As the end of the year fast approaches, what better time is there for reflection? And reflect we have.

We asked our team to each look back at a month of 2023 at RedKnows. The big stuff, the small stuff, and everything in between.

Welcome… to RedKnows Wrapped.

January – Kate

The start of a new year always comes with a feeling of a fresh start and good energy, but we really did kick things off with a bang. Our first day back we had the wonderful Trace join the crew, and we’d soon come to ask ourselves how we even lived life without her. The RK team jumped into action and boarded a jet to commence our UK tour filming new content for a beloved client, first stops – Aberdeen and Belfast.

This is also the month I’d sit down with each of the team to go through our new quarter plans with some incredible outcomes, but more importantly, they’re called performance pizzas, cause’ that’s way more fun. And not to make this all about me, but I kicked off the birthday celebrations of 2023, but seriously, a birthday the week before payday in January – who does that?!

February – Coel

February saw a storm of events, and no, I’m not just talking about the permafrost that turned our old office into a scene from Frozen (memories we laugh about while currently snug in our Christmas jumpers).

The month commenced with our leadership team launching us into 2023 with a spirited kick-off. We reflected on our achievements and set goals for the upcoming year, fueled by plenty of snacks.

And we weren’t just cooking up goals! We whipped up traditional crepes, and yours truly wore a homemade paper chef hat, all set against the backdrop of French tunes (sadly, no Ratatouille cameo).

March – Jordan

As snow continued to sweep the West Midlands, March brought a wave of briskly cold weather, but that didn’t dampen our fiery-hot marketing delivery!

International Women’s Day allowed us to celebrate the incredible talent, resilience and creativity that our inspiring women bring to the team each and every day. I’m still so proud to be surrounded by these amazing role models and strong women. As Shania says, ‘Let’s go girls’.

Another milestone snuck up on me in March – my two-year RedKnows anniversary. Wowzas.

As one of the RedKnows OGs (in other words, I’m part of the furniture now), I can safely say I’ve learned a HECK of a lot in my two years here. I’ve levelled up my marketing skills big time and realised I have a talent for building snazzy email campaigns. I’ve honed my SEO skills and have demonstrated some pretty cool ROI for clients. I’ve even worked on my love-hate relationship with Canva. It’s a brilliant design tool, the new AI functions are exceptionally easy to use and are super fun to play with.

Do I still want to tear my hair out when I struggle to make a picture fit in the box I want?

Yes.

Will that change?

Tune in next season to find out.

April – Sam

Spring may be the season for new beginnings and this was certainly the case for the RK brand. Since Neil started RedKnows back in 2017, the RK brand had pretty much stayed the same. We decided it was time for a refresh.

Amongst countless cups of tea, coffee, and incorrectly purchased packets of biscuits (I’ll never live this down) we worked together to launch the new brand identity and website for RedKnows.

From bespoke brand assets to an updated colour palette and typographic hierarchy, the new RK brand identity certainly represents everything that Neil and the team have worked so hard for over this past year, and it’s something we’re immensely proud of.

May – Lewis

May marked a significant milestone for RedKnows’ own Mr Social Media, as Coel was promoted to Marketing Consultant. This was a well-deserved achievement as Coel has constantly impressed us with his work ethic and passion for delivering results for our agency clients.

As we moved through spring, May saw the start of our ‘Corporate Catch-Up’ sessions. This was established following our in-house clients’ projects having several exciting moving parts heading into the summer. This was an opportunity to grab a brew and biscuits (Fox’s Biscuits are a RedQuarters staple!) and discuss projects, successes and how we can continue to go above and beyond for our clients and their talent attraction goals.

As May closed out, anticipation started building for the social event of the year, the RedKnows’ Summer Celebration – exasperated by the investigative skills of our office Sherlock Holmes – me!

June – Coel

June rolled in, bringing in those breezy summer vibes, a time we prepared for exciting things to come. So, there we were, diving into brainstorming sessions, armed with coffee and lots of snacks, led by The Three Marketeers comprising myself, Alice, and Lewis resulting in the creation of a killer personal brand deck. Then we worked on taking the bore out of the launch of GA4, a milestone that felt like a curse for many marketers, but kept us on our toes!

July – Alice

Though for me personally July consisted of a curse, it was a great month for RedKnows. Yes, it did result in a casualty outside of the office when I crashed my car into the bin (for all concerned – the bin was fine, my car was not) but otherwise, the office thrived as summer began.

We were joined by Monty on his work experience and Kate and I visited a client site to film some exciting video content, but by far the highlight of the month was Lewis’ promotion.

Lewis is our go-to for all things corporate marketing (and pop culture), and for good reason – he knows his stuff. We celebrated his well-deserved promotion in typical RedKnows fashion, with a trip to the Beech House.

August – Alice

August saw something very dangerous indeed spread through the RedKnows office… Glee fever! More deadly than most viruses, it manifests in the form of earworms that – as far as we know – still haven’t been removed to this day (much to Neil’s dismay).

This month also saw some very exciting milestones for RedKnows. We moved to the RQ (Red Quarters) marking a glow-up for the company courtesy of our visionaries – Sam and Trace. Glow up was a theme of the month actually, as we had our annual summer celebration day with this as the focus.

This year’s excursion consisted of living it up in London. We stayed at a very swanky hotel, conquered the Crystal Maze, zoomed down the Thames in a speedboat, and had an evening of food, drinks, and merriment. Between all these events we had the chance to sit down and plan how we are going to grow and glow going forward. All in all, a resounding success!

September – Jamie

My arrival as Marketing Assistant marked a momentous occasion for RedKnows in September (If I do say so myself!).

I was welcomed with open arms into the new Red Quarters and quickly found my place within the team. With my desk covered in branded merch, a welcome card written by everyone, and my coffee order framed on the wall on my first day, I immediately felt like a true RedKnows team member. It was great to get to know the team personally and how accurately their personality comes across in their funny TikTok videos – Yes, they are that crazy in real life!

Once I had fully settled into my role, we attended the IHR Event where we got to chat to a whole host of people and give some great insights into EVP and Employer Branding. Our stand was unmissable thanks to Sam’s brilliant design, and had our team cooking up some fresh popcorn for everyone stopping by.

Towards the end of the month, Alice was very deservingly promoted to Senior Marketing Consultant having shown extremely great work throughout the year. The celebration included a confetti cannon attempted by JLo which, let’s just say, was more fizzle than sizzle. Visit Neil’s LinkedIn to see the video, it’s worth it!

October – Jordan

As RedKnows’ resident princess of darkness / corporate emo, October holds a special place in my cold, black heart.

With arguably the best holiday gracing us at the end of this horror-ific month, the RedKnows social squad got to work on, in my humble opinion, the best Halloween-Recruitment-Marketing TikTok you’ve ever seen. In said TikTok, good old Jigsaw-Jords tried (and failed) to make our victim (our Graphic Designer Sam) cut off his leg. Our story concludes with a happy ending though, as Hero Coel saves the day and rescues our delightful victims marketers.

Also, shoutout to our storage unit for providing a very Saw-esque backdrop for our Oscar-worthy content.

If you haven’t already, check it out for yourself and maybe save yourself £190,000 in recruitment costs while you’re at it.

October also made way for one of the biggest catastrophes RedKnows has ever seen – someone in our shared office stole Alice’s mug.

You read that correctly. Alice’s mug was taken. And we are still not over it.

Terror gripped the office as we all set out to solve the mystery of Alice’s stolen mug. How would our copy queen / SEO specialist deliver her fantastic work without her all-important caffeine?

Wanted posters were made, as well as some fantastic reactive designs (see below – this was my desktop wallpaper for about a month).

In the end, Alice’s mug was returned and the day was saved. But could the culprit still be at large? Which piece of RedKnows crockery will be our next victim? 

The lesson here is to keep your friends close, but your kitchen equipment closer.

November – Trace

As we sailed past Halloween and Bonfire night, we decided to put our office Christmas tree up quite early, much to Neil’s dismay! The team embraced the Christmas spirit enthusiastically and we decked the RedKnows halls with tinsel and baubles! 

To add to the celebrations, RedKnows turned 6 years old on 30th November 2023 and we marked the occasion with a team photo and mandatory 6th birthday balloon (again much to Neil’s dismay, having blown the ops budget this year on MANY balloons) and by sending out a delicious Red Velvet Cake box to each and every one of the clients we worked with in 2023 as a thank you for their support and partnership. 

Finally, for November, we delivered our 360 video project to a client, we filmed 5 videos in 5 different locations across the UK. The final edits, including the fully branded VR headsets were delivered to a very happy client at the end of November. 

December – Neil

So, this is Christmas, and what have you done??

Well?? What have you done? Hmmmm?? Out with it!!

No idea? 

No, me neither.

Anyway, what I can be sure of is that this year has gone ridiculously quickly!! I know this is meant to be common as you get older, but even then, by my reckoning, this year cannot possibly have been 365 days or 12 months. Last time I looked it was easter!!

Perhaps it shows just how far we’ve come as a business and as a team since crimbo 2022. 

Because we have done a lot – a heck of a lot!!

We’ve moved offices, we’ve got a new brand, we’ve grown our team, we’ve promoted people, we’ve brought in an operations function that has literally transformed the way we do things, we’ve worked with more national and international brands and their talent teams, as well as some cracking recruitment agencies, we had our biggest and best summer away day, we’ve got more dogs, more balloons, and a cracking coffee machine.

Actually, maybe that’s why the year has gone “a bit rapid”, as my cockney roots might have described it.

(That’s COCKNEY roots. Let’s not be silly, we’ve all had a drink.)

And having just had Christmas jumper day, (and having flatly refused to wear the obscene one Kate bought me last year) this week we’ve got our Xmas party, and then one more week until we all disappear for the yuletide fun.

And I think that’s probably the most important bit actually. Because, no matter what you do or don’t believe, and no matter how or where you do it, the time from Christmas to New Year is really only about being with the people you really couldn’t imagine being without.

For me of course it will mainly mean cooking endlessly for the family, moaning about doing it and pretending that I don’t actually enjoy it, before being dad with endless putting together and not reading instructions on kids’ presents, and doing my level best not to annoy The Current Mrs Rudolph.

(Not calling her The Current Mrs Rudolph for a couple of weeks might be a good start.)

Anyway, this has been a blog. Probably, And I promised I’d write one, so I have. Partly because if I didn’t I’d be the only one, but mostly because Alice insisted and I’m a little bit scared of Sassy Szatts these days, to be honest. Don’t tell her that though, please.

So, that was 2023, or twenty-twenty-weeeee. 

Because it went fast. So, weeeeeeee…..

And here’s to 2024 – or twenty-twenty-PHWOOOAAAAARRR!!! As I’ve just decided to call it.

Because it will be a good one.

Not because it’s attractive.

Though it might be, I suppose.

Can a year be good looking???

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE!!!!!!