SEVEN HILLS SOCIALS

At Seven Hills we pride ourselves on our determination, hard work and willingness to go the extra mile. Similarly, we embrace the opportunity to spend time with our colleagues outside the office and raise glass to recent wins and achievements together.

We host monthly ‘First Friday Drinks’ at a local favourite, The Queen Adelaide. The early finish on a Friday means we see a majority of the team wrap up and head down to the garden and welcome in the weekend.

In addition to this, we schedule larger, quarterly team socials. Recent socials include: bowling at All Star Lanes, feasting at Putney Pies, and a round at Putt in the Park – conveniently located right next to the office.

Fridays at Seven Hills

Each Friday at Seven Hills we enjoy a whole team catered lunch together, this is soon followed by our weekly drinks trolley and, more often than not, the Friday quiz.

INTERNAL TRAINING

We have developed a series of training sessions that are led by members of our senior team and run internally each quarter.

These sessions give the team a greater understanding into the tools we use and the day-to-day running of our campaigns.

PRACTICAL TRAINING SESSIONS

• Joining client accounts
• Newspaper reviews
• Media monitoring
• Selling in and pitching to the media
• Client Handling
• Time management
• Packaging a story
• Editorial
• Day to day tools: Gorkana/Factiva/Roxhill

SEVEN HILLS ACADEMY

Our Academy Sessions welcome well-known figures from the Seven Hills network to share their experiences and mission.

From CEOs and founders, to campaigners and comedians, Seven Hills has welcomed a diverse group to the Academy. Recent speakers include:

• Ajaz Ahmed, Founder and CEO, AKQA
• Edie Lush
• Wilfred Emanuel-Jones, Founder, The Black Farmer
• Will King, Founder, King of Shaves
• Rory Bremner, Impressionist, comedian and public speaker
• Paul Lindley, Founder, Ella’s Kitchen
• Liz Seward, Airbus
• Kevin Cahill CBE, former Chief Executive of Comic Relief
• Chris Blackhurst
• Lord Karan Bilimoria

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT ALLOWANCE

Our annual personal development allowance sits alongside our internal training programme The aim of the allowance is to provide the funding for you to attend seminars, workshops and classes to enhance your professional development during your career at Seven Hills.

The allowance is £250 per year and requests can be made very simply by emailing/speaking to the Operations Manager.

So far we have seen people attend blogging masterclasses, a Photoshop day-long course, the DigitalAgenda Impact Awards and a paid-for-seat at the changing face of Fintech and UK Banking dinner.

Other options include clubbing your allowance together as a group to purchase a training session of a higher value, e.g. a session from an expert on how to get the most out of social media for a campaign.

Seven Hills team members are encouraged to monitor regular industry relevant events and training courses. These are circulated on a monthly basis, however, we recommend looking at events and courses from the following sources:

• PRWeek events
  www.prweek.com/uk/events
• PRCA courses
  www.prca.org.uk/training/courses
• Media Training
  www.mediatraining.ltd.uk
• PR Moment events
  www.prmoment.com/events
• Gorkana events
  mygorkana.com/welcome/dashboard
• London Press Club
  londonpressclub.co.uk/event-directory

TEAM RECOGNITION

The small things make a big difference. Over the years, Seven Hills has marked and celebrated team accomplishments in different and unique ways.

In addition to our annual awards and coverage of the month, we take the time to celebrate the smaller achievements. Whether it’s knockout coverage, our events team knocking it out the park or the first-class work of our Design Studio we believe these wins should all be recognised and celebrated internally.

Recent recognition has seen team breakfast or lunches, impromptu drinks, bottles of champagne and Selfridges vouchers for the team to enjoy. In addition to marking team anniversaries, birthdays and other mile stones.

DUKE OF YORK CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR AWARD

The Seven Hills Duke Of York Award takes place at the end of each year and invites clients teams to submit their pitch for the Campaign of the Year.

The Seven Hills Duke of York Award first took place in 2015 and saw the shortlisted campaigns – British Business Bank, Advertising Week Europe and Simply Business – presented by The Duke of York himself at the Seven Hills offices. His Royal Highness visited the office to listen to the pitches and present the award to the winning team, Simply Business.

Last year Graeme Malcolm OBE, CEO and Founder of M Squared Lasers, handed out the award to the Innovate Finance campaign, with a special commendation given to the GP Bullhound campaign. Both presenters, Claire and Henry, were later invited by His Royal Highness to visit Buckingham Palace.

JP MORGAN CORPORATE CHALLENGE

This year we saw 15 members of the team head to Battersea Park to take part in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge. The team were out in force (even sporting matching branded t-shirts) to complete 5.6k around Battersea park and enjoy a well-earned drink in the sunshine afterwards.

SEVEN HILLS SPOTLIGHT

Our Spotlight sessions provide regular opportunities for the wider team to come together and celebrate a job well done.

Each month, individual client teams present to the wider team and share how they approached a recent campaign or project. Highlighting best practice and leaving the team with a deeper understanding of what they’ve been working on.

These sessions are an opportunity to learn, ask questions and share ideas and insight.

To have a project or campaign you have recently been working on showcased at a the Seven Hills Spotlight, please speak to the Operations Manager to schedule an appropriate time.

STRAYOVER
BATTERSEA DOGS HOME

Seven Hills will be supporting Battersea Cats & Dogs Home in their first ever ‘Stray Over’.

This is a new fundraising event for corporate teams to support the work of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home with 10 members of the Seven Hills team due to give up their warm beds and home comforts to spend a night sleeping outside at Battersea’s iconic site.

ANNUAL TEAM AWAY DAY

Our annual team Away Day is an inspiring and engaging day for the whole team to spend together outside of the office.

This year, we kicked off our day with a team breakfast in Central London before heading to the new Unruly Clubhouse in Whitechapel for a mid-year presentation and a series of spotlight sessions from the team.

After wrapping up at Unruly we headed over to Swingers crazy golf for a team lunch and a quick nine holes. Following our sporting activities, we headed to Eight Club’s new roof terrace for sundowners whilst enjoying London’s skyline.

It has become a Seven Hills tradition to not disclose too much information ahead of the day and keep the team guessing on how each Away Day will unravel – here’s to the next.

DIGITAL BUSINESS ACADEMY

Digital Business Academy is a free online platform created by one of our former clients. It is created for anyone who might want to expand their digital skill base.

The content has been written in conjunction with UCL, Cambridge University Judge Business School, Founder Centric and Valuable Content. We selected four courses that are relevant to the work we undertake and recommend that everyone invests the time in completing these.

The courses are very easy and accessible mainly consistency short video tutorials, with practical advice and tips. We have suggested four recommended courses below, but do feel free to pick the lessons that are most interesting to you.

Build a Brand

Understand Digital Marketing Channels

Run a Digital Marketing Campaign

How to Use Social Media for Business

The courses take 30 minutes to complete online and you can return to explore the topic over 5 hours at your own pace.

MISSION BOOTCAMP

Throughout the year we run a number of Mission Bootcamps, these are day long workshops where we invite undergraduates to spend the day learning the skills of campaigning, before allowing them to try them out in fun, real world challenges.

At the end of the day, they pitch their ideas to the entire Seven Hills team. It’s not only a practical and engaging day but is how we spot young emerging talent to fuel our graduate programme.

Each year we appoint Campus Ambassadors from a number of Universities who are responsible for talent spotting undergraduates and help us to reach out the the student community.