Hillsgreen Welcomes Sophie Needham
Hi, I’m Sophie. I have recently started at Hillsgreen as a Content Marketing Executive. I came from a background in the beauty industry, so to switch from selling makeup on Ecommerce to representing some of the biggest names in the Agricultural Industry has been an adjustment… but a good one.
Whilst I’m not a farmer, my dad was. He took over the farm from his dad and brought 4 kids into the world, he loved dairy farming, but he soon realised that he just wasn’t making enough money to support a family of six. So, when I was 2, he sold the cows and moved on to his next venture- barn renovations. (You can imagine his excitement when I told him I was interviewing for a position at a Digital Marketing agency that specialised in Agriculture!) I might not know all of the technical jargon, but my rural upbringing has meant that I have a great appreciation and connection to the industry I work in.
I discovered my love of Digital Marketing when I was 18 selling clothes online that I had painted, printed, and sewn up; I knew I was creative, and I knew I liked fashion, so I combined the two and found that my ‘bespoke, handmade’ clothes were a hit! This got me thinking about my future and what I wanted to do, I enjoyed looking into the imagery and language that I’d use to capture my target audience and that’s when it hit me… I was going to pursue a career in Digital Marketing.
Once I’d graduated from college, I decided I was going to do the gap year thing, ‘find myself’, explore and all of that jazz. Well, that didn’t happen. Flights were booked and quickly cancelled again as the storm of Covid took over the world- and all of our lives. So I taught myself to use Adobe software, looked into how I was going to get into Digital Marketing and was fortunate enough to land myself in an apprenticeship later that year.
I spent a year as an apprentice for a start-up beauty brand and another year in a full-time position there. It was here that I learned a lot in a very short space of time- I discovered my love of everything paid social and was responsible for video and image content creation, setting up and running advertisements and the monitoring and reporting back to my boss.
And now I’m here at Hillsgreen, I’m still growing and learning but I love it and I’m excited about our future.