As 2017 comes to a close and the anticipation of what 2018 will bring begins to grow, we take a look back over an exciting 12 months and celebrate an incredible year for our clients!
Wins at the National Business Awards, the International Business Awards (Stevies), UK Employee Experience Awards, Professional Sales Awards, Financial Experience Awards, Comms National Awards, UK Business Awards and the Payment Awards are just a selection of our highlights.
We couldn’t be prouder of our clients for all of their successes and we are so happy the teams, businesses and individuals involved have received the recognition they deserve for all of their hard work.
And who can forget some of the fantastic events we’ve been invited along to as well…
It was such a privilege to be invited by Simon Murie CEO of SwimTrek to attend the presentation of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation award at the i360 on Brighton seafront – we loved working with the team at SwimTrek and can’t wait to see what 2018 brings for them.
Our CEO Donna O’Toole joined our awards finalists and Mark Cushway, CEO of The Inspired Group and sponsor at the National Business Awards. It was certainly a prestigious awards final, with a powerful motivational speech from Sir Mo Farah, all topped off with another superb win for our clients.
Mo Farah isn't the only Olympian we've had the honour of being in the same room as this year, Donna also had the pleasure of attending an inspirational speech from Dame Kelly Holmes at a charity event hosted by Close Brother's Retail Finance.
Here at August HQ, we’ve also seen some changes across the year…
We were so excited to be accepted into the Natwest Business Accelerator ‘Entrepreneurial Spark’ at the beginning of the year. This has become such a wonderful support network for us and an incredible resource for developing our new business tools and services.
This year, Team August has grown too. We welcomed outstanding and highly experienced new writers to our awards team; brought on board our new Operations Assistant Shannon to support both clients and the internal team alongside our seasoned Operations Manager Olivia; and were joined by Kerry who is doing a fabulous job of research and business development for August.
Donna, meanwhile, has been out and about teaching business leaders and entrepreneurs the secrets to winning the most prestigious awards in the world at many exciting business events.
On top of celebrating our brilliant clients’ achievements, welcoming our new team members and attending fantastic events, we’ve had huge success with our ‘How to Win Awards Masterclass’ – so successful that we’ve taken our unique formula and created an online learning academy that you can access from the comfort of your desks at any time!
The Awards Expert Academy will launch in January 2018, so keep an eye out for more information.
The New Year already looks like an exciting time!
We can’t wait to get our hands on Michael Tobin’s new book Live, Love, Work, Prosper, which is all about work-life integration – something we could all do with a hand with in 2018! We’ll be judging many more awards and finding excellent winners; sharing our knowledge at inspirational events; and supporting our clients to put their best foot forward with an awards strategy that will help them to achieve their dreams in 2018.
For now, though, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for your support in 2017, and wish you a wonderful festive season. We will be taking a short break over the Christmas period, with offices closing from w/c 25th December to 2nd January.
We’ll be back with a bang in 2018 to make your year award-winning!
With best wishes from Donna, and all the team at August
