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Behind the Barrel: A Look Back at 2024

leeburkett16

 I like to think everyone from fresh-faced interns to veteran CEO’s experiences January the same, the true equaliser that it is.


January isn’t a real month, it’s a boot-up month, where you spend your time installing major New Year’s updates, and the updates are finished by February, when you finally feel ready to hit the ground running, even though the ground started 5 miles back.


It’s now February and somehow, we’re still typing 2024. There’s something about the freezing temperatures, the dark mornings, the dark evenings, the agonising wait for payday, and the overly crowded gyms that short-circuits the brain.


Overexaggerations out of the way, it is now February, which has given us ample time to look back at 2024, and forward to 2025, and appreciate how far we feel we’ve come, and how much more we feel we can accomplish.


2024 started with what I could only call “our theoretical worst nightmare”. I say theoretical because, in the end, it was an incredible experience, and one we’d love to do again. What I’m referring to is our journey to Birmingham (South and City College Birmingham to be more precise) to speak with the fashion & textile and art & design students about the core elements of building your own unique brand, drawing from our own recent experiences to do so.


The students were incredibly receptive to the quizzes, tasks, and workshops we put to them, which hopefully both inspired them to follow up on some of the business ideas they put forward and helped them realise that they already had the creativity and ingenuity to start the second they got home.


Coming down from that high, in February, we were presented an opportunity to sponsor a friend’s amateur cricket team, Thurgoland CC team, based near Sheffield, helping to provide their kits for the upcoming season and giving us the chance to see our logo on a sports kit. Wanting to diversify our portfolio (if that’s how you use that phrase), we jumped at the chance, both to help a friend and provide sporting equipment to a team in need of it, because local sport is the backbone of this country. And we can’t lie, seeing our brand on a kit was a great moment for us, too.


Our first shirt sponsor!
Our first shirt sponsor!

In March, we finished our contract with Barkers Retreat, saying goodbye to our first-ever client, and to the dozens of energetic pups we’d get to fuss every Monday during our content visits. We’ve seen them continue to go from strength to strength since we handed back their social accounts, and we can only hope we have a cattery as a future client for more adorable visits in 2025.


An average camera roll after a Monday at Barkers Retreat 😍
An average camera roll after a Monday at Barkers Retreat 😍

We all know the phrase, ‘when God closes a marketing door, he opens a marketing window’, or something like that.


As we finished with Barkers, we welcomed IATP, and a few months later, OHSI. The former offers a dynamic and interactive link between those seeking asbestos training and those providing it, and the latter strives to advance occupational hygiene and protect worker health in Ireland. Both came to us with own unique ideas of how they’d like their social media accounts to look, and we’ve had great fun collaborating on a wide breadth of campaigns, with many more to come.


When we weren’t writing, designing or scheduling social media last year, we were obsessed with a Twitter account (it’ll be a cold day in hell before we call it X) called One Minute Briefs. Every Monday – Friday, a brief is published and creatives across the world have until about 5 pm to submit their idea. Most are for fun, but some, like the Task Rabbit project, which you may have seen on the London Underground, have a lucrative prize on offer, like having your Task Rabbit advert design plastered across the London Underground! So far, we’ve had moderate success, making a few shortlists, but it’s not about winning, it’s about taking part… although one big win would be fantastic for our egos.



IOHA 2024, the premiere international occupational hygiene conference, was in Dublin in June, where we had an exhibition stand, another first for us. We even felt brave enough to go up against scientists and occupational hygienists in the poster competition. Up against titles with words like isothiazolinones, our poster “What can Futurama Teach Us About The Future of Occupational Hygiene” made us the “award-winning” Double-Barrel marketing, as we took home the Most Humorous Hygienists prize.


Our AWARD-WINNING poster
Our AWARD-WINNING poster

Our first time exhibiting... yes we wore the same clothes as the banner on purpose
Our first time exhibiting... yes we wore the same clothes as the banner on purpose
Banners we designed for GHT!
Banners we designed for GHT!

While in Dublin, we also worked with Gully Howard Technical, a training and occupational consultancy services provider, to design the collateral for their stand.


Aside from our Double-Barrel Marketing activities, we started Joe and Lee On The Run, a YouTube and TikTok channel where we attempt to undertake various challenges, attempt being the crucial word there. 2023 saw myself (Lee) completing the Tallinn marathon and Joe running the Loch Ness marathon, so 2024 could only be a step down from there. What we landed on, was a shortened version of this video by Beau Miles. One mile every hour with major tasks ticked off our to-do list during the resting minutes. If you’re interested in seeing how we fared, on the hottest day of the year no less because who’s ever heard of checking the weather forecast, the video will be up in the coming weeks.


And lastly, our final development before Christmas was bringing on board Pinches, a company specialising in no-tie shoelaces. We’ve got exciting social media and video content planned for this upstart sports business, so watch this space to see the final result.

That brings us to now, 1st February 2025, with plenty to be proud of in our first full year as your go-to emerging business marketing agency, and plenty to be getting on with.


Thank you to everyone who has worked with us, supported us, given us feedback, and trusted us over the last 12 months. We’re truly appreciative and know we wouldn’t be where we are without you.


Until the next one,

Lee + Joe


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carmenburkett
6 days ago

Brilliant read and what a fantastic year !

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