At the beginning of January, I walked into my local leisure centre for my morning swim and noticed their new campaign for January 2023 ‘Join us for Joyful January’. The message behind the campaign is saying NO to the age-old adage ‘New Year, New You’, and focusses on finding joy in exercise and ultimately enjoying what your body can do and not what you look like. It’s bright, bold, uses non-stereo typical imagery, and is a juxtaposition to the style of several other local gyms who capitalise on the public’s self-loathing with promises of ‘dropping the Christmas timber’. (Yes, that was ACTUALLY on an advert I saw!).
It suddenly occurred to me that this strategy is genius. When I was asked to write a piece for January’s newsletter called ‘New Year, New Newsletter’, I initially fell into a virtue signalling rabbit hole of talking about a ‘renewed energy’, ‘going for gold’, ‘aiming for the moon and maybe we’ll hit the stars’ (you get the picture). The countless ‘New Year, New Us’, ‘This is our year’, ‘We’re going to conquer the world’ LinkedIn posts flashed before my eyes like headlights coming towards me on a motorway. I felt an overwhelming urge to join them in proclaiming how the transition from one year to another had somehow refreshed my enthusiasm and drive to succeed. But when I stopped and thought about it, I realised that simply wasn’t true.
Over the last few years at The Business Creative, we’ve devised a very robust plan for our future. We’re sticking to it – and it’s working. Ok, we’re tweaking here and there, we’re reacting when we need to and making positive changes to adapt the company, but I’m pleased to say that our drive, enthusiasm and hunger for success is the same as it ever was. We are continuing on the very same trajectory of growth that I talked about last year and the results are frighteningly exciting!
We have the best full-time team, freelancers and consultants and yes, we’re fired up, we’re enthused and we’re excited about our plans, but it would be false to say this has been brought on by the new year. It would be an untruth to say we’ve had to ‘gee up’ the troupes and ask them to renew their energy and focus, simply because it’s January. I feel very lucky to say, that’s just the way we are!
Just like the gym poster points out, I’m proclaiming ‘Joyful January’ for The Business Creative. I’m saying ‘NO’ to New Year, New Us. It’s a new year, but it’s the same us. The same energy, same drive, same focus, same values, same fun, same plan. I’m also going to take a few more lessons from this poster:
🎉 We will take the leap and try new things
🏆 We will set ourselves challenging, yet realistic goals
👀 We will focus on what we do as a company, and not just what we look like (on social media)
🌟 will be bright, bold and non-stereotypical
So, here’s to Joyful January and a very exciting year ahead!
