benefits.

What’s Next

Winning Digital Agency of the Year is a moment worth acknowledging. But the work that excites us most in 2026 is already underway – developing our AI products, building experiential websites, and delivering creative, performance-led marketing that shows what an agency our size can do for its partners from the heart of Perth.

Never Stop Starting™