Cogent Beekeeping: 2018 Annual Round Up.

Time flies when you're having fun.

That’s it. Like the speed of light, 2018 has drawn to a close. With 2019 rolling in fast, we take the time to look back on what was a great year here at Cogent. A year of wonders, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite highlights from the last 12 months. 

First up, newbies! In 2018 we welcomed 26 new starters to Cogent. It’s always exciting to see the team grow as we take on more work and welcome exciting new clients to the family. Our planning department has been our fastest growing team as it rapidly expands into a bustling team of strategic thinkers. We’re overjoyed to be providing our clients with a more strategic offering to creative solutions! 

Over the course of the year, we have also been doing lots of bits and bobs for charity. After plenty of cake baking, craft sales and most recently, the Cogent Christmas Turkey Derby, we managed to tot our fundraising up to an impressive £5k! *Cue applause*

2018 also saw the launch of lots of new wellness initiatives. We started monthly in-office massages (*aaaand relax*), mobile manicures, outdoor yoga, fitness and rugby coaching and lots more! After all, happy minds make a happy team!

Last year saw our client roster grow by nine. After lots of teamwork, brainstorming and creative intuition, we were overjoyed to win some great new accounts. Those exciting client wins turned into campaigns we are really proud of. We saw Marmalade debut on TV with a highly-anticipated ad which aired during the Love Island final, and beyond. We helped launched GoGo SqueeZ into the UK market and worked together with Rexel to help unify their national brand.  For Omega, we did lots of exciting stuff like partner with George Clarke (from Amazing Spaces) and help design a strategic journey to support their ambitious expansion plans.

Some of our other work highlights this year include getting Dublin on TV with a fabulous 60-second commercial which really embodied true countryside pursuits. We brought back Kiwk Fit’s well-known and nostalgic Kwik Fit Fitter jingle from the ’80s for their latest radio campaign. We filmed and edited lots of content for BMW and MINI at exciting events like Goodwood Festival of Speed. We worked alongside Gavin and Stacey’s Mat Horne who voiced our cinema ads for Paym, launched hundreds of websites for Marston’s while creating content left, right and centre… and we even got our PR client, Lintbells on ITV… just to name a few!

We were proud to see some of our Yorkshire Water work commended and featured across the web on the likes of Creativebrief’s Hotpicks of the Week. We even received a 5* industry vote on The Drum Creative Works for our ‘Course It’s Better campaign. The Drum also commended us highly (twice) for our work for Pet Head and Paym. Most of all, we were ecstatic to be recommended by our current clients for 80 out of 100 services on The Drum RecommendsWe received some lovely testimonials, keeping us motivated going into 2019!

“Cogent are like an extended part of our in-house team. They fully understand our complex business, understand the pressures we are working through and find opportunities to go above and beyond to help us get through this. They became our lead agency through the quality of work they deliver, their digital expertise and the close partnership they have developed with us. I really don’t know where we would be without them.”

– Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Marston’s PLC

That’s not all. Our very own Gareth Evans bagged himself a place on the Drum’s BD100 shortlist, making him if we say so ourselves, a rather smashing business developer!

December was a pretty good month for us too. Cogent rejoined the IPA, while our in-house quiz master Mary hosted the pub quiz of the year.

We finished a smashing year with a glittering Christmas party in Birmingham with a glamorous sparkle and shine theme!

So that’s 2018 in a nutshell. Thank you to all our lovely clients, partners and suppliers for making 2018 one to remember! Happy New Year, and here’s to another fantastic year at Cogent. LET’S DO THIS!

Quote of the month:

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

Ryunosuke Satoro