Project Description

Case Study

Giving Bidvest’s delegates confidence in the accuracy of their writing, and teaching them how to write different types of marketing copy

Quick facts

About
Serving over 60,000 customers, Bidvest is a leading foodservice wholesale distributor based in Buckinghamshire. The company delivers food products, catering services and equipment to schools, pubs, hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Courses

  • Grammar and Proofreading Quick Wins
  • Structured Marketing Writing

Catherine Hinchcliff, Bidvest’s head of customer marketing, wanted to make sure that her team’s copywriting was as accurate as possible – or as she put it, watertight. Catherine’s team produce a wide range of marketing copy for multiple channels and needed a robust process for proofreading any document.

Additionally, whilst most team members were very experienced at writing a particular type of copy, their roles were changing. Each team member would soon be expected to write different kinds of collateral. Catherine needed a course that would teach delegates how to write a wide variety of marketing copy – without too much time out of the office.

The training solution: A Grammar and Proofreading Quick Wins course as well as a one-day bespoke Structured Marketing Writing course

After consulting with Catherine, Writing Machine Academy adapted its Grammar and Proofreading Quick Wins course to suit the team’s particular needs, and to ensure that all content was in line with Bidvest’s own style guidelines.  The course took a step-by-step approach to the fundamentals of proofreading best practice, incorporating a range of exercises to give delegates the opportunity to practice their new methods.

Writing Machine Academy also tailored its Structured Marketing Writing course (Fundamentals) to cover all the areas Catherine’s team required. Beginning with the fundamentals of messaging and structuring, the course went on to cover writing for blogs, press releases, brochures, the web and social media, as well as tone of voice and jargon busting.

Client feedback

Delegates were asked to give a score out of five on a list of feedback questions such as ‘Quality of the training content’, ‘Quality of the trainer’ and ‘I have learnt new techniques that will improve my writing’. The average score across both courses was 4.5 out of 5.

“It’s given me the confidence to challenge the spell-check!”
Bidvest delegate

“Proofreading Quick Wins has given me the confidence to challenge the spell-check!”
Bidvest delegate
“Above and beyond my expectations. I was anticipating very dry material, but the course was incredibly interesting… it will enhance my writing.”
Bidvest delegate
“Structured Marketing Writing was fantastic, and really relevant to the Bidvest business.”
Bidvest delegate