About the Bus

On the road

Our mobile unit has been fitted out with our branding, materials and IT and will make its debut at Honley Show.

Head of marketing Andy Kemp said, “It’s an impressive piece of kit and includes laptops with internet access, plasma screen for presenting to small groups, air con, tea and coffee, and a range of other features. There is also flexible messaging internally and externally so that we can tailor our branding to suit the local audiences.”

The unit has a busy, pre booked schedule over the next weeks and months. It will serve a multitude of audiences and the following are only a sample of activities already booked or in the pipeline:

Local shows – mainly for pre start audiences with a focus on rural areas but plans for others including Melas

Market days – predominantly pre start but also established businesses through up front marketing with a regular presence at market days. There is a pilot event in Wetherby shortly where there is a lot of interest from their proactive Chamber of Trade.

Business Parks and Trading Estates – as above with pre marketing to trading businesses

Large scale redundancies – operating as a mobile outplacement unit to promote self employment as a valid career path

Higher and Further Education – promoting self employment to young people at their colleges and universities

Working in partnership – we have serious interest from member organisations and will be working with colleagues across the business to explore other opportunities to work in partnership, particularly with local authorities and others.

The mobile unit will play an important role in terms of our visibility, particularly in traditionally harder to reach rural audiences. It’s also a very tangible way of us responding to a range of audiences and needs. We are producing a short promotional video which will be on the website shortly – this will also be a very visual way of presenting our added value services for local communities to partners at local (and regional) level.

We’re really keen that colleagues are actively involved and would like to demonstrate the mobile unit to you in your local areas as it travels around the region.

We are always looking to develop and improve our services so let us know what you think – Mel Longden in the marketing team is leading and will also be happy to talk to you in more depth.