apt blog

My week at APT

My week at APT

I just finished my weeks work experience at APT Marketing & PR as I am interested in design. My mum said Apt would be a great place to go for work experience as its good for creative minds, working a week there I agrees! Working here has really opened up my mind to different career ideas that surround design, PR and marketing. The team has been amazing, helping me in any way they could and really getting me involved. I thought I would be making teas. Instead I was editing web pages for real clients. It really got put into perspective when I Googled the web page that I had been working on and my work is on there. It’s a great feeling. Every day came with its challenges and I was more than happy to give them ago.

 My fear at the start of the week was that I might get bored but that didn’t happen at all, even with an 8 and a half hour working day. There was always something new and exciting to do. I think the fact that I was actually doing real work made my overall experience more enjoyable.  Working on banners, editing websites, scheduling social media, writing blogs and designing news letters are just some of the tasks I was given to complete.

My overall experience at APT Marketing & PR has been a lot better than I expected and would pick it over school any day.

My internship at APT - Rosie King

Working with APT since January has been such a great opportunity and has enabled me to gain some amazing skills and experience that I will be able to take forward with me into the future! It has been brilliant coming into the office once a week, and having the chance to work on some big projects alongside the team has been so rewarding and enjoyable.

Every member of the team has been so helpful and friendly and I am so appreciative of their time and efforts in teaching me what they do!

I had the amazing opportunity to help with planning for Cheltenham Beauty Week 2018 and I was also lucky enough to help with the set up for the launch event. This experience gave me a real taste of Event Management and what’s involved, which will set me up really well to start my degree in September!

I also attended the Hatherley Manor Spa preview event alongside Kelly & Jess, which again, was a great insight into the organising and running of events. The sneak peek of the new Spa was an added bonus!

Being able to write creative blogs, write and schedule social media posts, and even produce client event plans and ideas has been so useful and enjoyable. Being given the freedom and responsibility to do so has been really rewarding and has given me a great chance to learn from real, first-hand experiences. Receiving useful feedback on my work and seeing it published is so satisfying and I really felt like it was appreciated.

I am hugely grateful to everyone at APT Marketing and PR for welcoming me into the office and allowing me to get involved with so much of their great work!

My Internship at APT - Emily Schilling

Over Summer 2017 I began searching for a company around Cheltenham, so that I could gain some experience within the marketing industry whilst finishing my final year at University. So, after some emails and a chat, I began at the end of August. I was thrown in head first during the preparations for Cheltenham Festival of Cycling for the Tour of Britain, and quickly got to know the team and the values of the company. The Tour of Britain was a great chance for me to be put under pressure with the team and experience them under pressure too!

The next big stage was the Marketing Cheltenham launch, when I helped prepare for and attended the launch. This was a great way for me to experience the members of the team networking and presenting to a large audience.

During the quieter periods, I helped schedule social media, write creative blog posts and update App content. It is really rewarding to see your work published and shared across sites and social media, it shows that the work is truly appreciated.

Throughout my time at APT, I’ve learnt various systems, techniques and programs that have given me skills to use in the future, as well as given me tonne of experience within the workplace.

APT Marketing and PR has allowed me to meet and work with a passionate and driven team, and I hope that I have the pleasure of working in a team such as this again in the future. Thank you all for teaching me everything you know, giving me advice and being so welcoming!

My Experience at APT - Caitlin Edmunds

Having the opportunity to undertake an internship at APT marketing and PR has not only been enjoyable but has provided me with a platform of industry knowledge that will be useful in the future. I am currently in my third year at the University of Gloucestershire studying Marketing, Advertising and Branding and have thoroughly enjoyed working within the agency alongside my studies.Taking the knowledge I have gained over the course of my three years at University and being able to see them in practice has helped me develop my learning and adapt myself in trying different things, as well as giving me more of an understanding as to what aspects of marketing I aim to specialise in. Having been delegated tasks each day outlined on an individual work list, I was given the opportunity to carry out a range of jobs, learning different aspect of the company.

During my time here, each individual member of staff has made me feel more than welcome and has made me feel like a member of the team, providing me with my own responsibilities as well as allowing me to stand on my own two feet and express my own ideas. I have really enjoyed having the freedom to come up with blog content ideas for clients, take charge of social media scheduling as well as being a part of building website content for clients. I have loved being a part of helping to organise Cheltenham Beauty Week by making sure that information was available for customers online. Being able to see my work published is very rewarding and I would like to thank each and everyone at APT for giving me this opportunity.

My Work Experience - Emma

Choosing the right work experience for you is a very difficult process, as mostly you do not know what to expect when you get there. APT Marketing & pr was certainly the right choice for me, as it has really opened my eyes to see how businesses coordinate daily as not only is it a successful business, but the team I worked with are fantastic.

Admittedly, I was fairly nervous on the first day as I was walking into the unknown and I hadn’t looked much into marketing operates in the business world; but I soon discovered that I was extremely welcome. My first tasks involved drafting some tweets for the Compass Holidays and Bicycle Hub Twitter accounts. I managed to think up some eye-catching puns, including ‘there’s Norway you’re missing out!’ which I think I found far too amusing. This was then following by a campaign write-up, of which I chose the KFC ‘The Whole Chicken’ advert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KykM1kwdaOA ) where I wrote about the controversy of the advert relating to the McDonald’s ‘Good to Know’ campaign.

I then went on to write blogs for The Cheltenham Cycling Festival, of which APT were helping to promote. This involved a post about Chris Froome’s success following his win of the Tour De France on Sunday 23^rd July, which was then posted on the Cheltenham Festival of Cycling website. Throughout the following day, I wrote blogs on a countdown to the Green Bike Trail, a promotion for businesses to download a poster supporting the event and a cycling through the ages post. This was then posted on the Festival blogging webpage. Considering I have never written a blog before I found this somewhat challenging, but fortunately Jessica was on hand and showed me some examples and websites to get me started (and I don’t think they turned out too bad).

I also was able to help with other marketing techniques, as I was given the opportunity to compile some newsletters. This involved using a design software called Canva, which I had never heard of before, where you can create logos and signs to accompany text. It is an extremely versatile website, where I also used it to create photos for my social media tweets and blogs. I was then shown how to put this in the emailing system, where it will be sent to real customers!

My penultimate blog was to be written for one of APT’s clients. It was on a topic that I took great interest to, concerning cyber attacks. This was really valuable as I was able to apply a great deal of economic knowledge from my studies at school; therefore I hope it makes a great read. Following this, I was also shown how to upload and edit their new Bicycle Hub website and how to upload new products, which was actually quite exciting and different as I have not done much website management.

Throughout my time at APT Marketing & pr I have gained many new skills, including manipulation of tweets in a schedule, learnt how blogging acts as a marketing technique and how to use and edit websites through new software to sell products. My experience has been second to none and I absolutely enjoyed every moment! I recommend the business to anyone who seeks experience in a marketing environment with an amazing team! Thank you for a lovely time☺

New Creative Guru for apt marketing and pr

The team at apt has welcomed a new Creative Guru to the office, Dawn Manning.

Dawn comes from an Art and Design background. She studied at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College gaining her First Diploma, Extended Diploma and BTEC Extended Diploma in Art and Design. It was during this time that Dawn realised her creative passion was for Graphic Design. She then went on to study a degree in Graphic Design & Multimedia at The University of Worcester, where her skills and creative drive flourished achieving a First Class Honours Degree.

Dawn loves all areas of Graphic Design and practises calligraphy and baking in her spare-time! She is excited to launch her career and begin her new role as Creative Guru at apt as well as finally graduating!

GCSE Results: Where to next?

We can imagine that many students across the country are celebrating their GCSE Results today. It can be such an exciting and also quite daunting time for young people as they have ultimately found out whether their grades have enabled them to move forward in their education.

There are lots of fantastic options available for students who got the grades they needed and even for those who didn’t, including sixth form, college and apprenticeships.

Here at apt, we love giving young people opportunities to learn new skills in a real working environment; we often have young people on placements and work experience and offer quite a number of places throughout the year! We thrive on helping young people to develop and focus on their future careers. Over the years we have also had a number of fabulous apprentices who have been able to earn while they learn. One of our apprentices even went on to be finalist in the ‘Apprentice of the Year Awards’ as well as gaining much more local recognition too.

We are really pleased to work closely with Gloucestershire College to support their variety of Business courses they have available. Gloucestershire College has a range of Business qualifications starting from Level One that can enable students to learn a whole selection of transferable skills. Having a qualification in Business also has many exciting career pathways such as HR Management, Marketing as well as Administration.

So, if you have just picked up your exam results and you are still not sure on what education path to take next, be sure to visit the Gloucestershire College website. Gloucestershire College will be releasing a detailed prospectus with information about further education, A Levels and Apprenticeship this October, so keep your eyes peeled for that too!

How did you do in your GCSEs? Let us know by tweeting @apt_marketing using the hashtag #gcseresultsday.

My week of work experience at apt - Libby

My work experience week here at apt Marketing and PR has been a great opportunity. It has allowed me to see how they operate not only as a marketing agency but also as a close-knit team.

When I first arrived here on the Monday morning, I felt very nervous as I was unsure as to how I’d be able to contribute to their company and how I would fit in with the team as a whole. However, my worries were soon put to rest within the first half an hour or so as they had me set up comfortably on my own desk and computer with an itinerary of tasks for me to complete for the week ahead (much better than just making teas and coffees!)

Throughout the week, I have had the chance to do a variety of tasks. I started with social media scheduling which involved finding interesting business articles from various sites and composing these into tweets for their Twitter account. I wrote the tweets for this week and was showed how to schedule them using Buffer which enables them to be sent out at a specific date and time. I also conducted a competitor analysis for apt and Compass Holidays, mainly focusing on the website designs of different companies.

Since I had highlighted in my work experience application form my interest in the design aspect of marketing, the team were kind enough to compose an itinerary that had tasks tailored to this. For example, working to the brief that was provided, I was able to design the layout of a new service sheet for the Bicycle Hub. They also introduced me to software which I had not used before, such as Adobe Illustrator and Canva.  Using Canva, I was able to produce several headers for the Compass Holidays e-newsletter using different shapes, fonts and images. Using the same software, I created twitter banners with images from the Wyedean area with a hidden sweet in each one for the Sweet Talking social media campaign. In Adobe Illustrator, I was allowed to release my creative side and get designing logos for the new website. Although I initially found this particular software hard to use, I soon got to grips with it and found myself learning how to create new things. I am very thankful that I got the opportunity to utilise this software as it has developed my computer designing skills which was one of my main aims that I wanted to achieve.

Overall, I have really enjoyed my time here at apt – the week has flown by so quickly! I very much love what apt do, yet I feel the best part about the company has to be their ethos; their continual positive spirit and absolute willingness to help one another out make them able to operate completely efficiently as a team – key characteristics which make them a successful business. Therefore, I would 100% recommend them to anyone thinking of work experience as they’ll not only make you feel welcome but will get you stuck into tasks that you want to do and will actually enjoy. 

On that note, I would like to thank the whole team at apt for enabling me to spend a week in their company and to feel so welcomed. I wish everyone at apt and the business itself every success for the future.

Libby from Sir Thomas Rich's

 

This is just the beginning – leavers blog by Kristina Rickards

Asking me to write a leavers blog is cruel because I can’t even begin to comprehend the sheer amount of things I’ve learnt during my time at apt.

If you’re unfamiliar with my case, then hi I’m Kristina, nice to meet you! I was originally a work experience candidate at apt which somehow transitioned into an 18-month long apprenticeship. However, now it’s time for me to fly the nest, as they say, and move forward onto my next endeavour.

This apprenticeship has given me a clear understanding of the world of marketing first hand, as well as enabling me to not only grow as also as an employee but an individual.

At first I was working on smaller tasks such as market research, drafting ideas for social media, writing blog posts and so on. But as apt saw my potential and hunger to learn, the responsibilities piled on and I was quickly named the ‘expert’ in certain things including our CMS and email marketing platform - I went from a fully supervised trainee to a trusted member of the team.

From copywriting to social media management, graphic design and even budget management – I’ve done it all!

Last year, the team even entered me into the Gloucestershire Apprenticeship Awards! I was a finalist in the Financial & Business Services category and although I didn’t win, it was a gigantic boost in confidence and the whole experience was fab.

However, my growth and development at apt has been more of a personal journey for me.

Angie, the MD, is very encouraging; she loves to push people out of their comfort zones and of course, she did that to me! I am very thankful, not only to Angie but to everyone at apt for mentoring and preparing me for my next step in life. I will miss everyone, but I am very excited to see what my future holds.

Kristina :)

My Work Experience at apt - Ayesha

This week I have had the pleasure of completing work experience at apt and I have really enjoyed my time here because everyone has been so welcoming and friendly. I've been given the opportunity to learn numerous things and although I started the week with some reservations, for example thinking that I would idly be making coffees and using the photocopier, this was most certainly not the case.

Although I felt like I had been ‘thrown in at the deep end’ at the beginning of the week I quickly came to terms with the various roles I was asked to perform. I didn’t expect to be working with clients so when I was asked to do research for an important pitch or to complete blogs for various customers I was thrilled yet nervous. Hopefully, apt were pleased with the work that I completed and I believe I did each task to the best of my ability. It has been extremely rewarding to see blogs written by myself for various companies being published online and I thank everyone here at apt for giving me that opportunity.

Working here at apt I have learnt many things, such as how to use programmes like Tweetdeck, which I found interesting. The office was very easy to work in because everyone else was working hard all of the time; however, there was also a relaxed and chatty atmosphere.

I’d like to take this chance to thank everyone at apt for making my week extremely satisfying; enormous thanks have to go to Angie for presenting me with this opportunity and Jessica and Kristina for assigning me tasks and showing me the ropes. Thank you also to everyone else in the office who were all very friendly, you really made me enjoy my time here. Overall, I would recommend coming to work at apt for anyone if they’re given the possibility!