This month Ellen joined the marketing team as our marketing assistant, here is a little introduction to her and her thoughts on her first month in the role.

“I was really excited when I got the call from Nadia telling me that I had got the job at Platts, I’d been living up by Anglesey for five years and it was time to come back home. I’ve had marketing experience from my degree, an internship and a 2-year marketing role, but I was ready for a new challenge in a new role in a new industry.

So far, my time in Platts has been quite varied, every day is something different and this has given me a lot of new experiences but also left my head spinning a bit! My first week was mostly spent in the office with Nadia teaching me all the wonderful things about sawdust and wood shavings, but it wasn’t long until I was out on the road. I was thrown in at the deep end with two massive shows in my first 3 weeks, UK dairy day and the National Ploughing Championships in Ireland. But I have really enjoyed getting out and about, meeting customers, getting to know the farming community and the Platts team.

Attending UK Dairy Day was a bit of a blur, the stand was busy with enquirers and other companies coming along to say hello, as well as a few trade show regulars, but we were able to sneak off for brief breaks to visit other stalls and see the new technologies being used by dairy farmers and the livestock. It wasn’t just my first show, Sioned also attended for the first time, luckily we were able to offer each other support and muddle through, in the end making a good team (the team will be reappearing in October for the National Dairy Show and the Bath and West Show!)

The National Ploughing Championship was a fun week with a lot of early starts which Nadia and I survived through copious amounts of tea and biscuits. The sun turned up for us and record-breaking numbers attended the event, it was really interesting to meet a wide range of people from the agricultural industry and people that we look forward to working with in the future. My role at Platts won’t just be about travelling for trade shows, I will also be populating the social media accounts, writing content for the website (like this blog post), CRM marketing through emails and designing new marketing literature.

I grew up in the countryside surrounded by dairy farms, so I have been surrounded by the culture, but I am aware that I have not had a farming background. So, it’s been really important to me to meet the farmers at the shows and find out about their daily lives. So far, the event that has most helped me with this was the Rearing to Go Conference. This conference has allowed me to meet people from the agricultural industry and hear about issues that affect them every day, the event which was organised by Peter and Paula Hynes, focused mostly on mental health and pressures that a lot of farmers experience. The conference was inspiring, hearing that so many people had struggled and experienced the most desperate of situations, but turned it into a drive to make a positive change was truly incredible. I’ve always been passionate about promoting mental health, so I was excited to hear that Platts are progressing a mental heath strategy over the next 12 months which we will all hopefully be able to work towards.”