For Back to School season and during the month of September, we have run with our key strategic partner Art Material Company (AMC) in Ireland (online retailer only) a successful digital campaign on W&N Promarker sets including the below actions:

• Web banners
• Landing Page (1K views)
• FB/Instagram ads + Google ads ( 6K views / 4K clicks / 700K impressions)
• Ecom product page updates (3K views)
• Blog post
• Newsletter ( 46% OR / 2.5% CTR / 6% conversion rate)

We are quite pleased with the way of working we have built during this campaign resulting in sales growth ( +153% vs prev 3 months and +293% vs Sept 2021)

Looking forward to building future successful campaigns with them based on our learnings during this promarker campaign.

…

…

Leaders Plus

Just wanted to share that I spent a very enjoyable and thought-provoking morning yesterday at the Leaders Plus Line Manager’s workshop on behalf of one of my team who has recently returned from maternity leave and is currently one of the fellows.

I hadn’t come across Leaders Plus before I joined Colart a couple of months ago, but I was really impressed with the programme and the quality of discussion in both our pre-work and the sessions yesterday. The facilitator did a great job of mining some rich insights and learning around how we can better support working parents.

As a working mum with a young child myself, I’m so pleased to see Colart supporting this initiative, and I would encourage anyone with recent or imminent returners on their team to consider the programme! You can find out more at Leaders Plus – Supporting working parents to pursue their careers or speak to your local HR partner.

…

How to live and eat cheaply

Part 1 – Learn to love your slow cooker!

Most of us have a slow cooker at the back of our cupboard, and if you don\’t they are pretty cheap to buy (£16-£25). Consider getting one that will fit a small chicken or joint because even if cooking for a small household, you do not need to fill the pot the rest of the time, half full or less is fine.

If only cooking for 1 or 2, you can freeze portions for the days when you are in the office and want a quick tea.

Make sure you have a low and high setting and preferably a keep warm setting as well. You do not need to buy a branded one and they can last for years and years.

And here is the good news, they cost about 5p an hour to run and are great for making cheaper cuts of meat tasty and tender as well as non meat dishes.

If you are working from home, you can put a casserole on in the morning and by the end of the day your tea is ready, and you have the bonus of a lovely cooking smell all day.

They are simple to use, just brown off onions, meat and vegetables in a frying pan for a short while, add your herbs and spices, and some stock. Then pour into the slow cooker, put on the lid and leave for 5-8h. The liquid does not usually cook down too much so you might want to use flour to thicken it. There are lots of good recipes online, try BBC Good Food or Jamie Oliver. I recently did Beef Ribs (as I did not want to use my oven for 6h with the current costs) and they were great.

I am sure I am preaching to the converted, but if you are new to slow cookers, why not try one?

…