DMA Talent's Discover Digital

‘It was really fun, I connected with lovely people and learnt a lot. What more could you want?’ Discover Digital student.

Discover Digital was developed by DMA Talent and Barnardo’s and was funded by the DM Trust, European Social Fund and the National Lottery, through the Big Lottery Fund. The programme ran in November and enabled a group of Brighton-based youngsters to work with a dedicated progression coach towards getting them back into employment, education or training.

Kay Tarry from Barnardo’s commented, ‘We are already very grateful to National Lottery players and the European Social Fund for making the Make Trax programme possible, and we’re thrilled to have additional support from DMA Talent, allowing us to offer another great opportunity to local young people.’

TrustedHousesitters set the students a brief on the Monday, giving them the rest of the week to pull together a response which they presented back to a very excited panel of TrustedHousesitters employees on the Friday. The brief challenged students to get at least 1,000 new pieces of pet and travel UGC (in photo or video format) from their members for use in marketing activity around Christmas.

James Hillhouse from Commercial Break led the workshop across the week and was brilliant in helping to develop the group’s response to the brief. He commented:

‘I think we all accept now that this industry simply has to attract talent from a wider, more diverse pool. My frustration with this is that we all spend too much time agreeing with this and not enough time actually doing something about it.

What excited me about this project is that it was an industry body rolling up its sleeves and getting stuck in. The choice of collaborating with Barnando’s on this was, I think, inspired. This wasn’t diversity light, this wasn’t smoothing the path for people already in the industry, this was reaching out to a group of people who need a break but aren’t getting it and giving them an opportunity.

There was so much that was rewarding about the programme, but I think it’s worth drawing out two things. The first was seeing so many of the participants start the week doubting themselves, but end the week filled with confidence and energy about not only the experience, but what the future held for them. The second was how tangible DMA Talent made a career in digital marketing seem. By involving local businesses, by securing placement opportunities with them, and by offering the means to continue their learning with IDM training modules, what could have seemed theoretical, suddenly seemed very real.’

A huge thanks to our speakers for contributing to the success of the week: Jason Woodford (CEO) and Chloe Szilagyi (Executive at SiteVisibility), Naomi Taylor (Mr President), Komal Heyler (Head of Marketing at Pure 360), Susie Burdekin (Commercial Break) and Hannah Raymond (Brand Marketing Executive at Boundless).

And, a big thank you to the team at TrustedHousesitters for their support across the week.