It’s been a year. That goes without saying for pretty much anyone, but it’s been a particularly eventful one for us! I welcomed a new baby in July, took three months off afterwards, spent the first half of the year battling pregnancy exhaustion and the last half of the year trying to keep two kids alive – and there was some work completed in there as well!
As I sit down to write this, I’ve just hopped off Facebook, where I saw a very clever ’12 days of Toddlers’ parody post, which featured twelve sloppy kisses, nine things to carry and seven thousand questions (#amIright?!). I’ve also started to see ‘Year In Review’-type posts trickle in, as we all get a little reflective.
So, brought to you by the 12 days of Christmas – here’s what 12 months of 2021 have looked like for Joyful Communications.
- Twelve engineering activities
- A million words on Grammarly
- Tenders, they just keep coming
- Nine wonderful websites
- Eight media releases
- Seventy EDMs
- Six brand campaigns
- (at least) 500 cups of coffee…
- Four annual reports
- Three grant applications
- Two Plain English makeovers
- And a winning award entry!
Okay, so some of that may need interpretation.
Twelve engineering activities
One of the highlights of the year was writing a series of 12 engineering activities aimed at primary school students for EA Junior Club. This really tested our brains, not only in coming up with fun, engaging activities, but in really writing to an audience and making complex concepts understandable for primary school children and their parents.
A million words on Grammarly
In December, Grammarly reminded me that I’d written over 3 million words since 2017. While maths is really not my strong point, I calculate that’s around 600,000 words for me this year, and Deb will have written at least that many (if not more, after picking up the slack while I welcomed baby in July!).
Tenders and grant applications
We write plenty of tender responses for clients – ranging from local government supplier panel submissions, to multi-million dollar major project subcontracts and mining industry maintenance tenders. These are a consistent feature of every year, along with grant applications (fun fact: it’s totally the same skill set, and the same buzz when you win!).
Nine wonderful websites
We released nine new websites into the world this year! Here’s just a few of them:
Eight media releases and 70 EDMs
Media releases are a staple of any comms consultancy – and we’ve written for local government, industry organisations, awards programs and retail clients this year. The same goes for EDMs – I picked 70 as a nice round number but not a day would go by that we don’t work on email copy! While video and voice might still be having a ‘moment’ (does anyone remember trying Clubhouse this year?), I think it’s a long time before writing clever, targeted emails to nurture an audience will be irrelevant. Okay, off my soapbox…
Six brand campaigns
Brand campaigns are always a blast to work on. There’s something so exciting about finding a new way to communicate about a brand, picking an angle, and really getting creative. We worked on several brand campaigns for two industry peak bodies, including everything from web copy to print ads, EDMs and creative collateral.
Four annual reports
Annual reporting season fell smack-bang in the middle of baby season this year, and while we were only ‘driving’ one report and subcontracting on the rest, phew that was a big job.
Two plain English makeovers
Plain English is so important when you’re simplifying the complex and speaking to any audience – but particularly when that audience might have different literacy levels. We’re really proud of the plain English work we do…it might seem counter-intuitive but it’s actually harder to edit things down and make them simple than it is to make them complex. Ask us about it sometime…we’ve got plenty to say!
And a winning award entry
And we had a big win to finish the year off…accepting a Best in Business Award for one of our clients (hey, we go the extra mile!) who weren’t able to make it to the presentation evening. A special mention also goes to Deb, who was nominated for Employee of the Year in the same Awards but missed out on a finalist spot – although she’s the winner in our books!
