Home Business Events Yorkshire Marketing Experts Unite To Help Local Small Businesses Fly In 2019

Yorkshire Marketing Experts Unite To Help Local Small Businesses Fly In 2019

Deborah O'Grady and Jo Swann launch a Marketing Masterclass

This week two established figures from the Yorkshire marketing sector are coming together to launch a New Year workshop that’s intended to help small businesses to find the confidence to grow and evolve during 2019, with their support.

The ‘Brandology’ workshop – Your Brand & PR Masterclass will be run by Deborah O’Grady, a brand and business growth consultant, and Jo Swann, founder and director of Chocolate PR who between them have over 35 years of experience and are both on a knowledge sharing mission to help empower other female entrepreneurs to evolve their brands.

The two female entrepreneurs will guide small business owners through the same brand process Deborah and Jo have used to create big name brands, defining the business’ purpose to help them communicate with meaning and motivation to attract the right customers for the right reasons. Attendees will also learn how using PR can help engage and excite people around their business, expertise and values, to make sure they stand out against their competitors.

Deborah has over 20 years’ experience helping brands and agencies – both large and small – to grow and prosper. Having worked with big brands such as Hugo Boss, Silentnight beds, Asda and Irn-Bru, as well as working client-side, in agencies, and setting up her own agency, Deborah has a huge breadth of knowledge to help take businesses or brands to the next level.


Deborah said: “I see time and time again businesses stunted because they haven’t nailed their brand – they don’t have the confidence in the business because they don’t have the confidence in the brand – and once this is addressed and strengthened the power is immense. Business growth comes, new doors open and business owners feel empowered again. I’m really looking forward to helping our delegates achieve this!”.

Jo launched Chocolate PR nearly 15 years ago, after working in media, marketing and PR agencies, to challenge the way PR was being done by the bigger agencies and offer a more personal service, also tapping into her journalistic background to help generate visibility for clients. She has worked with companies of all sizes including the likes of Whistles, NSPCC, learndirect, Marriot Hotels, Yo! Sushi, Dale Carnegie, Skipton Building Society to name just a few and won many awards along the way but her mission now is to help small businesses, and particularly female entrepreneurs harness the power of PR.

Jo said: “I am passionate about supporting small businesses in making PR work as a cost effective, creative marketing medium, to help them tell their story and have fun doing it. Having carved a niche in helping female entrepreneurs tell their story and harness the power of PR I’m on a mission to knowledge share more than ever to help women feel more comfortable with PR and understand how they can use it.”

The workshop is aimed at those who are: struggling to grow their business or feel stuck; keen to evolve their brand but unsure where to start; embarrassed about their brand as it doesn’t do them justice; finding it difficult to explain clearly and with differentiation what their business does; feeling invisible; aware all their messaging is different but unsure how to fix it and tell their story; looking to rebrand; looking to raise their profile.

By the end of the workshop, attendees will: have a clear understanding of branding and how it helps build their business; have clarity on what they stand for and their brand values; know their brand voice and how to use it; discover their brand story and how to share it; learn how to define their target market and what motivates them; know why researching competitors helps uncover meaningful insights; have a clear understanding of their unique brand story and how to communicate to your audience; gain new knowledge on how to use PR to expand reach; have learnt how to write a business story in a press friendly way using our proven press release template; gain insights into how journalists work to help identify PR opportunities to get in the press for free.

Attendees will get: A full day of interactive support, along with Brandology templates and guides, followed up by post workshop 1-2-1 sessions with both Deborah and Jo Swann to help attendees build upon what they have learnt.

The Brandology experience ensures: passionate specialists with vast experience of working with big brands; quality tried and tested processes that have helped household brands; theoretical and practical based training; small class sizes; and a 1-2-1 coaching call post workshop to help with the next steps.

The Brandology full-day workshop will be taking place the 18th January at Dakota Deluxe in Leeds.