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Adobe Brand Builder: How the winning businesses will spend their cash grants

Adobe Brand Builder: How the winning businesses will spend their cash grants

Posted: Fri 25th Aug 2023

Earlier this year, Enterprise Nation and Adobe Express teamed up to launch their Brand Builder programme, an initiative to help small and medium-sized businesses take their design skills to the next level.

As part of the programme, we ran a competition for 20 small businesses to win cash grants of £250 that they could use to promote their ventures and grow and enhance their brands.

Here, we talk to some of the grant winners and ask how they plan to spend the money to market their businesses.

The winners

Winners of the Adobe Brand Builder competition: Joey Li (and co-founder), Holly Farndell and Tonya d'Araujo

Joey Li, Leiho

We're so pleased that Enterprise Nation and Adobe have supported Leiho with this grant! It means we finally have a marketing budget we can spend towards targeting more people and reaching our audience.

As a small business, allocating a marketing budget can be hard when you have lots of expenses and outgoings. So we're excited to get creative and see what we can do!

Instagram: @leiho_uk

Holly Farndell, freelance illustrator

There are so many ways to grow my brand as a freelance illustrator, but I think a really important focus for me currently is upping my content game to help me connect with both new and familiar faces in my network, including customers, clients and like-minded creators.

That might be creating new imagery for my online shop, investing in equipment for video content on TikTok and YouTube (something I'd LOVE to venture into!) or making a super-clean and cohesive brand across my website and newsletter.

Plus there are plenty of opportunities for me to throw some learning and skill development into the mix, which I think will be both challenging and super-interesting.

Instagram: @hollyfarndell

Tonya d'Araujo, Cacao Pow Deo Bar

We're very grateful that Cacao Pow Deo Bar has been selected for the Adobe Express Brand Builder grant competition. This grant will go towards marketing and PR opportunities to help us further build brand awareness.

Instagram: @cacaopowdeobar

Winners of the Adobe Brand Builder competition: Samantha Thomas, Tom and Mike Hay, and Jocelyn Darko

Samantha Thomas, Tide and Seek

Wow, thanks so much, Enterprise Nation and Adobe! We're so excited to have been one of the lucky winners. We'll put the money towards the next photo shoot that Tide and Seek has planned for September. We can budget for that extra model we wanted to use!

Instagram: @tide.and.seek

Tom Hay, HayDay

As a start-up e-commerce brand, this grant is going to help us run a campaign across our socials, Instagram, Facebook and on Google, in order to increase visitors to the HayDay website. A huge thank you to Enterprise Nation and Adobe!

Instagram: @haydayhq

Jocelyn Darko, DARKKINS

This is a first for us, and we're so grateful to Enterprise Nation and Adobe Express. As we're already in the process of rebranding, this grant will be so helpful in projecting DARKKINS as a premium barrier-boosting skincare brand.

Being a winner of the Brand Builder competition means that I can afford a month of PR for DARKKINS to increase our brand visibility. Thanks to Enterprise Nation and Adobe Express, I'll be able to put this grant towards rebranding DARKKINS to reflect the clean, ingredient-focused company that it is.

Instagram: @darkkinskin

Winners of the Adobe Brand Builder competition: Kate Nixon and Laura Clempson

Kate Nixon, Novel

Since starting our bookselling business Novel last summer, we've been keen to rebrand and update our logo. As a small business, we try to pump money back into the local economy wherever we can and support other businesses and creators in the area.

I'd absolutely love to pay a local graphic designer to refresh Novel's brand now we're slightly more established and know what sort of thing we're after.

Instagram: @novelsheffield

Laura Clempson, Clara and Macy

I'm thrilled to have won a £250 cash grant from Enterprise Nation. It'll be a great help with marketing Clara and Macy and levelling up our branding.

I plan to use the grant towards new branded packaging materials for our orders and digital marketing during Q4, our busiest season!

Instagram: @claraandmacy

Lindsay Forbes, Laconic Jewellery

I plan to put this grant towards growing my business Laconic into a fine jewellery brand. I'm currently working on developing a new e-commerce website and this grant will help me create imagery and graphics. I'll use these on the website and for PR, to raise brand awareness through marketing campaigns and events.

Instagram: @laconic.jwls

Relevant resources

Enterprise Nation has helped thousands of people start and grow their businesses. Led by founder, Emma Jones CBE, Enterprise Nation connects you to the resources and expertise to help you succeed.

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