This National Apprenticeship Week, we are sharing how one of our employer partners - Fresh Nous - has utilised Apprenticeships and how this has impacted the organisation.
Celia Felgate, Director of Fresh Nous, shares her experience:
"Fresh Nous is a small but mighty marketing agency, and apprenticeships have been a core part of how we build capability, keep our thinking fresh, and create genuine opportunities for people at the start of their careers. We are Investors in People, so developing talent is not a side project for us, it is part of how we run the business.
Marketing changes fast. Apprenticeships help us stay future-focused by combining day-to-day client work with structured learning that keeps pace with new tools, channels and best practice. It also aligns withour values as a business. We want to open doors for people who have the drive and potential, and then support them to grow into confident, capable professionals.
We use apprenticeships primarily to recruit new talent and grow them inside the agency, with the flexibility to upskill existing team members when the right opportunity comes along. Over the last decade we have worked with TDM to support four apprentices, and it has become a reliable pathway into our team and our culture.
We chose TDM because they understand the reality of small business and agency life. The support feels practical, responsive and human.The training fits around the pace of client delivery, and the guidance helps our apprentices turn learning into real output quickly. We also value the consistency. We have worked with TDM for over ten years, and the relationship has always felt like a partnership rather than a supplier arrangement.
Most recently, two apprentices completed the Level 3 MultiChannel Marketer apprenticeship and are now progressing onto degree apprenticeships. That progression matters to us. It shows confidence, ambition,and a strong foundation built through a mix of training and meaningful work.
Our apprentices are fully involved in agency delivery. They contribute across client management, campaign planning and management, data analysis and reporting, content creation, and day-to-day optimisation across channels. They have supported multi-national campaigns and worked on an incredible variety of products and audiences, from Christmas parties and wellington boots through to complex, compliance-led sectors like fire alarm systems. That breadth helps them build commercial awareness quickly, and it strengthens our delivery as a team.
Apprentices bring energy, curiosity and fresh perspective. In an agency, that is a real advantage. They ask brilliant questions, challenge assumptions, and help us spot opportunities we might otherwise miss. They also help us keep our standards high because we are constantly articulating our thinking, documenting processes, and improving how we work. The result is better capability across the whole team, not just the apprentice.
Apprenticeships are a key part of our long-term talent strategy. They help us grow specialists from within and reduce reliance on a difficult recruitment market where experienced marketers are in high demand.They also help us close skills gaps in a practical way, especially infast-moving areas like analytics, paid media optimisation, and multi-channel performance reporting. Apprentices learn, apply, reflect, and improve, and we benefit from that momentum immediately.
“Working with TDM has helped us build a sustainable pipeline of marketing talent. As a small business, apprenticeships give us the structure to develop people properly while benefiting from the fresh perspective and pace they bring to our client work.” "
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