by Sunny Balcony team
Sunny Balcony Team of the Year: celebrating Jacaranda Hub Marketing Team
The Sunny Balcony Group exists as a platform for growth, a place where businesses are built, leaders are developed, and people are given the opportunity to put their innovative ideas into reality. Hosting our Christmas Party at the end of last year provided a moment to pause and recognise the people who drove the organisation forward. Held at the Opera House, it was an evening that celebrated the achievements of our companies and the collected effort behind them. A highlight of the night was the Team of the Year award, celebrating the exceptional work and support provided across the group, with the Jacaranda Hub Marketing Team crowned champions for 2025.
Managing Director Nicola Mills defined what the award stands for “recognising the team who demonstrated outstanding performance throughout 2025. Consistently delivering exceptional results and strengthening our organisations through their collaboration, innovation, and commitment.”
This award winner was chosen by the Sunny Balcony Executive Team, who came together to reflect on the outset objectives set at the outset of 2025 and which team best delivered against them. Following strong and closely contested discussion, the Marketing Team secured the title in a competitive field.
About the Jacaranda Hub Marketing Team
At the core of Sunny Balcony Group sits Jacaranda Hub, a company that crosses paths with every brand within our portfolio. Reflective of the jacaranda branches, the “Hub” hosts multiple departments from finance, business development and operations to HR and marketing, offering comprehensive support to our wider network. This means that the marketing unit doesn’t serve one brand or one industry. In fact, they serve multiple businesses at different stages of their lifecycle, each with different needs.
The Team of the Year award recognises teams who go above and beyond and are valued by colleagues and leaders across the business. Over the past year, the Jacaranda Hub Marketing Team operated as a true partner to the wider group, supporting each business and helping shape success across all brands.
Recognising the complexity that comes from understanding each customer base and brand’s objectives, Marketing Director Kate Downing described this award as “a huge accomplishment for a team that services multiple brands in multiple industries and at varying stages of maturity.”
The marketing team’s success comes down to strong foundations, clear structures, weekly meetings and matching tasks to employees’ strengths. But what ties it all together is their collaboration to ensure the highest standard is executed on every brief.
2025: A year worth counting
The award for team of the year is a reflection on performance, collaboration, and impact, not just recognition. Some highlights delivered by the Jacaranda Hub’s marketing team this year include:
- supported the launch strategy of three new companies – Wollip, Impactiv and Ready Energy
- market development and rebrand of The Cheeky Beans Café
- built three new websites – Wollip, Ready Energy and Sunny Balcony
- delivered more than 140 events. Across 20 unique formats, including major international ones
- rolled out new processes and systems alongside AI tools to sharpen their efficiency.
The numbers tell one part of the story. But more importantly, behind those milestones is a network that, as Marketing Director Jen Manuel puts it, demonstrated “talent, resilience, and collaboration” not as isolated qualities, but as a way of working to help each partnering business set and achieve big targets in the past year.
What is to come:
In recent months, the marketing team has been embedded in business unit strategy sessions across all brands they support. Not as observers, but as active contributors helping to shape the direction and approach for our companies in the upcoming financial year. That means being in the room where strategic decisions are made, bringing a marketing lens to corporate challenges, and ensuring that the ideas and plans have a clear demand in the market.
Those plans are now being built with a clear direction to align marketing activity to measurable outcomes and elevate how the marketing function as supporters to our wider portfolio.
Leadership in practice:
One of Sunny Balcony’s central commitments is to visible leadership, not just as a role, but as something people can see and aspire to.
Marketing Directors Jen Manuel and Kate Downing provide direction and hold the strategic thread across all brands. But the individuals’ members themselves Anna Burson, Jaweria Saeed, Vanessa McGloin, Nikita Horiatopoulos, Farquhar MacDougall, Olivia Walsh, Conor Richardson and Laís Arcanjo are the ones who bring ideas together and execute as one to achieve the shared direction of each company.
Each of them, across different projects, has taken ownership of execution, relationships, and the standard of work they are known for. All while knowing that celebration, not just hard work, is part of Sunny Balcony’s DNA.
Part of the prize went towards something they chose for themselves, an experience at Kaboo Studio. A creative reset, a chance to be together outside the office and a way to mark a year of achievements.
That’s what makes the award more meaningful, it wasn’t awarded to one result, it was earned by their collaborative approach to achieving outset targets.
Congratulations to each and every creative mind within the Marketing Team, your support and dedication are greatly appreciated by every business that is part of the Sunny Balcony Group.