When you are moving at break-neck speed it can be hard to remember all the things you did that were worthy of celebration, so it’s good to take stock from time to time. We did this to help us celebrate 21 great things that happened in 2021, so we’re looking again at our most recent 12 months and figured there were many more than 22 things that happened in 2022. Read on to find out what made us happy this year 🥳
To say it went well would be an understatement. Upon checking in at 7.30am on the morning of launch in order to get the Google Ads campaigns up and running, we thought there’d been a glitch on the website or that someone had forgotten to set the products live as there was *no stock*. As it turned out, White Peak Distillery had sold out of its inaugural whisky release by 7 minutes past midnight. A testament to the awesome reputation this youngest of English Whisky brands.
And then got the merch to prove it! Google Ads revamped their certification processes in February this year and the way they handle the allocation of badges too. It used to be easy to certify and then get the logo and plonk it on your website and never check back in again – or indeed ever actually be certified in the first place. So Google have tightened things up by creating newly designed logos that are clickable through to the agency’s page. If you want to know if your agency is a certified partner, or if they are fibbing, then we wrote a blog about it here.
We work with a number of Google Ads Strategists assigned to us on various client accounts, and the one we have for helping us to manage the Faith In Nature account recently commented on how they were going to use their recording of our chats to share with their colleagues internally to help them brush up their platform skills! That made us smile.
To tidy up what they had before which had been languishing in a dated form for over 6 years. It looks so much better even though it’s a very simple site, demonstrating what can be done with web design for very little money. Check it out here, and if you are into buying fine art pieces at auction, then check out what the chaps and chapettes at Louis Taylor Fine Art do.
Our Managing Director, Debbie, has been asked to take part in live interviews a number of times over the years, gaining the lofty title of ‘social media expert from Bakewell’ when she appears on BBC Radio Derby. In April, Elon Musk hit the news when he made a bid to buy Twitter for $43 billion, and we’ve all seen how that has descended into a bun fight since then. It was pretty cool being on the radio though.
Later in the year, we appeared again on BBC Radio Derby, and also on Smooth Radio and Capital FM once Elon Musk’s spat with Twitter finally concluded with him buying out the company in October 2022. By mid-November, Donald Trump’s account got reinstated. We will continue to watch on in bemusement and horror at how the rest of this year pans out for the folks at Twitter who have been thrown into total chaos as a result of Musk’s swingeing changes in the short weeks he’s owned and operated the company.
A creative writing Masters student, Isha joined us in the Spring to learn more about the digital marketing world. She went home for a vacation to India during her placement and so we also got the rather exciting opportunity to have a Zoom Team meeting with people joining from Derbyshire, Scotland and India all on one call! Isha has promised to check in with us from time to time, and definitely pop in for a coffee when she’s next in Derbyshire. The Masters is now submitted and so we’re watching on, cheering from the sidelines as we wait for her to make her next move!
So much glamour! Such a lovely couple who richly deserve to enjoy every moment of it, our friends Alice and Gavin Munro have spent the last year celebrating the 200th anniversary of Louis Vuitton. Named as one of 200 visionaries by LV, they’ve been involved in a whistle-stop tour of the world – yes, *the world* – as the exhibition that features their grown chairs has been making its way around the globe. Check out how awesome they are on their website, and we feel so lucky to stand next to even the tiniest shard of their amazing glow.
We were introduced to SHE UK earlier in 2022. They are a charity based locally in Mansfield that works with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and rape. We introduced them to our friend Thom Baker who worked on a new website to replace their old one, at a budget they could afford. We also helped them with their fundraising by disgorging some of our profits into their bank account during one of their fundraisers. As you can imagine, we think they are doing amazing work and would encourage everyone to donate just a couple of pounds to help them continue their activities.
MD Debbie’s partner tried his level best to seriously maim himself when he was in a serious accident that saw him airlifted to hospital. He became dubbed ‘the helicopter guy’ that fateful day in May and took some finding, following a trail of possessions left at the scene and a wild goose chase to track him down. After months of recouperation, and a total rearrangement of the home living space to get him back to full health, he is back on his feet. The most amazing takeaway from this terrible experience however was the support that came pouring in from all corners, including the incredible team at Destination Digital for which a thousand thank yous is not enough. We don’t want to have to relive this experience, but a crisis is always a great way to find out who your true friends and supporters are, which was a humbling experience.
When your diary reads 10.20am Alan Titchmarsh; 11.15am Jo Whiley and includes three press calls, you know it’s not going to be an average Monday morning. To help Griffin Glasshouses fundraise for Horatio’s Garden we were involved in (literally) chasing down celebs at RHS Chelsea to encourage them to add to a partially completed painting by The Wonky Artist.
We got to meet some ‘proper’ celebs like Dame Darcey Bussell, Linford Christie, Rick Stein, Reece Shearsmith, Charlotte Church, Deborah Meaden, Alex Jones and Martin & Shirlie Kemp amongst many, many others. What a day! And what’s more, every celebrity we met that day was soooo lovely too (apart from one, who you’ll have to be in touch to ask us about!).
Hip, hip…
The Barnes brothers know how to put on a party, and specifically a wedding party. Emerging from the embers of Covid19, where weddings was not an industry you wanted to be in, they have launched and then soared high with a high-quality full-service wedding venue in the heart of the rolling Derbyshire countryside. There is *never* a bad word said by anyone who has come into contact with the Stretton Manor Barn Team – not a syllable, not a peep. This is a testament to the customer service they lay on, from the moment someone picks up the phone to get in touch for a venue viewing to the big day itself. So happy first birthday and we hope to be celebrating many more with you in the years to come!
Something different… and something very back breaking. In the midst of a very busy time for us in the early summer, we also took a little time out for a traditional Derbyshire craft. We bundled ourselves into a car to go and help out with the local Over Haddon well dressings – pictured here is the childrens’ board that we helped pull together in 5 intense days of petalling before erecting it where it battled the rain and the baking sun for the next 7 days whilst on display to the public. A fascinating piece of Derbyshire culture, designed we think to break the backs of all petallers!
We won Best Marketing, Advertising & PR Startup in June and went along to The Secret Space in Birmingham to pick up our trophy, making us officially an award-winning digital marketing agency serving the UK, Europe and beyond! How exciting 🤩
We went to the amazing Coombe Abbey Hotel in Coventry for the Woman Who Awards where we were finalists for this truly lovely awards organisation. As ever, the event was a fabulous opportunity to meet up with fellow women in business and network with them. Meeting up again with Rachel Garcia Garrido and Lily Samuels, was the biggest bonus of the day. You would have thought we’d known each other for years 😘
A more handsome beast, you could not hope to meet… To help launch the new-for-2023 Mr Fothergill’s Sweet Pea Miggie, this most handsome example of a Suffolk Punch heavy horse was brought along to meet the gardening press on Press Day at Mr Fothergill’s HQ in the summer. The new line of sweet pea seeds will fundraise for the Suffolk Punch Trust, who work hard to preserve this breed of horses that now no longer has a working need in the age of tractors. The world would be a poorer place without a good looking guy like the Colonel around we think.
They are the talk of the FA, but Bedale AFC, egged on by their club sponsors HECK keep on topping the previous year’s football strip with another memorable kit. Toad in the Goal was the inspiration behind the 2022’s once-seen-never-forgotten strip for the club this year.
HECK also got busy launching product after product after product this year too.
Phew!
In the summer. An undergraduate on an English Lit Bachelors joined us to help out on the Arts Derbyshire project. As a charity, Arts Derbyshire have very little income, so an internship that is FOC to the charity was just the ticket to help progress a few things that needed to be done. Issy came for the summer, but stayed on through the autumn too.
She’s become a part of the furniture in her time with us, contributing back as much to us as we give to her, and so we’ve decided to keep her! Sitting alongside us and learning the ropes at the coal face of digital marketing whilst she finishes the final year of her degree is not only going to be really handy for her future career, it’s also a lot better option than working in Costa Coffee too.
In August Debbie got a call from Dominic Hiatt of Newspage UK. The conversation went a little like this…
“Hello, it’s Dominic. Would you talk to a BBC journalist?”
“Erm, yeah, sure.”
“Great! I’ll forward you an email. You’re on in 40 minutes.”
He then forwarded the email from a researcher, who then called to run through some questions on the 10.1% inflation rate that had been announced that morning. As well as preparing to comment on it, a little Googling ensued to discover that the BBC News Channel wasn’t an internet thing, but national TV with over 17million viewers. Eek!
As the old adage goes, you need to fake it til you make it, so Debbie winged it as she concentrated on managing to successfully to remember the English language for the duration of the interview 😅
In September, a long-held aim to position Darlac as a d2c seller was realised. We helped the team at Darlac to launch their ecommerce website and start the process of ecommerce merchandising the site, and developing a customer database to bring a new and previously untapped customer base on board for the firm. Initial sales volumes have been very encouraging, and we’re looking forward to growing this new revenue stream for the brand as 2023 unfolds.
We’ve worked with Potteries Auctions for a long time, helping them with SEO coverage for their website that has significantly increased their exposure on Google. We also help them with a small Google Ads budget too, to keep things ticking over. As part of the content marketing strand of work, we help them write about all sorts of subjects in the auctioneering world to help them with the aim of increasing their digital footprint. In 2022, this task was made very easy indeed when they raised world-record prices at their July and November auctions.
In July, a Royal Doulton Prototype Bunnykins ceramic piece fetched over £35,000 at auction. They followed this up with the most ever paid for a Beswick shire horse piece. The piece fetched £11,300 making it a new World Record!
This Royal Doulton Prototype Bunnykins tableau titled Celebration Time sold for an astronomical £35.5k at Potteries Auctions’ July Fine Art Sale
This rare Beswick model of a shire horse 818 in painted white gloss sold for an astronomical £11,300! We’re pretty sure that this may well be a world record for a Beswick piece sold at auction.
We’ve been finalised in local, regional and national business awards in our short journey so far, and we won our first regional award in June. We were then knocked out of our socks when we were announced as Silver Globee® winners of the ‘Women Owned StartUp of the Year’ in the 2022 Women in Business World Awards 🌍
Finding out we’d won another international award in the Stevies just a few weeks later was an amazing piece of news that kicked off our November. The glittering awards ceremony was held in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. We wanted so very much to be able to fly over to take part… but the practicality of the cost and the timing kicked in. A live stream on YouTube had to suffice, and it was just as thrilling to hear the result of a Silver placement in our category.
In a world-first our client Faith In Nature made history by become the first company on the planet to legally appoint the concerns of the planet to the Board. Most of our clients have ethics, environmental or social values at their heart and this is a huge part of how consumers are demanding more of the people they choose to spend their money with. This move is something else though! We hope to see other companies follow suit in due course, making Faith In Nature truly pioneering.
As a long-time FSB member, MD Debbie gives her time to the organisation to help them with events, hosting and connecting with the local business community. Since Covid19, this has been confined to Zoom sessions only, but in October the first in-person events were held for the good businessfolk of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
Debbie was a speaker at the two events in the University of Derby’s Enterprise Centre and Nottingham Trent University’s Dryden Enterprise Centre, and it was fabulous to be back in person chatting to new people and catching up with old acquaintances in what feels like an absolute age. We loved it and can’t wait for more!
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A new brand with four supermarket listings already, we’ve been asked to help out to strengthen the brand’s online presence to help the team to maximise the mark it is already making. We love working with retail brands, and so to add this to the portfolio is right up our street.
We went along to the Hilton Wembley for the National Business Woman Awards in November, where we were finalists and expecting to clap on everyone else, but to have a thoroughly nice time anyway. So it was rather stunning to find our name called out in the first category of the evening, winning silver in the Best New Business category. It was a very glitzy affair in a great venue, where we got to meet up with the fabulous Maria Peggs again. Armed with a new trophy, we then ate, drank and made merry in sumptuous surroundings!
The very next week after our Wembley win at the National Business Women’s Awards, we headed north to the Royal Armouries in Leeds for the Forward Ladies Awards 2022. Travelling north this time, we found ourselves in another glamourous venue on the docks in Leeds at the Royal Armouries Museum. Although we came home empty handed, we were sat on the best table, right at the front in the best seats in the house on a Sponsors table. If, like us, you are thinking, ‘Leeds? Docks?’, then yes they exist and we watched a little of Steph’s Packed Lunch being filmed in a dockside studio before being shooed away by runners.
We’ve … ahem… invested in the local economy by eating far and wide with the new Chakra Lounge in Bakewell, the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop Tea Rooms, Riverside Kitchen at David Mellor in Hathersage, The H Restaurant, Hassop Station Cafe amongst the list of eateries we’ve spent time and money in this year. It’s rather a habit of ours…
We’re fond of spending time OOO, and this year, after Hannah left the local area to go and live in Glasgow, we decided this year for Christmas that we needed to go big or go home to bring the team back together again physically. And so, we all gathered in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne for our Big Christmas Trip Out. Eating, wandering about and chatting were all involved and we spent time in the Baltic gallery on the southside of the river, taking in the art.
And that was only some of 2022. What a ride!
Next stop is 2023 and we’re hoping to slip into the troubled economic waters as smoothly as possible to make our end of 2023 review just as exciting by the time we’ve completed the next 12 months.
If you’d like to talk with us about how we can help your business with marketing, digital strategy or in building your brand to give it a solid base in the current economic climate, then email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199. We’d love to chat.
If you’d like help with digital marketing, ads management, SEO, copywriting, websites, branding or social media management… or anything else related to the internet and digital, then get in touch with us. We’re a friendly bunch.
You can email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199 or you can use the contact form at the bottom of this page.