How has 2023 treated you? We have to admit that, for us, it was not too shabby! We moved quickly through the year and have paused to catch our breath with a round up.
When we welcomed Alex and Laurie through our doors for a chat about their Google Ads accounts, we weren’t expecting a three-for-the-price of one! SPA Landscaping is the original brand, a grounds maintenance contracting company, that has branched off to ecommerce selling of power machinery through the SPA Power Machinery brand and the uniquely useful Easy Petrol Post Driver brand.
The SPA Landscaping family of brands works in the commercial grounds maintenance end of the spectrum. This poses tricky semantic challenges when trying to chase down professional gardening and commercial soft landscaping without wasting money on domestic enquiries for someone to come round and cut their hedge for them occasionally.
We were able to turn our years of horticultural, ecology, environmental and hobby gardening experience to the commercial aspects of soft landscaping, grounds maintenance and power machinery for the grounds maintenance and farming industries with relative ease and got the Google Ads account up and running on 1000%+ ROAS for ecommerce sales within a month of taking over the accounts.
In the depths of winter, we hightailed it to Birmingham to go and see the factory, and for what would become an exciting new partnership with Haws Watering Cans. A family-owned company that are keeping the tradition of hand making their beautiful watering cans right here in the UK. In fact, right here in the heart of Birmingham. We love a factory tour, and we *loved* learning all about the watering can making processes that are very much hands-on and are very much about each can being made individually, one-by-one to the highest of production standards.
In fact, we have been so impressed with them, that when it came time to choose a milestone birthday gift for Saffron at Baker Consultants, it just had to be the Hot Dip Galvanised Two Gallon Warley Fall Can as pictured here!
Sometimes with marketing campaigns, you have to move a few mountains to make things happen. This is exactly what happened when we were approached in January to help get a windowsill gardening campaign underway for Mr Fothergill’s. The campaign was targeted at people new to gardening, to help them build a new audience.
We brought in a PR partner that we’ve already worked with on other projects in the form of Intelligent Profile to help put together a PR and social plan to gain some earned media for the brand, as well as to engage with and recruit content creators for the brand to support the campaign fronted by ITV’s Love Your Garden, David Domoney (what a pro!!).
TV, radio and print coverage, helped push the brand out ‘offline’, where we were busy waiting to receive them as they hit the brand’s social media channels. A resounding success, and going from 0-60 in just a few short weeks to allow us to hit that peak home-growing time was quite the ride!
HECK produce sausages, burgers and mince that have ‘One HECK of a flavour’ and so they wanted to shout about it from the rooftops. Or rather they wanted the nation to sing it!
Audio and sounds are the next big thing in marketing, and so producing the sound of HECK was the next logical step for the brand to take, when they are so often leading from the front with their creative ideas.
And how do you bring a sound to life? Through a choreographed video of course!
We put local video makers Briight forwards and HECK loved them, so a union was made right on the spot. Take a look at the video they produced to help with this campaign 👆
Not yet out of winter proper, by the end of February, we had also been working hard behind the scenes in partnership with the FSB and the Peak District National Park. There is a lack of opportunity for business networking in the heart of the Peak District. Most networking in this area happens in Derby or Nottingham – a good hour’s drive from where we and many businesses in the north of the county are located. So we wanted to help redress the balance.
Our first session got underway in March 2023, and we’ve been going monthly since then! With a fantastic range of speakers in the year to date, and a wide range of local businesses, it’s been really satisfying to hear positive feedback about this thing we’ve managed to bring to life 💚
📅 If you would like to join us in the New Year, then our first session is 17 January, and you can find out more about what, where and who right here: https://www.fsb.org.uk/event-calendar/bakewell-in-person-networking-jan2024.html
In the last week of April, one of our favourite clients did something very special. HECK, and we’re going to say it – the Nation’s favourite sausage brand – were featured on BBC’s Inside The Factory. Highlighting their vegan sausage production process, it offered viewers a sneak peek behind the scenes of the factory that has become an iconic landmark on the A1 in Yorkshire.
📺 If you didn’t catch it the first time round then click right here to watch it on catch-up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001lfgr/inside-the-factory-series-7-vegan-sausages
What a fun evening! Being shortlisted for The Small Awards was a thrill. Getting to head south to London in May for the awards ceremony was even more thrilling. Being on the best table ever was the best part of the evening though!
Awards are just as much about networking with the people in the room as they are about keeping your fingers crossed for bringing home some silverware. And, boy, did we ‘network’! A tray or two of Jägermeister later and we dispersed into the night having made some firm friends.
Lightening does sometimes strike twice, and the evening of The Small Awards was the only thing keeping Debbie away from the StartUp Awards in Birmingham the very same evening. As a judge for the awards, it was a shame to have missed out on being there for the awards ceremony, but duty called further south in London. We cheered on from the sidelines virtually though, and so well done to the winners that evening 🏆
We are privileged to be able to join the rich and famous at one of the most prestigious events in the calendar each year with a trip to RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
This year we helped represent five clients at the show. Our old friends Mr Fothergill’s and Darlac tools took up their usual trade stands on Eastern Avenue in the shade of the plane trees. Griffin Glasshouses took up their prime spot on Royal Hospital Way, and we dropped by our new friends Haws Watering Cans who were located at the top of Eastern Avenue near the northern gates (and scroll down for more on this 😉).
We also had an exciting assignment with our clients Baker Consultants who were involved in a Main Avenue garden… but more on this below 👇
Could there be anything more exciting than being a part of the hubbub of a Main Avenue garden at RHS Chelsea? We think not.
Our friends at Baker Consultants have been working on a world-first technology in the world of ecology. They got a prime opportunity to contribute to the Royal Entomological Society’s main avenue garden by debuting their tech on the garden that had been designed by Tom Massey.
A beautiful space with a strong educational theme, this garden was a memorable moment for visitors to the show with an iconic ‘insect eye’ inspired canopy that housed a bug lab. It was in this lab that our friends a BC set up the worm listening station to educate stand visitors on ecoacoustics technology.
But where does the Princess of Wales fit in, we hear you ask?!
During the proceedings of Press Day, there seemed to be a lot of camera shutter clicking and jostling going on. Debbie proved she was never going to make an effective paparazzi by having no idea what was going on until a flash of pink going down the steps and the hushed whispers sent a ripple of excitement through the assembled crowd. The Princess of Wales had arrived with a group of school children to take a look at the garden. And yes, she’s just as picture perfect in the flesh as she appears to be on camera!
Meanwhile at the other end of the avenue, our friends at Griffin Glasshouses had a busy press day going on as well, meaning Debbie had to hot-foot it between both ends of the avenue to keep in pace.
Griffin Glasshouses are long time partners of the National Gardens Scheme, and took the opportunity to present their ‘biggest ever cheque’ to the NGS, on their stand located at the north end of Main Avenue. The National Gardens Scheme Ambassadors had all been gathered together and so what a wonderful photo opp for Griffin Glasshouses. Presenting to stars of the small screen in the form of Danny Clarke, Rachel de Thame, Mary Berry, Arit Anderson, Jo Whiley and Alan Grey was a wonderful experience.
The NGS stand was also opposite the Horatio’s Garden design by the Harris Bugg Studio. RHS Chelsea’s first-ever wheelchair friendly garden turned so many heads that they unsurprisingly won Gold, and People’s Choice.
Griffin have been key partners of the charity for many years, and so it also provided the perfect opportunity to present Olivia Chappell with a fundraising painting from the 2022 show. Chatting to Hugo Bugg of Harris Bugg about his plans for the Horatio’s Garden Sheffield was as inspirational as talking to the people who were helping man the garden who talked of their lived experiences of being spinal injuries patients, as well as their awe at the design that had been put together by Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg. Watch this space for developments on this front in 2024!
Although Debbie had been offered and had accepted a Trustee role much earlier in the year, it wasn’t until the CRB checks and paperwork had been filed at the Charity Commission had gone through that she was able to talk about it.
SHE UK are a Mansfield-based charity who help survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual violence and rape. Joining the Board as a Trustee is the best way to give something back to an organisation that really needs the help, and so this appointment is one that she has been honoured to take on.
Find out more about the work of SHE UK and please, please, please do donate if you have even just a few pounds to spare 🙏
The old website for Potteries Auctions was virtually on its knees when we took on the job of redesigning it, migrating all the content and freeing it up to work smoother, faster and with a responsive design to move it on from what had become dated and difficult to maintain editorially.
The folks at Potteries Auctions are thrilled with the results, and having spent a lot of effort on an SEO-friendly migration of the website, Google is pretty happy with it too!
We get involved in the petaling for the Over Haddon well dressing each year, and 2023 was no different. We took the afternoon off to have a lovely lunch before heading to the garages in Over Haddon to help press thousands and thousands of petals, seeds, leaves and other natural materials into the damp clay. It’s a fascinating Derbyshire tradition that we are pleased is still very much alive in this part of the county, and we think you will agree that the results are very impressive indeed.
What do you do to support someone with a morbid fear of public speaking? You make them stand up in front of 20 people twice in one day and public speak of course!
Rachel is a rock at Destination Digital but she is also very shy! So when Debbie was invited to take part in Lady Manners School’s Careers Week, she took Rachel with her to co-present… and after initially quaking in her boots at the prospect, she did marvellously 👏
Rachel and Debbie talked with year 10s about their career paths, and answered lots of questions from around the room about how they got to where they are, and what the options are for young people looking to embark in a career in marketing. It was amazing to talk with everyone and learn more about their aspirations, and we hope that we helped you all just a little bit each.
And… well done Rachel, and same time next year?
Influencer Day and Press Day at Mr Fothergill’sBringing this project to life was a big focus mid-way through the year. Mr Fothergill’s hold a Press Day each year, inviting the gardening media to the day to learn about new products, industry news and developments.
By far the biggest draw is the Trials Ground at HQ in Kentford in Suffolk and so Debbie put the bright spark idea forwards of taking opportunity to invite influencers and content creators the following day whilst the trials plants were in their prime condition. It seemed like the best opportunity to get gardening enthusiasts, who are celebs of the tiny phone screen world, and show them exactly how we do things at Mr Fothergill’s.
We expected them to enjoy it, but were blown away by the positivity of response from *everyone*, and the notifications that came through immediately from people posting from the field, inside the factory, from the marquee and on their journeys home again was social media engagement heaven 🥰
We can’t wait for 2024!
When you are really busy working on projects to the left, to the right, and being kept busy every working hour of the day with *stuff*, is not exactly the best time to move offices… but hey… we don’t like the grass to grow under our feet.
We moved from our upstairs office to our brand new downstairs office and we’ve been loving our new bigger, more spacious office space ever since. One of its best features is a lawn outside the front door, so we’ve conducted a fair few meetings sat in the soft grass with our shoes kicked off and the sun on our skin. You really should come up and see us some time.
After working with Ann Wright, Head of Arts for Derbyshire County Council for over 17 years, a chapter finally closed for the Arts Team at DCC. If ever it were possible to put a fantasy football team-style business team together, Ann would be firmly in it.
An amazing person to have worked with in the arts in the county over the years, and we’re as sad that this has had to come to an end as we are happy that we have a firm friendship that will endure.
And what’s the best way to celebrate? With a really expensive tasting menu dinner at Joro in Sheffield of course!
So tasty 😋
Amazing 🤩
So expensive 💰
As one of Ann’s swan song acts, she had the foresight to set up Arts Derbyshire as a charity to safeguard the brand going forwards, for hopefully another 17 years!
The charity has been incorporated for a couple of years now, and has found its feet enough to be able to secure funding to offer a brand-new Director role, and how thrilling that Stephen Munn has taken that position 🤩
Stephen is well known in the Derbyshire arts scene, and in fact further abroad in the arts scene in many other parts of the country too. He has already brought an energy to the team and we’re looking forward to working more with him through 2024 and beyond.
When you invent a world-first technology, there has just got to be some interest from the press right?
The ecoacoustics technology debuted at RHS Chelsea, earned some media coverage with a spot on BBC, and soon thereafter came further TV slots and newspaper coverage.
👏 Bravo!
This was one true act of people power! In 2022, a very small batch of BeanChup and EggChup were made by the folks at HECK and sent out to a select few. Headturning, interesting and frankly… a bit of a joke, the EggChup caught the attention of the nation (or so it seemed)
After campaigning us for months and months, the team finally figured a way of producing an EggChup that could be distributed to the general public and we put out the call to arms to pre-order with the promise that if more than 50 people put their money where their mouths were, we would make a batch. Over 210 people hit that order button in the end, and so could this end up being a regular product in 2024 we wonder 🤔
Getting a Which Best Buy accolade was a big tick for our client Darlac this year. Their Telescopic Edging Shears were awarded this best-in-industry status and we’ve been busy helping spread the word on this handy tool every since!
Our friends at Big Green Smile have been working hard behind the scenes to become B-Corp certified 👏
They join the ranks of many of the brands they stock on their website such as Weleda (a local Derbyshire based company 🙌), Ecover, Method, Badger Balm, Yogi Tea, Delphis Eco, Child’s Farm, Dr Bronner’s, Bio-D.… the list goes on and on!
So if you are looking for end to end ethical and environmentally friendly products for home, beauty and cleaning, *including* ethical warehousing, despatch and delivery… take a look at the B-Corp brands on the BGS website
We have crossed paths with Theresa Peltier at Arts Derbyshire, where she latterly joined as an advisor to the Board. This was before she was awarded the biggest voluntary role there is, in the form of becoming High Sheriff of Derbyshire!
It was wonderful to be there to witness this very formal affair at Derby Cathedral and welcome Theresa into the role. We’re looking forward to seeing all you get to achieve in the year ahead.
October came around and we were not done with this year yet! Having interviewed a number of people, including Uni graduates for an Apprenticeship vacancy, hands-down we were absolutely certain that Ed was the best man for the job.
At time of writing, he has now been in post for a little over two months and has taken to digital marketing like a duck to water. We’ve enjoyed sharing our skills and knowledge with him on our short journey so far and can’t wait to get properly stuck in in 2024.
You can check out his series of blogs on our website and send him some words of encouragement if you like!
Over the course of this year, we’ve been helping Weiss Technik supersize their marketing in 2023. We have been doing this by supporting them with digital content and campaigns. Their organic lift through the year through the content marketing we’ve been putting in place has been as plain as day to see on Google Search Console, and in the meantime, we’ve been pushing millions of pounds of pipeline through to the sales team through our Google Ads campaign management, that segues with Hubspot and Lead Forensics management on the website too.
We were also asked to help them write an award application, and since we’re pretty good at getting finalist positions for our own awards applications we sprinkled a little of this magic on Weiss Technik UK too.
We travelled to the heart of London in November for a glittering awards ceremony at the British Museum in the West End. A little like proceedings after the ceremony at The Small Awards earlier in the year, the after-show ‘networking’ for the British Business Awards took in the alcoholic delights of Covent Garden, creating a very sore head but a battery of new contacts by the next morning.
#sorrynotsorry 🍺 🍸 🍷 🥂
The very next day, Debbie had to hightail it to Wembley where she was a judge at the National Business Women’s Awards 😅
Getting to present a silver award to Louise Hardy of Severfield in the Business Woman of the Year Award (Large Business Category) and gold to Margaret Miles-Bramwell OBE of Slimming World was a true honour 🤩
And as ever, it was a fun party in a room full of inspiring women.
The Wedding Industry Awards is the biggest in the wedding industry and our friends at Stretton Manor Barn put their names in the hat and only went and won 🏆
We think the team at Stretton are great and now its official that they really are. Congratulations 🥳
🎭 It was straight into the heart of Theatreland for the Forward Ladies Conference and Awards in late-November where we stepped into the fantastically enveloping and opulent warmth of The Londoner hotel in Leicester Square.
With all awards events, grabbing the unique ability to network with people outside your normal reach is where its at! So it was great to share a table with Shyamini, Jemma and Olivia from IFS, Gillian Lamela of JP Morgan, Syra Shakir of Leeds Trinity University, Lani Nguyen of Alstern Solicitors and judge Emma Davies of Grant Thornton, who we discovered was based just up the road from us in Sheffield!
It was great to catch up again with Louise Hardy only a week after having presented her with a silver award at the National Business Women’s Awards. Also to meet and talk futurology with Anna Keeling (ex-VP of Boeing folks 🙌) at the reception drinks.
We have had a couple of weeks to catch our breath before finishing off our December early for some of our staff, with a big Christmas trip to Durham at the end of this week to enable us to meet up with our outlier staff member Hannah who now lives in Glasgow. So watch what we get up to, where we end up and what we find in Durham sometime very soon on our Instagram account…
What a year! What a ride!
We’re now eyes-forward for what 2024 will bring and can’t wait to share more adventures, meet new businesses, new people and experience new things that will lead us to more opportunities. If we don’t already know you, then step forwards, we’d love to meet you.
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