From £16,000 to £3 Million. The Rise of Eve Lee and The Digital Fairies

We recently caught up with Eve Lee – founder of the all-female creative studio The Digital Fairy. With clients including Chanel, MAC, Estée Lauder, Nike and Alexa Chung, the Digital Fairy has earned a reputation as leaders in the millennial market – authentically connecting big brands to the youth market.

In this interview, we ask Eve about her background, her favourite projects, and how she built The Digital Fairy into a hugely successful female-first agency (£3 million turnover) with an all-female (50% BAME) team of millennial and gen z creatives – the average age at the agency is 24. Here’s Eve’s story:

Newnham: What were you like growing up – how would your friends and family have described you?

Lee: Always on my phone

Newnham: You started out in marketing – what conversation/event led to you starting The Digital Fairy and can you describe some of the earlier hurdles you had to get over to get the business off the ground?

Lee: The Digital Fairy came about because of a lack of investment in digital – there were no jobs so I created my own. I wanted to work in digi marketing because I was such an early adopter of social media, I knew it inside out and, at the time, I just didn’t get why brands weren’t using it to target…