Blog
25 years of incredible change: from Startup Studio to Global Digital Marketing Partner
Shaun
Creative Director
In 2025, SOZO marks 25 years at the forefront of digital marketing, a journey that started with static websites, during the first dial-up days to delivering AI-powered campaigns from across the globe.
What began in an office base in Cheltenham has now grown into a global agency with new offices recently opened in Cape Town and a thriving team in Mumbai, India.
To celebrate this milestone, we’re taking a moment to look back not just at our story, but at how marketing itself has transformed over the past quarter-century.
From traditional marketing campaigns, early web design and direct mail to social media, ecommerce, big data, and now AI-driven strategies, the last 25 years have brought rapid, radical change.
Through it all, SOZO has been there, adapting, innovating, and helping our clients thrive in a shifting digital landscape.
At SOZO, we rarely look back, preferring instead to look ahead at a rapidly changing digital world.
This blog from founder Shaun, is a nostalgic look at how far we’ve come, and a glimpse at where we’re headed next.
The early days of the internet
Remember the year 2000? As the new millennium dawned, would the world end at midnight? SOZO was just beginning its journey. Back then, the digital landscape was in its infancy; a vastly different place. The world was less noisy, websites were static, dial-up was king, and the idea of “digital marketing” was barely a concept.
While SEO remains essential for visibility on traditional search engine results pages (SERPs), it doesn’t guarantee that your brand will be mentioned, cited, or trusted by AI tools. That’s where AIO comes in.
Static websites, print ads, and direct mail
In 2000, for small and medium-sized businesses, marketing was largely traditional. Think print ads, direct mail, and maybe a spot on local TV or a radio ad campaign to punctuate hits from boy and girl bands.
Websites? They were often simple online brochures; a digital Yellow Pages entry, if you will. Most were built using basic HTML, with layout done using clunky tables and minimal styling. There were no templates or CMS platforms, everything was hand-coded and uploaded manually via FTP.
Animations were often created in Flash, and if you wanted anything dynamic, you’d be working with early scripting languages like PHP or ASP. There were no smartphones, and design for different screen sizes wasn’t even a consideration.
It was a slower, simpler internet, but a seismic shift was coming, and SOZO was there, ready to embrace a new ‘digital’ world.
The evolution of websites, email marketing and emergence of SEO
Throughout the early noughties, the internet was rapidly evolving. Suddenly, having a website became more than a novelty; it was a necessity.
Websites quickly became the main way for a business to get ‘found’ and show the world what it did. And then came the Google revolution. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) started to gain traction in the early 2000s, and it quickly became a game-changer for us.
While it has become one of the main ways for businesses to find new customers, in those early days, SEO was all about keywords, lots of them. Websites often stuffed keywords into pages, hidden text, and meta tags in a bid to climb the rankings on search engines like Yahoo, AltaVista, and early Google.
Initially, it was a bit of a Wild West. Over time, search engines got smarter. Google’s algorithms evolved rapidly, favouring quality content, relevant links, and a great user experience.
What started as a technical trick has grown into a sophisticated, content-led strategy and SOZO has been there since the beginning, at the forefront, adapting and guiding clients through every update.
The rise of online shopping
Online shopping was another absolute revolution in consumer behaviour.
Online shopping may have truly exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns forced consumers indoors and brands had to pivot quickly to digital-first models, but the foundations were laid much earlier.
At SOZO, we were already building some of the early ecommerce websites in 2001, long before it became mainstream.
We even set up our own ecommerce website selling cricket equipment in 2003. The office became part studio, part warehouse.
While the cricket venture was later closed, importantly it gave us first hand experience of how to market a business online and how to sell products via a website instead of a shop, which many businesses saw as a novelty at the time!
Fast forward to today, and online shopping is not just the norm, it’s the backbone of retail globally. That early experience gave us invaluable insight into the ecommerce journey, helping clients successfully transition from bricks to clicks well before the rest of the world caught up.
2005 – The birth of social media and content marketing
As we moved through the 2000s, a new phenomenon emerged: social media.
Platforms like MySpace, then Facebook and Twitter (now X), completely transformed how businesses connected with their audiences.
It was no longer just about broadcasting; it was about creating engaging content to foster meaningful relationships and build communities.
Content has become the new currency on which brands trade.
Creating valuable, relevant material to attract and retain customers is now critical to many strategies today. And something we have developed into a service with our in-house team of copywriters.
2007 – Launch of iPhone, mobile apps, and location-based marketing
Then came 2007, and with it, the iPhone. This was the start of the mobile revolution, and it changed everything, again!
Suddenly, the web was no longer confined to desktops and laptops. Websites absolutely had to be mobile-friendly. Mobile Apps became the new frontier. And for businesses, location-based marketing, and in-app advertising opened up entirely new ways to reach consumers on the go.
Suddenly, we had to make all of our websites mobile and tablet friendly,which was a whole new challenge for our design and development teams.
Designing for mobile isn’t just about shrinking things down; it requires rethinking layout, navigation, speed, and usability.
Buttons need to be thumb-friendly, text must be legible on small screens, and load times are critical.
Designers now work with responsive frameworks that adapt to different screen sizes, and the focus is on simplicity, clarity, and fast performance.
At SOZO, we had to completely rethink how we built websites, putting mobile users first, not as an afterthought, but as the primary audience.
More recently, web design and development has focused on a more sustainable element in a bid to reduce the carbon footprint of the business and the internet as a whole.
As brands see that purpose doesn’t erode profit, and conscious consumers align with brands that have clear sustainability principles eco-friendly web design is highly sought after.
2015 – Data analytics dashboards, CRMs, and personalised experiences
From 2015 onwards, data became the golden currency of marketing. Small and medium-sized businesses suddenly had access to an incredible wealth of data and analytics tools. This allowed them to understand customer behaviour, preferences, and trends like never before.
At SOZO, we have helped clients turn that data into decisions, whether it’s personalised email campaigns based on previous browsing history, dynamic product recommendations tailored to each user, or custom landing pages that adapt to different customer segments.
Using tools like Google Analytics, Klavio and AI-powered platforms, we guide brands in creating smarter, more meaningful touchpoints across the entire buyer journey. The result? Stronger engagement, higher conversions, and experiences that feel genuinely tailored to the individual.
2025 – Embracing AI in marketing
And now, in 2025 and beyond, we stand on the precipice of perhaps the biggest revolution of them all, Artificial Intelligence.
Consumers expect seamless experiences at every touch point, across every channel, online and offline.
Our marketing teams have embraced this new world and we’re already helping businesses adopt AI to improve their efficiency but also gain them visibility in AI assistants like ChatGPT, Googles AI Overviews and other platforms, which are starting to replace the traditional search engines.
2025 and beyond – The digital world continues to evolve at pace
For 25 years, SOZO has evolved with the times.
From the early days of simple websites to today’s immersive AI-powered digital experiences.
We’ve also championed sustainable growth, embracing B Corp principles and consistent innovation every step of the way.
We’ve seen it all, adapted to every change, and helped countless businesses thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we invite you to join us on our next incredible journey.
Contact us and let’s shape the future of your digital marketing together
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