Lockdown Diaries Boxed Red Marketing

To keep all our businesses fresh in our minds (and not just the shops!) we’ve been asking a few of them to tell us more about themselves; how they are getting on during lockdown and what they are missing most about our town.

Here we have Knutsford resident, Ruth Gresty of Boxed Red Marketing, who gave her answers to Sandra Curties, Town Centre and Marketing Officer for Knutsford Town Council.

Tell us about your business?

After becoming frustrated with the quality of service offered by marketing agencies, Janna founded Boxed Red Marketing in 2009. Her key objective was to offer the highest quality added-value marketing solutions for clients. We have been delivering on this goal for over 11 years now working with a large variety of clients across multiple sectors. We are a close-knit team of 14 (plus our team sausage dog Sammy) with strategists and planners, digital experts, accounts managers and designers – we buzz off creative problem solving and opportunity grabbing. As we are all working from home we have a team slack call every morning at 9am and often have an online team quiz in the afternoons – this is great for keeping in touch and having a bit of daily banter – but we all really miss being physically together as a team. We have always called Knutsford our home (we are based on Princess Street) and feel very passionately about our town which is why we have developed the knutsfordhighstreet.com website for our community of businesses and residents alike.

How have you been helping clients during this time?

Having such a wide variety of clients across multiple sectors, we have experienced first-hand how Covid-19 has impacted a range of businesses in different ways. From travel to food and hospitality, property to furniture manufacture and nurseries – every sector has been impacted in some way. We have such strong relationships with our clients that we have worked closely with each one of them to navigate the best solutions for them now and in the future. Different ways we have helped our clients range from seeking and acting upon opportunities in this new environment including diversification and government funding opportunities, redesigning their marketing plans and communication messages to best fit the current climate, making sure their online presence is as strong and visible as possible, creating strategies to ensure success on ‘the other side’ and enabling some to pause their activity where they have completely stopped trading in the short term. We are all, as businesses and as people, on our own personal coronacoasters, but we genuinely believe pulling together, sharing ideas, resources and solutions, or just being there for a chat, will help us all on this bumpy ride.

Can you share what you’ve applied for in terms of grants and funding?

We have recently received our small business grant, which came much appreciated. We feel very fortunate that we are still open for business and have managed to retain our full team without furloughing anyone. We do believe, however, that some of the best ideas happen at unprecedented times and we believe the Knutsford high street website was one of those. We will continue to look for funding opportunities from government bodies like Innovate UK for both our clients and ourselves to ensure we make the very best of these innovative ideas.

Where are you up to with putting plans in place for when Knutsford re-opens?
We can’t wait to be back together as a team in our lovely Knutsford offices – we all miss our favourite shops, cafés and restaurants and can’t wait to visit them again. We also miss our walks to Tatton and seeing our team dog Sammy. We are putting plans in place to return to our offices as soon as it is safe to do so, however with some of us being parents and a team member busy brewing her baby, there are various factors which will guide our decision on this. In terms of knutsfordhighstreet.com and other local activities, we will proudly continue to work with the council to ensure the best community communication as Knutsford comes back to life.

What message do you have for other businesses?

Online visibility, communication, diversification of your service or product offering and flexibility on how people can access your products or services are all key in these tough times. Having spoken to a number of local business leaders on Zoom calls over the past few weeks and also been in touch with many of you on the development of the high street website, I have witnessed a real sense of local business community with personal situations being shared alongside ideas and potential opportunities. Where some have felt down, others have picked them up. My biggest message to other businesses is that we are all impacted in our own personal ways, but if we stick together as a business community and help each other along the way, we are bound to be stronger now and in the future.

What do you miss most about not being open?


As a team we miss being together and creatively bouncing off each other. I even miss waiting for the microwave to be free, negotiating on who does the brew round and finding my Philadelphia has been eaten! I also miss being in Knutsford town every day with the vibe and people, getting my favourite toastie (ham, cheese and tomato – yum!) from the market and buying something I ‘really needed’ from one of our lovely shops. If I am to be honest (as much as I love them to bits) I also miss missing my children and family!

Lockdown is over where will find the Boxed Red Team?

On a Knutsford pub crawl!