A Year of Going with the Flow. And Making Stuff Happen.
A year ago this week, I joined Ripple.
Before that, I'd spent years freelancing, working with agencies and clients across the UK, from London to Belfast and plenty of places in between. I loved the variety. Every brief was different, every client had a different challenge to solve, and every project taught me something new.
There's a freedom that comes with freelancing, and I wouldn't swap those years for anything. They gave me the chance to work across almost every sector imaginable, from financial services, retail and healthcare to education, hospitality, technology and the public sector, writing everything from TV and radio commercials to websites, employer brands, social campaigns, animation scripts, brochures, press releases and strategic messaging.
Along the way, I was fortunate enough to work with organisations including Aardman Animation, Barclays, Dyson, Ford, GCHQ, Halfords, Jaguar, Kainos, MAN Truck & Bus, National Trust, Siemens, TikTok and Vodafone, alongside countless brilliant SMEs whose stories deserved every bit as much attention.
But I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to be part of a really good team.
Not a big team.
Just a small group of talented, curious people who care about the work, challenge each other, laugh a lot and quietly raise the standard every day.
Looking back, there's a neat symmetry to it all. One of the first pieces of work I was recognised for was winning a D&AD Student Yellow Pencil for a campaign for Thrislington Cubicles. A manufacturing brief. A construction product. The sort of challenge I had no idea would eventually become the thread running quietly through my career.
Twenty-odd years later, here I am, helping manufacturing and construction businesses become clearer, stronger and easier to choose.
And I couldn't be happier about it.
One of the biggest surprises over the last year has been rediscovering just how extraordinary these industries really are.
If you judged this place by the news, you'd think the only things happening on this island were political rows, constitutional debates and whatever fresh outrage had captured everyone's attention that week.
Meanwhile, in factories, workshops, offices and construction sites across Ireland, people are simply getting on with it.
They're designing products, engineering solutions, manufacturing components, solving problems, building schools, hospitals, homes, roads, data centres and infrastructure. They're exporting around the world, investing in new technology, creating skilled jobs and quietly driving two economies forward.
Northern Ireland's manufacturing sector alone contributes more than 13% of economic output and generates around a fifth of all private-sector turnover. Across the island, manufacturing and construction support hundreds of thousands of livelihoods and remain among the strongest foundations of our economy.
We don't celebrate that nearly enough.
Perhaps because making stuff happen is rarely as noisy as talking about it.
That's what I've grown to love most about this sector.
The people.
There's a quiet confidence about manufacturers and construction businesses. They don't tend to shout. They focus on doing the job well, improving what they do and earning trust over time. Whether it's a family business becoming an international success story, an engineering team solving an impossibly technical challenge or a manufacturer investing in more sustainable production, there are remarkable stories everywhere you look.
They simply need telling properly.
That's where Ripple comes in.
My role sits where strategy, creativity and language meet. Sometimes that means helping a client uncover what genuinely makes them different. Sometimes it's shaping a brand, writing a website, launching a product, developing an employer brand or creating thought leadership that helps people see a business differently.
The medium changes.
The principle doesn't.
Clarity wins.
What I've enjoyed most over the past year is working with a team that shares that belief. Strategy isn't something we bolt on. Design isn't decoration. Content isn't filler. We ask questions, challenge assumptions, look for the bigger picture and build communications that reflect the quality of the businesses behind them. It's thoughtful work, properly done, and it's a privilege to be part of it.
The exciting thing is that we're only getting started.
Ripple continues to evolve, and alongside it we're building ClickBuilder into a natural extension of what we already do, helping clients bring brand, content, SEO, digital marketing, social, AI and search together into one joined-up strategy.
Because that's where the opportunity lies.
The businesses that will thrive over the next decade won't necessarily be the ones spending the most on marketing. They'll be the ones whose strategy, brand, digital presence and communications all pull in the same direction, making it easier for customers to understand them, trust them and choose them.
That's the work I want to do more of.
One year in, I've realised I didn't come to Ripple simply to write about manufacturing and construction. I came to understand the people who quietly make things happen.
Helping them tell those stories feels like exactly the right place to be.
Here's to the next chapter.