1 new role created. 20 work experience placements. 24 webinars. 125 pieces of video. And one epic compliment: “You’re quick and dirty but with mature content.” Why, thank you.

It’s been quite a year. As a small business owner who found herself steering the ship through some pretty choppy waters, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned along the way.

Of course what I really wanted for 2020 was to get match fit for Brexit.

I wanted the Sookio team to be the best we could be, the John Lewis of digital marketing agencies that people would come to for a quality service and with whom they could build a lasting relationship.

What I didn’t expect was a pandemic. Well, who did?

On 16 March 2020 when the Prime Minister made his announcement that everyone should work from home if they possibly could, we packed up, wished each other farewell as cheerily as possible, and left our lovely HQ. It’s not goodbye, it’s au revoir!

I set up shop in the corner of the lounge – not for one second thinking this would later present me with a problem when I would have nowhere to put the Christmas tree.

The next month or two were this adrenaline-fuelled period where everyone was trying to work out what the hell to do.

As a digital marketing agency we’re pretty light on our feet and were fully operational within 48 hours. Who knew that the massive fire from summer 2019 when we were locked out of the building for three weeks would be a dry run for all this!

But for the large institutions we work with, it was disruption like you wouldn’t believe.

If you’re an exam board for example, the whole point is that it has to be a secure operation, you can’t just pick up a laptop and walk out of the place. Life science clients can’t just take the lab home with them.

We also do a lot of work with the University of Cambridge. Well, they’ve been doing things the same way for 800 years. Try taking that online overnight!

Team member Marisa, always calm in a crisis!

We also had people coming to us needing sizeable communications support as they decided to pivot and change their entire marketing strategy…only to change their minds completely a few days later.

This is totally understandable, and it was our job to stay calm and steady and help people find a way through, even if we didn’t have all the answers ourselves.

So what have we learned throughout this crazy period? Quite a lot…

1. Remote work experience lets you help more people in one go

In August, sparked by extreme irritation on behalf of the younger generation with the chaos around A Level results and with the realisation that so many work experience placements had been canned, I decided to do something practical to make a positive difference.

In the space of a week, we planned our first Sookio Bootcamp, a week of work experience aimed at graduate level.

9am on the Monday morning I opened the waiting room on Zoom and there were 20 eager faces staring back at me. And we were off!

17 Zoom calls, 8 creative briefs and 4 training sessions – it was a busy week. Resulting in 4 posts for the blog, a series of creative promos for Instagram and LinkedIn, and our beautiful new animated ident.

I was so proud to hear over the next months that two students had already landed brilliant jobs in marketing, and were grateful to have been given such valuable experience ahead of their interviews.

Read our tips on running remote work experience

2. Video production can still happen. Yes, even in a pandemic

So we’d been working really hard to build up our in-house video operation since summer 2019. It felt like our efforts were really starting to pay off, with loads of video projects and workshops scheduled in for spring…when this happens!

How were going to continue with video production when we couldn’t go on location to shoot the footage?

Well, it turns out that every problem has a solution.

Full credit to our Head of Production Matt Harris for his endlessly creative approach to helping clients achieve their goals – even if we had to take a circuitous route to get them there.

Repurposing existing video content. Using animation. Working with stock footage. There’s always a way. And I love these little promos we came up with to demonstrate our approach.

Having done a quick count up through our portfolio I can see 125 pieces of video content produced in this period. Wow.

I’m particularly proud of client work such as:

Huntingdonshire District Council’s #ThinkLocalHunts campaign, helping to promote high street retailers in the toughest of years

Cambridge Trust, taking their Welcome Scholars online, with pre-recorded video segments, coaching workshops for speakers, and co-hosting the event

Plextek, creating a team video from photographic stills

CATS Colleges, helping students feel connected even when their schools were closed.

Read more about our video production services

3. You can take events online. And reach even more people

All the events organisers I know have been on a bit of a journey!

I’ve seen a common pattern. First, postponing the event. Then putting it back a few months more. Then experimenting with doing it online. Then realising the huge opportunity this represents. Ooh.

I spoke at the Cambridge University Alumni Conference in the summer and there were people there from Azerbaijan to Toronto who wouldn’t have attended in person.

There’s been this dawning realisation that it’s opened things up. And even when things do (finally) go back to normal I can see that there’ll always be a blended approach between attending in person and online activity.

Due to demand, we’re now offering a whole new service, virtual events marketing support.

Others went very quickly to the webinar approach, and I’ve loved being part of some amazing events with Cambridge Network, Cambridge Wireless, Life After Professional Sports and WordPress experts Glass Mountains.

My talk on TikTok for events software brand Certain had 500 people registered; it’s so strange to be in front of such a large audience while sitting alone in the office essentially talking to myself.

Let me just count them up…OK so that’s 24 webinars and workshops in nine months. That’s nearly three a month!

I’ve so enjoyed seeing colleagues getting involved too, sharing their digital marketing expertise in workshops like a beginner’s guide to Google Ads, copywriting in healthcare, and how to look great on camera.

And our smartphone photography workshop for The Body Shop at Home will be shown to 10,000 delegates at their conference in January.

This one aside, so many of the webinars are online. Take a look!

Winter webinars | Summer of learning | Watch the playlist on YouTube

4. You need to be nimble to survive. Small is beautiful!

Welsh rugby fan here. You know how you get those big lumbering blokes on the front row powering forward, then this cheeky little fella grabs the ball, sneaks through the pack and sprints past the lot of them to score a heroic try?

That’s us.

There are eight of us at Sookio (seven at the start of all this, but more on that in a second). And while for many agencies this is on the small side, I think being neat and petite is to our advantage.

It meant we could make decisions very very quickly and just get on with it. We kept on coming up with ideas to help solve client problems which we could put into action immediately.

I’ve focused on tightening up processes behind the scenes too, to make our workflow more watertight and ensure we didn’t drop the ball when it came to cashflow.

All of this we could do in a short timeframe. There was no long chain of command, no board or shareholders to answer to. Just us. Bigger ships move much slowly.

One of my highlights of the year was a client saying – while we were actually doing the pitch! - “What I like about you is that you’re quick and dirty, but with mature content.”

Love it. What it says to me is that we roll up our sleeves and get on with it. But that we’re still focusing on what the client needs - not feeding our egos through content which is quirky but totally unusable.

5. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The team is everything

I feel a bit emotional even writing this paragraph as I think about the Sookio team and everything we’ve been through.

We’ve kept each other informed in daily Zooms, made each other laugh on our cheeky-bantz Slack channel, heaped praise on each other in a new one called you-beauty. We’ve picked up on signs that someone’s having a down day and checked in over WhatsApp.

We’ve been aware of each other’s little pockets of stress and made allowances. We’ve accepted that people might not work regular hours. Most importantly we’ve been kind to each other and shown understanding during all the ups and downs.

I’ve found the Mind Wellness Action Plan to be very helpful when reaching out to people from a distance.

Asking ‘how are you’ only goes so far, and this helped me explore difficult subjects and ask more constructive questions, which I hope showed that we’re a company that genuinely cares about its people - way beyond empty statements.

And at a time when so many companies were having to take tough decisions and furlough their staff, I was proud to be able to create a new role of Production Assistant to Imogen Lang. It’s only part time at first, but the goal is to build it up so she becomes a permanent fixture.

Nothing demonstrates our supportive team ethic more than our Sookio Sequence video. If you haven’t seen it before, enjoy!

6. Business owners are useless at putting themselves first

Well, unless you’re Philip Green. But for me, I’ll be honest; at times 2020 has pushed me to the absolute limit.

There have been days when I’ve been HR, finance, delivery, sales, admin, business development, marketing…what’ve I missed?! Oh yes – teacher! Working so hard to keep a business afloat against the backdrop of stress that was homeschooling. What a failure that was!

A couple of times I was so close to burning out completely I just had to pull the shutters down and go off radar for 48 hours or I thought something might go wrong in my brain.

This is not good! But like so many business owners, it’s been like treading water. Just when you think you can see a bit of land in the distance…it inches further out of reach.

Zoom and Teams have been incredible at helping us communicate with clients and each other, but what I eventually realised is that it’s the continual context switching that was making me feel so mentally drained.

I was so used to dashing around the place. Hopping on a train to London for a networking event. Walking into town for a meeting. Chatting with a colleague in a kitchen. Now each conversation lacked those essential visual clues, adding extra strain on the cognitive load.

It took me a long time to understand that this was the problem. It’s been a hard lesson for me to learn - but the moment I forced myself to take regular breaks, things began to improve.

There’s nothing like three laps round the green listening to Jessye Norman singing Ave Maria to calm my restless brain. Here’s my classical delights playlist on Spotify - try it for yourself.

7. You have to work (really) hard to stay visible

A client of ours was always dialling into meetings from the airport, as that was the only time in his busy schedule when he had a moment to pause.

But it was crucial to his pharma business that he flew round the world to meet clients face to face.

I know a lot of people like this, and they’ve all been telling me how important digital has become over the last few months. They’re still able to do business, still able to sell…but they can now spend more time with their families. Bliss.

This has meant a shift in approach. More targeted, paid campaigns on social media and Google Ads. A lot of people have come to us to overhaul their marketing strategy completely. Or they’re using video and webinars to reach their customers in lieu of face-to-face meetings.

For us, we’ve kept on making a noise. Yoohoo, we’re still here!

We’ve been very active on social media and continued to share expertise in the blog. We’ve missed two Sookio HQ parties – grrrrr – but hopefully we still made clients feel special with our Sookiosaurus challenge to create an origami dinosaur!

New for 2021 will be a newsletter refresh, with two a month – a personal Letter from the Editor (that’s me!) coupled with a blast of blog posts.

We’re also launching monthly upskilling sessions exclusively for clients, our new Sookio Sharpeners. Can’t wait!

How is your 2021 looking? If you want to refresh your digital strategy, our crack team of problem-solving, creatively minded digital marketing consultants can help!
Drop us a line and say hello

Founder insights: What I learned from running a marketing agency in the middle of a pandemic