So, I’ve been on my new apprenticeship for just over two months now and the time has flown by! I’ve already learnt so much and can’t wait to see what the rest of the course has in store for me… 

My role at Purple hasn’t changed too much since starting my apprenticeship. As I’ve already been with the business for over 2 years, I know my tasks and responsibilities as part of the team pretty well by now. One thing that has changed though, is fitting my learning around my work for clients and for Purple. Although I’ve done this previously, when I did my Level 3 Digital Marketer, it’s been a learning curve fitting in this new course as my role at Purple has changed since I completed my last apprenticeship!  

This course is different to the Level 3 too, not simply as it’s a higher level, but this one encompasses marketing as a whole - both digital and traditional! This means we’ll cover things from the delivery of a whole campaign across channels, to the legal and stakeholder considerations, and product development - something I don’t do much of at all at Purple, especially not for our clients. I’m really looking forward to the variety of topics we’re going to be looking at! 

Since starting my course, I have attended a few training sessions which have been brilliant and we’ve already covered a range of areas, including stakeholder relationships, branding, and crisis management. I’ve also met three different coaches - Ellis, Rachel, and my development coach Rebecca.  

All the E-learning supplied by Apprentify is really engaging and really helps me to solidify my learning before and after the classroom sessions. I’ve really enjoyed the classrooms and online learning so far - it’s been really nice to meet new people from businesses that are in the most part quite different to Purple and hear their experiences of marketing! We recently worked as a team on a live crisis management task which has been one of my favourites so far. It was really fun - albeit a little stressful - to work in ‘real time’ on a project as a team and react to various updates and situations! Fingers crossed nothing that major will happen to our team, but if it does, at least we are prepared😂 

I’ve learnt so much already since the start of my apprenticeship, and I’m certain this will continue as I go through the course! It was really useful to be able to recap various aspects and theories in marketing that I don't necessarily consider day-to-day in my role at Purple, such as more traditional marketing channels, the marketing mix, and the consumer decision making process. I’m keeping track of all of these new things I’m learning on a knowledge, skills and behaviour spreadsheet to get me prepared for EPA (which feels a mile off at the moment but I know it’ll fly round!). 

I’ve also had a couple of coaching sessions with my DC Rebecca, which have been super helpful and offer that extra bit of support to make sure I’m on the right track! Myself and Sian, our JCP apprentice who I’m mentor to, had a joint coaching session where we discussed personal marketing, and growing a network on LinkedIn to help benefit our marketing knowledge and build strong connections. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can use these calls to improve our learning and establish ourselves as marketers. 

I’m so excited to get stuck into my apprenticeship further and learn lots more about marketing to broaden my knowledge and skills! After completing my Level 3 apprenticeship earlier in 2021, I know just how valuable the learning is and can’t wait to keep going.😎