Blesma Members take on a Marketing course at the Shard

Three Blesma Members have been given an exclusive lesson in digital marketing by world leading marketing agency Jellyfish.

Back in March, Blesma Members Paul Findlay, Luke Morrison and Stewart Harris attended a pilot five-day intensive course run by Mike-Alpha, with training provided by Jellyfish at the Shard, London.

Through the course, which has been backed by Facebook, Mike-Alpha aims to educate the UK Armed Forces community in marketing theory, strategy and planning.

Military veteran and head of channel partner marketing EMEA at Facebook Andy Mihalop co-founded Mike-Alpha alongside Blesma Member Si Harmer, aiming to help military service leavers, veterans, spouses and dependants learn digital marketing skills to either build a second career or run their own business.

Andy said: “There is a pool of talent in the Armed Forces community that no one is tapping into in the industry, so I saw an opportunity to train the community and help them into employment or with their own business.

“This is our first course, but we are already talking to Jellyfish about a couple of people going into their marketing academies. We are also hopeful that three of the spouses will be going to work for a large corporate, and five or six people either going into internships or full-time roles. Four veterans here are early stage entrepreneurs so we are hoping what they learn here will help their business grow.”

The Digital Marketing course is split across theory and practical group sessions focusing on marketing, advertising and social media. Once completed, students are then paired with a Marketing Academy mentor, who works with them over six months to enhance their skills.

Former Private of the Parachute Regiment, Luke is hoping the course will help him with his fitness endeavours. He said: “I came into the course with an open mind, knowing I could benefit from the course in the future as a personal trainer, with my drone filming and for future Blesma opportunities. I’ve had a little experience with Facebook adverts with my fitness, but I never really knew anything about it. Now, I know about how to target an audience by location, interests, age and more. It was a brilliant course.”

Blesma Interviewed Vox-pops Luke Dalton, serving Royal Marine and Co-founder of Contact Coffee:

You have quite an already established brand with over 46,000 followers on Instagram. So, what attracted you to this course?

I’m due to leave the Military in November but we’ve been running Contact Coffee for four years in the background. We’ve built our following organically, self-teaching from YouTube, getting things wrong, and learning from those mistakes. But I’ll be transitioning into that business full-time, so the course was an opportunity to learn more about marketing for the benefit of the business. It was too good to turn down.

What have you learnt from the course?

You’ve got to spend the money. It’s an educated gamble. It’s just taking a risk, but we’ve got the knowledge from a course like this now. I’m fairly confident we can set a certain budget to a task and achieve what we want.

Now you’ve finished the course, what are your plans?

Use everything that I’ve been taught and push more money and more effort into the marketing side. After doing this course, if any more courses come up, I’d definitely get on them. Even if I’ve got to pay for them that’s how worthwhile it’s been. I’d definitely recommend it!

Blesma also interviewed Kim Williams, Military Spouse:

How did you find out about the course? 

Only recently have Army spouses in my area been given opportunities to come through for course to help them get back into work. There’s been a huge initiative and movement within our garrison welfare to do more, so everything that comes up, I will put my name down for. There was a job fair at our garrison and Andy was giving a talk and mention the Digital Marketing course. This was the first course I’ve attended, but I’m focusing on re-education and seeking out the different avenues I can go into.

What are your plans now you’ve completed the course?

The course has been brilliant. I know there are a couple of job opportunities in digital marketing available through Recruit for Spouses, so hopefully now I’ve done this course I can look at employment. Recruits for Spouses are there to support spouses back into a working role. They are good at what they do.