Getting the barn in order​ with Yeo Valley

If you have ever met Alex or Chris you won’t need me to tell you how engaging they both are. Put them in a room together and they deliver their materials with oodles of fun & energy. My team are already asking when they are coming back…​”
Niall McKee, ​Brand Director, Yeo Valley

The need to put marketing in the driving seat​

Founded in 1994 on a family farm in Somerset, Yeo Valley is one of Britain’s leading organic brands and a well-established player in the British dairy category. ​

The business kicked off 2022 with a bang: a superstar new Brand Director, ex Diageo and ex Fever-Tree Niall McKee, and big, bold growth plans.​

The challenge for Niall was to build belief at senior levels in the role marketing should play in driving that business growth – and then come good on that promise!​

To deliver on that growth, Yeo Valley needed to invest in the people behind the brand. That’s where LockSmith came in.​

Back to basics ​

You can’t effectively build and scale a brand if you don’t understand marketing fundamentals. ​

Niall had inherited a high potential marketing team. The problem was that none of his marketers had been formally trained. There was no consistency: varying levels of experience, different backgrounds and no established way of doing things. ​

To make marketing a key driver of long-term growth, Yeo Valley needed raise the floor on capability and create a common language & set of processes. ​

Our solution was a three-day end-to-end foundational marketing skills programme, a tailored version of our flagship programme, The Key to Brand Management. This comprehensive training taught the team everything they needed to know and do to complete a full brand planning cycle.

The solution

Core Marketing Principles ​

From The Long & Short of It to Byron Sharp, we curated the must-know marketing theory and made it hyper-relatable with category case ​studies. The theory was ​brought to life ​with interactive​ team activities, ​games and energisers.​

How to be a brilliant marketer​

Using live Yeo Valley business issues, we trained the team on the marketing cycle from start-to-finish, from consumer understanding to writing strategy, planning, and execution.​

We shared expert insight with guest speakers from exciting scale ups like Tony’s Chocoloney & Lily’s Pet Food to excite & inspire. But inspiration isn’t enough. We designed brand planning tools, templates, and processes to empower the team to apply their learnings as soon as the training ended.​

Working with sales & retailers ​

In a commoditised category like dairy, it’s no good being a brilliant marketer if you don’t know how to commercialise your plans. ​

We tailored the programme to include a one-day workshop training the team to unlock amazing relationships with sales teams & retailers, as well as teaching them core commercial skills such as how to write & deliver better selling propositions.

One year later

Yeo Valley commissioned us to return in 2023 to deliver a second training programme: a deep dive into briefing and insights, two core marketing skills. ​

We are proud to have empowered the team with the confidence & competence needed to drive an effective marketing agenda forward at Yeo Valley.​

We’re here to help

For more information or to book a training course, contact us at chris@locksmith.works or alex@locksmith.works. Let’s unlock your team’s potential!