Today sees Liquid celebrate its tenth anniversary of being in the Channel Islands!

The last decade seems to have flown by, as I’m sure it has for so many of us. It isn’t until you pause to look at how the world has changed over the last ten years, however, that you realise what a significant period of time a decade is.

The last decade has seen riots in England, the horrific Earthquake in Japan (leading to THAT tsunami), Nelson Mandela died, a future King was born. Flight MH370 vanished, the Ebola (and Zika) pandemics took hold, the Panama Papers were released, the Paris Climate Change agreement was signed by 195 nations. Brexit came to be, women in Saudi Arabia secured the right to drive and a fire tore through Notre-Dame Cathedral. We have seen political instability and unrest, significant economic challenges, terror attacks and too many natural disasters, though I’m not quite sure even that last decade prepared us for the year that was 2020.

And the last decade has been one of the most significant to date for the communications industry with the explosion of social media and digital marketing (which saw Facebook announce it had surpassed 1billion users back in 2015). Ten years ago, social was about pictures of your lunch, community management of your social pages and social supplementing media relations activity, which led on tone of voice and messaging. Today social is key to engagement with societies, a fundamental business tool (especially in regards to retail) and part of brand and reputation management, holding businesses and organisations to account. When Buzz Feed is working in partnership with the BBC and when ‘fake news’ makes the dictionary, you know that social and digital are here to stay.

I have also recently been thinking about my personal achievements of the last decade. I am now Lisa Downes (not Gutcher) and am mum to two wonderful young children. I am the Channel Island director of Liquid with responsibility for our Jersey and Guernsey operation, I was recognised as the national CIPR Excellence Awards Young Communicator of the Year (back when I was eligible to be classed as ‘young’) and more recently I was proud to be named the PRCA City and Financial Professional of the Year. (I blush as I hate mentioning these awards but in the scheme of things, they are significant moments of my last decade).

Over the last ten years Liquid has also won many national and regional awards for our work, being recognised as the PRCA Workplace Champion in 2020 was a highlight and we continue to be the only Channel Island consultancy to feature in the prestigious PR Week Top 150 list. But it’s not the awards that I’m most proud of, it’s the people behind those glossy gongs.

Liquid could not have achieved all of those awards, grown to the 4^th largest public sector consultancy in the UK (PR Week) and developed into the business it is today if it weren’t for the hard work, dedication, enthusiasm and fun spirit of our constantly growing team in the Channel Islands and in Birmingham.  The last year has thrown challenges at all businesses, but our continued success is absolutely down to our team. We’ve supported one another and come together to respond to lockdown with incredible creativity.

So, on that note, I’d like to share a heartfelt thank you to the wonderful Liquid team, our supportive, loyal and enthusiastic clients and our hard-working suppliers, without whom this decade long journey in the Channel Islands would have been very different and definitely far less memorable. Thank you, each and every one of you. Here’s to the next ten!