A difficult year…

As understatements go, describing 2020 as “a difficult year” is probably one of the bigger ones.  Even as we descend into the final working week of the year, the bad news continues to accumulate faster than the incoming Christmas cards.

Businesses usually thrive despite the actions of governments not because of them and rarely has this been truer than in 2020.  Like many companies we’ve taken a hit in 2020, but I consider us extremely fortunate in comparison to the thousands of companies across the hospitality and travel sector.  It’s one thing if COVID speeds up the demise of non-viable businesses.  It’s quite another when thousands of otherwise successful businesses are taken out by closures and slowdowns.

Focus on the positives, one at a time

There’s been much said about the mental health impact of the lockdowns.  We’ve been relatively lucky that, to date, out team here has been very resilient but there’s no way we will be taking anything for granted.  Personally, when I’ve felt myself becoming overwhelmed, I’ve focussed on getting through one task at a time.  For what it’s worth, I find it helps to ignore the bigger picture and just look at the one thing you can do at that point.  Equally, while repeating 2020 is not going to be on anyone’s bucket list, the fact that the entire world has gone through this experience at (broadly) the same time probably makes it easier to bear.  You don’t have to travel far to find someone worse off than you.

Preparing for the future

Despite the trying times, life has gone on and we’ve been fortunate to work on some incredible campaigns this year, despite the situation.  Our launch of the Astro Slide led to it being the most popular crowd funding project on the planet early in May.  We are also proud of the launch of Airshield that took place in the middle of the year, which had a reach of more than one billion people.

Additionally, we spent some of the lockdown working on updating our case studies, our website and social media channels – to ensure that we can recover from this crisis more quickly when it finally passes.

At the end of this difficult year, we want to thank our clients and the journalists that we work with.  Equally important is to thank our suppliers for their support over the last 12 months, often in incredibly trying circumstances.

Like many companies our Christmas party did not go ahead this year.  Instead, we decided to spend our Secret Santa money on giving a gift to a vulnerable child.