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Our small business goes big!
Aug 22Today is an incredibly exciting day for Martha Brook! We’re thrilled to have won the Small Business Goes Big Enterprise Nation competition in partnership with Adobe and JCDecaux to have an ad on over 100 bus shelters around the UK… and it goes live today! Read on to go behind the scenes with Martha and the lovely Lucy, our graphic designer, to find out more about what Small Business Goes Big is, what this means to us and a sweet prize for spotting us…
What is small business goes big?
Small Business Goes Big was launched earlier this year by small business support platform Enterprise Nation, Adobe and JCDecaux Nurture to unleash small business creativity and help firms update their brand identity and reach more customers. To win the prize of over £100k in advertising space, our lovely graphic designer, Lucy Beckett designed our very first ad using Adobe Express, the new design app which helps entrepreneurs and small businesses when it comes to anything design related, from website pages to social media assets and more. As we’ve worked with Enterprise Nation ever since Martha started the business 9 years ago, we jumped at the chance to enter this fantastic competition.
Our very first advert
We thought long and hard about what we would want on an advert that would be shown to millions of people on bus shelters. After a few brainstorming sessions between Martha, Lucy, our Graphic Designer and Christie, our Marketing Manager, our main aim for our Small Business Goes Big advert was to get across the essence of Martha Brook. How could we capture the imagination of people going about their daily lives with our advert? After looking at a range of different options, we felt we had to give our Life Planner its’ time to shine, and Lucy set out to bring our vision to life using Adobe Express.

When we found out we had been hand-picked by the judges as one of ten winners, we were (and still are!) over the moon! Opportunities like this, especially for our small business, have such an incredible impact and we’re delighted Martha Brook will be shown to lots of new people all over the UK.
We caught up with Lucy (aka the newest Martha Brook celebrity!) about how she feels about having her design publicly shown to millions around the country with her name emblazoned on the top of this ad along with her photo: “I couldn’t quite believe it when I found out that we had won! I’m really proud to have my design featured on digital screens all over the UK, it’s definitely a pinch me moment! It’s such a big moment for both myself and our brand, we couldn’t be more excited.”

Come check it out and win!
Running from 22nd August to 4th September, we can’t wait to see how many of you lovely people spot it! In fact, we’d love to see it so much that we’re giving away a £50 gift voucher to one lucky winner who takes a photo with our ad and uploads it to their social media tagging us @marthabrookldn and using the hashtag #smallbizgoesbig. You can find out the nearest ad to you using this handy map! Good luck!

N.B. We’re on a rotation with other small businesses too, so you might have to wait a minute or two to see ours. If you have the time to, go give the other small businesses some love too!
We never thought we’d have the opportunity to do anything on this level this year so we’re beyond thrilled and grateful for this incredible opportunity from Enterprise Nation, Adobe and JCDecaux Nurture.
P.S. If you want to explore our Life Planners – as seen on ads around the UK (we couldn’t resist!) – you can find them here. And, If you do manage to find our ad, there is a treat waiting for anyone who scans its QR code!
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