Deputy Programme Director for BSc Marketing (From September 2024)

In my current role as an Employability and Placement Advisor, my key focus is to increase the number of students going on placement from the school of Marketing and Management. In 2017/18 I achieved a 25% increase in students on placement from my school. My role involves regular communication with members of the academic staff, and students. I hold regular 121 and drop-in sessions where I advise students on the best way of achieving their aim of getting a placement. Alongside this I use social media, and other digital communication networks such as email and Moodle to encourage students to engage. I am heavily involved in the teaching across all the school’s employability modules and am involved in the assessment of the Marketing student’s mock interviews. I advise students in all aspects of the marketing recruitment process, from reviewing their CVs, through interview prep and assessment centre prep. Alongside the timetabled teaching, I run tailored workshops on specific areas of the placement recruitment process according to the students’ needs.

In this role, I worked closely with the Module Leader and took responsibility for the delivery of the module to one cohort. This included pre-lecture prep on the taught content where I sought to put the weeks' topic into context using up-to-date examples to engage with the students in my class. As well as delivering the content, I acted as a first marker for the module's coursework assignments. Furthermore, I provided academic support and answered all the student's queries as they arose.

This was a maternity cover and I moved into a permanent role within the team.In my first role at Coventry University, I worked closely with all students within the School of Marketing and Management, advising them on how to maximise their employability within Marketing, Events and HR. I also work closely with the Employability and Placement Advisor for the School to encourage second-year students to take up the placement opportunities with them and help prep students for interviews. I held three drop-in sessions a week, where students could come to get help with any employability queries and get constructive feedback on their outstanding applications and CVs. I organised, advertised and ran workshops designed to improve a student's employability, including LinkedIn and creating CV Websites. I worked closely with academic module leaders to ensure that each of the courses' employability module is relevant and up-to-date. I communicated with students across a myriad of platforms including Email, Social Media and Phone.

AUTOPA Limited is a stalwart of the UK Street Furniture industry. A family run business, AUTOPA has been manufacturing street furniture, access control and cycle parking products in the UK for over 60 years. A highly customer focused company, AUTOPA prides itself on providing the highest quality products and best customer service in the industry.

Whilst at ByBox I was responsible for the management of their marketing campaigns for ByBox Field Support- the B2B arm of the company. Within this role, I worked closely with a number of external agencies, including creative, print and PR agencies. As well as external agencies, I worked very closely with the sales and account management teams.As part of the sector process, I was responsible for ensuring that we had the right collateral for the sales people at each of the exhibitions we attended. Before joining ByBox all the collateral was generic, however, through the sector process, I started to tailor the literature to each of the different audiences. To ensure that ByBox’s literature stood out from others at the event I sought advice from our print agency on unique print techniques such as velvet lamination, or high quality paper.As well as content creation, I was responsible for the full marketing mix on the B2B side of the business. This included booking and briefing adverts, organising and setting up events, e-marketing and briefing the PR company of any news relating to any of the sectors. When researching new sectors, I carried out some desk marketing research to ascertain if the sector was viable. One of my biggest achievements in this role was to get ByBox nominated for the Channel Provider of the Year for this year’s CRN awards. Hopefully come November 13th this will be upgraded to winning from nominated! Creating this submission I worked very closely with the sales team, to ensure that all the language was correct for the sector and the information was correct. This was my first award submission that I had created, so as you can imagine, I was very happy to see ByBox was nominated.During the first half of my employment at ByBox, I took full responsibility for the marketing department whilst the Head of Department was on maternity leave. This included responsibility for the marketing budget, and the other members of the marketing team.

Climate Center are the UK’s leading supplier of commercial refrigeration and air conditioning equipment whilst Pipe Center is a leading supplier of commercial & industrial pipe and heating systems. Excellent interpersonal skills, a strong attention to detail and a commercially focussed view is essential in this role.Working as part of the product marketing team, this role requires excellent interpersonal skills, strong attention to detail and the ability to segment large amounts of data to create targeted customer promotions. My biggest achievement in this role is working with the product managers to create targeted customer offers to boost basket spend on add on items.I am proficient in segmenting both internal & external customers to create and deliver impactful and accurate product focused promotions. I have experience of d promotions and campaigns to internal & external stakeholders and am a confident & comfortable presenting to large groups of people.The aim of my role is to create incremental value for Pipe & Climate Center through the implementation of promotions & communications looking at both branded and own label product ranges.

Working as part of the Core Store team, I was responsible for the creation, development, implementation and analysis of seasonal and non-seasonal cross-category events and themes; in-line with strategic and financial objectives. Through these events, my aim was to drive customer spend in the key energy platforms of the brochure, whilst encouraging customer trial into the lower penetration categories.I was responsible for generating ideas and creating events that support a contemporary brand image whilst maintaining customer and representative energy. The events that I created had to be commercially viable and drive the KPIs of the campaign, contributing to the overall performance of the brochure. Prior to the quarterly planning workshop, I carried out a post-mortem analysis on the PY cross-category events, reviewing how events have performed and suggesting ways in which they could be improved for future campaigns. From my analysis, I would suggest which products / prices/ merchandising worked best in each of the energy spots to make future brochures as strong as possible.Working closely with cross-functional teams was essential for creating the events and brochure energy points, and I developed strong working relationships with team members in a variety of different departments. This helped greatly when working with all the teams to ensure deadlines were met and kept in line with the overriding brochure schedules.Attention to detail and communication were key skills for this role.

Working as part of the Core Store team I was responsible for the managing the brochure plans for my set quarters (Q2 and Q4) from initial workshop through to brochure sign off. This involved working closely with other departments and teams to ensure all deadlines were met.As part of the planning process, I was responsible for creating the financial presentations for my assigned campaigns and quarters, which I then presented at the brochure review meetings to heads of category and senior heads of department. Through my weekly tracking of sales and margin, I highlighted any issues and was responsible for creating recommendations to ensure that the key KPIs were met. In-depth knowledge of all the stories and themes of my campaigns was essential for this role, including the merchandising of all the sections. I reviewed the merchandising mix for all my campaigns to ensure that the potential of the energy spots and space were maximised.Due to Avon's brochure led business model, I was always working on around five to six of campaigns at one time, all at different stages of the planning process, therefore strong organisational skills were essential. Further to this, I was responsible for the management of two direct reports, including managing their development and their workload where necessary.I was promoted from this role into the Senior Campaign Role as part of Project Darwin (a restructuring project within the Marketing Department)

This was a highly analytical role that functioned as the link between the Purchasing and Marketing teams. Although not a true "Marketing" role, I strongly believe that my the in-depth knowledge I gained of Avon and the campaign procedure was developed because of this role.As part of this role, I was responsible for providing the Purchasing team with product forecasts at key stages in the brochure creation process and logging them into the planning system. These would then be used by Purchasing to purchase the products. Avon works on a Just In Time delivery system, so ensuring that the forecasts were as accurate as possible was vital. I would use vast quantities of historical data in order to create my forecasts, taking into account product style, season and price.I was integrally involved in the product selection process at workshops, working closely with both the Marketing Team in the UK, but also discussing product options and forecasts with my counterparts across the EMEA region. I was promoted from this role into the Quarterly Campaign Planner in November 2010.

At Brethertons I was part of a small marketing team of 3, and like at Amefa, I had the opportunity to be involved in a wide variety of projects and areas.Networking Clubs: I was the main organiser and point of contact for the 2 networking groups run by Brethertons- the ONLC and the BBBC. I managed the marketing database, ensuring it was up to date. Using Front page I created the monthly e-shots, and also booked both venues and speakers for the meetings.Creating Marketing Collateral: I worked with the printers and other members of the marketing team to create, amend and proof read the corporate and departmental brochures using the NetPrint program online (based on InDesign). Digital: I was responsible for updating the LawSense blogs and twitter feeds

I was a member of a very small, but close-knit, Marketing team, and as a result had the opportunity to be involved in a wide variety of projects and areas. Advert Creation: I worked closely with our external design team to create adverts for key trade publications, from quote generation, through creative brief to delivery of the artwork. I formed strong working relationships with the design team throughout my time at AmefaCompetitor Analysis: I reviewed the marketplace activity to ensure Amefa was competitive with the high street and our key trade competitors. I was responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Competitor Database, from which I reported on market trends every month.Events and Trade Shows: I took the primary role in organising the logistics, merchandising and promotions for the UK based trade shows. Working in a cross-functional team, this required organising stock, transport and creating any literature packs and POS required to make the stand at the show as effective as possible.