Purpol Marketing Limited - Most Valuable Business Development Professional

Company: Purpol Marketing Limited, Chippenham, United Kingdom
Company Description: Denise O’Leary is the founder of Purpol Marketing who are bid writing and marketing strategy experts holding an impressive 95% win rate with £3.5bn opportunity secured to date. Her book WINNER has been an Amazon No1 bestseller. Denise measures her success on how much her clients win and is sharing knowledge as an author, mentor and speaker. Purpol coach on how to win awards, grants and bids.
Nomination Category: COVID-19 Response Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Valuable Business Development Professional

Nomination Title: Remote digital internships addressing the COVID-19 Challenge

Denise O’Leary is the founder of Purpol Marketing and has 25+ years of experience within the Construction and manufacturing sectors.

Purpol Marketing are bid writing and marketing strategy experts holding an impressive 95% win rate with £3.6bn opportunity secured to date.

Denise engages with the UK government at No10, the Cabinet Office and the House of Lords to share knowledge on how SME businesses can win critical bids as well as marketing their brands to win business. She helps businesses define critical elements in their bidding approach. Denise speaks internationally to showcase how effective marketing principles are key to construction companies in order to deliver values led messaging to the benefit of all clients and measurers her success by how much her clients win.

Denise is passionate about sharing her knowledge with the next generation and has provided numerous internships and work placements – from a few weeks to 6 months . She speaks at her old school on career development and interview training and has mentored worldwide especially for women in construction and those developing their business careers.

“Denise excelled as a mentor. She has taken a genuine interest in my studies and career progression.” Bronwyn Jesse

Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):

COVID-19 raised huge education challenges, specifically for students. Work experience opportunities evaporated, companies are on recruitment freezes and students are left without opportunities to apply their knowledge.

Denise O’Leary business development lead published 2 opportunities for Summer 2020 internships at Purpol Marketing and was inundated with applications. Rather than turn anyone away, she made the internships available to all applicants.

Eight students joined her remote digital internship, designed to provide real life marketing experience over the placement. From online courses, research, website creation, direct marketing, email marketing infographics and social media – the whole spectrum of marketing was covered. All returned to further education or gained employment.

Students first took Purpol’s Online Courses, then a live zoom 3-hour webinar explained the concepts. Focusing on the ‘Marketing for Recovery’ course they were then tasked to develop a marketing plan for the Marketing for Recovery course using Purpol Brand guidelines.

Some chose to create graphics or videos, others chose to focus on social media, video or indeed a/b besting of different direct mail messaging. The interns then presented all their results back to each other in a hosted Zoom call so they could experience a virtual marketing agency.

Jade Lucas “Thank you for the experience and knowledge I have gained from this internship! It will be something I value and has really helped my industry understanding.”

Ray Vandyck “Thanks again for this invaluable experience!”

Educating these inspirational, adaptable millennial marketers was a privilege, setting them on their career path.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):

Most marketing agencies have reduced staff, cancelled training programmes and stopped staff personal development. Denise and Purpol have increased their training provision, all for free to help students gain real life practical experience. All training was remote via webinars and zoom, being totally Covid secure and meaning geography was not a limitation to learning.

Feedback was incredible:

Diane deGuzman “this opportunity has let me learn and do new things which I would have never thought of attempting and has also given me a chance to see how the other interns have approached the tasks exposing me to great ideas.”

Georgina Newham “Doing a degree is great but the only way to get experience is to get experience. It feels rare that a company seems to genuinely want to help students who need experience and I feel lucky to have been given this chance by Denise.”

Charleen Dunn: “These activities allowed me to reflect on the content and consolidate my learning.”

Having run internships for 7 years, Purpol knows the long-term benefits provided including confidence, presentation skills, digital knowledge and adaptability.

Kaitlin Sugrue “When I was thinking about getting an internship, I never expected it to be in the new world of working from home. Due to current events, the internship changed to remote working. I was very lucky to have had the pleasure of working with Denise I’ve learnt a great deal in marketing strategy, understanding client needs, social media, communication skills and presentation delivery.”

Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):

All the interns created a blog about their experience, the detail of these blogs can be seen in full on the www.purpolmarketing.co.uk website and are detailed below:
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/internship-review-from-diane-de-guzman/
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/purpol-marketing-placement-ray-vandyck/
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/internship-blog-by-jade-lucas/
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/georgina-newham-the-new-world-of-remote-internships-working-with-purpol-marketing/
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/internship-blog-from-charleen-dunn/
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/my-experience-of-remote-working-with-purpol-marketing-the-new-way-to-intern-kaitlin-sugrue/

The content was also created as a press release to encourage other organisations to take on interns, even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
https: //purpolmarketing.co.uk/purpol-marketing-supports-8-digital-interns-during-covid-19-crisis/ also attached
Purpol generated media coverage on the following business publications:
https: //www.businessbiscuit.com/8-news/6593-purpol-digital-internship also attached
https: //www.tbeswindonandwilts.co.uk/business-news/purpol-marketing-interns/ also attached

One of the projects was to develop a marketing campaign for a new online course ‘Digitally Marketing for Recovery’ The students were introduced to tools such as Canva to create graphics and Mailchimp for developing direct marketing emails. An example of the social media graphics developed can be seen in the document – ‘Example of student projects delivered.’

The difference in the approach was very interesting – some went to create a website, others graphics for social media. The students also developed example direct marketing campaigns, and a video that Georgina developed to help market the ‘Marketing for Recovery’ online course (uploaded separately as Purpol Infographic YOUTUBE) – this really showcased how she pulled together all the ideas from the course and applied themto a meaningful digital marketing approach. All of this was done in their homes, remotely with online mentoring.