Marketing and PR firms hoping to fire up region with new joint venture

Castle Donington-based firms Poppy PR and Passion Marketing have joined forces to offer a public relations and marketing service called IGNITE.

Poppy PR, which provides traditional public relations services, crisis management, social media and event planning, amongst other services, will be working in collaboration with Lindsey Newman-Wood, of Passion Marketing, the marketing and innovation strategy, implementation and planning firm.

Tina Clough, who set up Poppy PR 10 years ago, said: “We have been in a relationship with Passion Marketing since we moved our business to Castle Donington in January.

“We clicked and got on really well and have been talking over the last few weeks, especially during lockdown, about how our businesses are progressing.

“We saw that businesses on our books were diversifying what they offer, or ‘pivoting’ and coming up with new products, services and income streams, with bakeries launching delivery services, packaging companies producing personal protection equipment (PPE) and people thinking outside the box.

“Lindsey suggested a joint offering between our businesses to help people to market something new or change the way they were working previously, to keep their businesses going.

“She will come up with a marketing or innovation strategy to help businesses reposition themselves and we will deliver the PR work.

“Lindsey will also offer ongoing support in terms of marketing support and marketing coaching to ensure the strategy is working.”

Clough added that she was particularly looking forward to offering business coaching.

Marketing and innovation consultant Newman-Wood, who set up her business nine years ago, is currently delivering marketing workshops for the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership Growth Hub and the Leicestershire Growth Hub.

She said: “We could talk ourselves into a recession right now, but we are on a mission to help businesses to get out of these challenging times and not just survive but thrive!

“We already do it with current clients and the purpose is to help small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the East Midlands.

“This is an exciting collaboration and I think we can offer a better package with the two businesses supporting each other.”