Halo Media – Year in Review 2022
Wow, it’s year end already – this year was on time-warp speed! 2022 was a year of growth for us, and not just in our bellies (sadly our love of doughnuts isn't helping!).
We’ve had a brilliant year and it’s down to working with incredible people and companies. Thank you for your support and for caring for our team and for allowing us to do what we love.
Here’s a quick recap of the year that was!
Halo UK & SA
It's been an adventurous start and Halo UK is fully set up and operational. Unlike the Durban office, which is a “proper office”, our UK HQ is on a farm in rural South-West England. This allows Hayes and Louise to quietly focus on their work (if you exclude the tractor sounds!) with an easy pop into London for meetings and industry events.
The Halo SA team in Durban have had a busy year. They’ve been pushing themselves creatively and the results are that our work is now used as the benchmark and templates for some of the global brands we work with. We’re immensely chuffed about this!
We grew a little – introducing Anele!
We have a new team member, Anele. When we interviewed her, we immediately knew she felt like one of us, so she ticked the all-important ‘cultural fit’ box. But more than that, she’s bringing a keen marketing mind to Halo. A recent marketing graduate, Anele is also a content generator and writes insightful copy to educate and convert sales. She's also a bit of a canary … if you can't find her in the office, just listen for the singing! (And she's good too, it's like having a little Beyoncé in the studio!).
You can find out more about Anele and the Halo team here.
We grew some more! Our company conference was about internal growth and improvement.
We had our company conference in October. Our theme last year was “A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for” where we embraced the voyage of new territories. This year’s theme was “Open Seas” because we're sailing at full mast. We used a pivotal quote as our learning platform: “Ships don't sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don't let what's happening around you get inside you and weigh you down”.
We looked at what was happening around us – war, recession, cost of living, etc., and how that affects our team, our clients and our communities. By understanding what's around us, we can then choose to turn hard times into times of growth. Because you don't get diamonds without pressure!
From this, we’ve developed our Vision, Mission and Values statements, along with a renewed commitment to customer-centricity. What does that actually mean? Well, we reminded ourselves of our values and how they need to shape every decision we make. Then we looked into how we can bring delight to our clients in every way – from the quality of our work to the friendliness of our team.
As we had it near Halloween, it seemed natural to combine a Christmas and Halloween party. But as it was in October, we needed to embrace Oktoberfest too!
So we celebrated all that we could with a Christmasoweenfest. It was a legendary party, although it did confuse the neighbours!
We grew a lot! Introducing a brand-new business – Workforce Campaigns
The nature of our work sees us immersed in internal communications. Especially for companies with a large workforce, e.g. mining communications. Through this, we’ve seen a need for better education and motivation in the workplace.
So, we’ve recently launched Workforce Campaigns. This is an online platform for companies to access Health, Safety, HR, ESG and Communication campaigns for the workforce.
They differ from what the market currently knows – where somebody buys a safety poster and that’s it. Our campaigns are designed for multi-channel high visibility across key touchpoints. So they consist of posters, emailers, flyers, videos and toolbox talks. That makes them a global first in multi-channel communications!
A smorgasbord of cool projects in 2022
Here’s a little taster of some of the projects we sunk our teeth into:
Hayes led a crew to Guinea for a mining brand audit and to capture images and video for Rio Tinto. The imagery and videos are used in their brand library and for PR and Communications, like this CEO's message.
We developed an interactive financial pitchbook for Absa bank in a format that other areas of the bank are now using. Speak to us if you're interested in an interactive digital experience.
We’ve created communication campaigns for South32 that are making a difference in their mines globally. Here’s a cool campaign we did for Human Rights Day.
We developed a new website for long-term clients and leading critical metals investors, TechMet.
We’ve started making 3D picture videos. They are fantastic for social media and comms videos for when you only have photos and graphics, but you want a more impactful viewing experience. We’ll share more of these on our socials in the future.
We’d love to say a big thank you to our clients and friends for continually supporting us. It goes without saying that we couldn’t be here without this support. But on a deeper level, those who support Halo, and our ethos, are making the biggest difference to us every day. By allowing us to work with brands we admire, and people we care for and to enjoy coming to work every day – you've made the difference. A big thank you!
