Marston’s is an established UK pub and hotel operator. Founded by John Marston in 1834, it prides itself on providing pubs and bars for everyone and every occasion.

Over the years, Marston’s has grown from a local family-run business to a PLC with 1,500 pubs and 12,000 employees.

The requirement

With so many different pubs and employees, Marston’s has lots of good news to tell. Internally, these positive stories are shared via different channels, including the printed staff newspaper, Marston’s Life and Marston’s Messenger bulletin updates.

Given the fact there’s so much great news to shout about all of the time, the busy central communications team at Marston’s HQ needed some copywriting support. More specifically, they needed an extra brain and pair of hands to help write the staff news stories and company updates. It was essential the copy reflected Marston’s fun, personable and down-to-earth style.

The solution

Marston’s worked with SK Copy Co on an on-going basis, briefing us on all of the stories they needed us to write in time for each bi-monthly print run. More importantly, we took the copywriting briefs and made them our own, recommending new angles, coming up with ideas and challenging suggestions – all things the comms team wanted us to do!

Initial briefs for front page news, features, NIBS and photo stories were shared as they became available, and we worked within the required timescales to interview the relevant people and write the stories with lots of creativity and flair ahead of deadline day.

We also produced content for Marston’s social media channels, which involved using the comms team’s internal templates to ensure consistency, while also making sure certain key messages and hashtags were incorporated.

The results

We helped produce the content for Marston’s Life for over a year, which included six editions of the popular staff publication, as well as numerous batches of social media posts.

The copy we provided always nailed the briefs and required minimal amends.

Here’s just one of the positive snippets of feedback we received from the comms team: ‘Thanks so much for this. I really loved the energy and pace of the piece – it’s a really great fit for our business and the conversational style is exactly what we aim for!’

To find out more about what it’s like to work with SK Copy Co, take a look at our growing list of client testimonials.

In the meantime, to discuss your content strategy and production requirements with us, email sanina@skcopyco.com