Twin Creek Media Team Shares Wins and Learnings of 2023

This year was a building year once again. We welcomed two more amazing people, Jocelyn and Alannah, to help with our growing number of monthly advertising clients.

We won a Summit International design award!
And we won a TechBehemoth Marketing award, too.
Double win. Whoop!

Training new people has also identified where our processes are weak. Nothing points out our company's operational flaws, like trying to teach others what we do. All the knowledge in my head, his head, and her head need to get put down on paper (or Google Doc!) and become Playbooks (one of my new favourite words). Turning those operational lows into highs continues to be a serious amount of work, but as they say, “No pain, no gain.”

Podcast! I'm internet famous after the launch of "Between Two Creeks" - a video series about marketing and advertising topics mixed in with personal experiences and lame jokes. By "internet famous," I mean my mom has watched it once or twice besides a few other poor souls that stumble upon our social media channels. ;-)

The economy has been tough this year. Clients are pushing for an ever-better-bang-for-buck. Challenge accepted. We’re looking forward to a great 2024.

A Client’s Colouring Book Sketch (Human/AI collaboration)

Bots rule the web, but will the analytics robots behind the scenes turn bad?

In 2023, Google transitioned from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This shift marked a significant and challenging change in tracking codes, metrics, and report generation. While offering greater adaptability in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, it also made gathering common campaign data much more difficult.

I'm proud of our data analytics and web team for managing this transition seamlessly across all our client accounts. At the same time, we implemented additional tracking software that made up for the shortfall of GA4 to gather valuable insights into user behaviour and campaign performance. This empowers our marketing team with better insights, which turn into optimized websites and enhanced user experiences.

There was an abundance of great projects and campaigns I worked on in 2023, but the highlight of my year is actually the people behind those. I really don’t want to bring up 2020 (ahem… Covid), but that year and the two that followed drastically impacted our in-person connection with our clients.

That changed this year, and I was able to meet with my clients face-to-face a lot more, even travelling to other locations on a number of occasions. I get such joy and motivation working directly with clients. It may not seem like a big thing, but it was the biggest to me.

We’re all in this together!

Well, another year at Twin Creek Media (TCM) is in the books! There's definitely been many wins, given my 8-year (and growing) commitment to the creek. Since joining in 2015, I've seen a lot of changes, and every year end brings a moment of reflection. This year had many high points, such as welcoming new team members, seeing existing clients thrive, and onboarding new clients.

One special note: even though the world was experiencing the so-called "great resignation," TCM was unaffected. Clearly, prioritizing and investing in your team's well-being—shoutout to flexible work weeks!—and growth, along with fostering a strong company culture, paid off. 

Overall, experiencing another year of agency persistence was a highlight for me. We were proactive in ensuring we were prepared for success with the right team in place to serve our existing and future clients better. I realize there's an unknown landscape ahead as we move into 2024 with the rise of the accelerated digital transformation, inflation insecurity, and more, but if my eight years have taught me anything, we will adapt. 

Cheers to year nine!

Wowza, talk about a rollercoaster year! Taking a lil' trip down memory lane, my peaks and troughs throughout the year are all tied neatly in a bow with the tech migrations and fresh software we embraced (big love to Google and the UA to GA4 switcheroo).

What was a potential horror show actually rocketed our productivity to new heights. The bummer of the year? Definitely the grunt work of prepping, physically shifting, importing, and going through the migration with a fine-tooth comb. Not once, but thrice! Anticipating a bright future and a greater use of robots (AI) in the coming year!

Nothing’s sweeter than the payoff after overcoming a challenge.

What a year it has been! I’ve been challenged with many new and exciting website design, video, and branding projects over the course of 2023. As I’m approaching my 3rd anniversary at Twin Creek, I can confidently say that there have been more highs than lows during my time here. 

I was lucky enough to venture to Nelson, BC, this summer and try out the ziplines of our client, Kokanee Mountain Ziplines. Exploring more of BC since moving here from Ontario almost three years ago has been a constant adventure, and having such great local clients at Twin Creek makes it even better!

I’ve also been designing websites for clients such as Jani-King of Southern Ontario, Synergy Landscape Design, creating summer event series commercials for Gostlin Keefer Lake Lodge, and a logo for GO Liquor Studio; I feel like I’ve done it all this year!

This year has brought some new and exciting challenges in my career. I was tasked with taking on many website builds from scratch in a platform that was quite new to me and implementing some really cool JavaScript elements and animations that our amazing design team came up with. This year has tested my skills, and I look forward to learning more of these tools to improve my skills as a developer and programmer, which in turn will help my team and, most importantly, our clients.

On the flip side is the new Google Analytics 4 and the way events and goals are implemented, tested, and tracked. This change in how these events and goals are set up and executed from a development perspective was quite challenging initially and led to many nightmares. But in the end, our developers and data analysts worked together to streamline the process, and I am confident in our tracking and reporting moving forward.

Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

AI is changing everything!

OMG AI! Since the beginning of the year, AI has changed and updated social channels and ad strategies significantly. The highs? Meta’s updates on Advantage+ Audiences have helped us reach more optimized audiences at better CPCs. The AI integrations for visuals and text optimizations have also helped us improve efficiencies in AB testing.

ChatGPT is like having a smart assistant on call—from generating caption ideas to doing advanced data analysis. For example, we created a highly efficient keyword analysis process using ChatGPT— saving us hours of manual work. 

The thoughts that keep me up at night are the uncertainties—we don’t really know how Search Generative Experiences, which Google is working on rolling out, will affect how we do SEO. It’s a lot of testing and backup plans, but the uncertainty is stressy. The same goes for the discussion on cookies—are they entirely gone or just dying? And the complete overhaul in targeting that comes with it is a little scary… exciting, but also scary. So many unknowns going into 2024!