The Humans of Hancock and Rowe: Sarah
The Humans of Hancock and Rowe is a series of interviews that introduces you to who we are and the people we work alongside. From our team to our clients, we’ll be sharing the stories of those who our agency help, support and collaborate with.
Introducing Sarah, Marketing Manager for GoodOaks Homecare who we recently worked with to redesign their national and local franchise websites.
Where do you come from?
Ok, where to begin? I was born and bred in Dorset on the South coast. I have danced since the age of five, so in my mind it was always going to be a career path. I trained in Bedford at the Stella Mann College of Performing Arts. Once I graduated I then moved home and would commute to London for jobs and auditions. I've done anything and everything you can think of, from small pantos to large musical theatre tours, flash mobs to cheerleading at Lord's Cricket Ground.
It really is the best. It's a weird industry, but it's just amazing because you get to live your dream and dance every day.
Sadly, the dancing career came to an abrupt end after injuring my knee whilst on tour. The injury ended up being worse than I first expected and after two operations, the wrong diagnosis and rehab, couldn’t be fixed for me to return to the industry.
Where are you now and how did you travel between the two?
I'm now the Marketing Manager for GoodOaks Homecare. I look after the brand, the future of where we want to go and the marketing budget for the central spend, but I also help with all the different franchise branches. I work with each branch to see how we are going to get the biggest return for their budget.
I've always been in marketing by accident. I used to help my brother-in-law out in-between dancing jobs with his sports coaching business in terms of neatening everything up with things such as logos, branding, email signatures and website content. I then got a temporary job with an electrical distribution company. After that I became an Account Executive at a marketing agency where I worked my way up to Senior Account Manager. I love the variety of people I work with and the option to get out of the office for external meetings - I’m not really a nine to five kind of person. A change in environment is crucial to my day.
What are your hopes for the future and the digital world?
That we don't get taken over by robots! Technology at the moment is absolutely amazing. However, I don't want it to completely replace the human side of it. I think it's so important for human interaction. Sometimes you just want to pick up the phone or you just want to get honest reviews from your friends and family, as opposed to being forced to ‘watch this’ or ‘do this' by algorithms online. Not everything has to be instant, I'm worried that it's going to raise an impatient next generation.
Social media is also a worry of mine. It worries me that people still don't understand that not everything on social media is real. There’s so much bullying that goes on and people can't avoid it, people think it’s ok to troll people from their bedroom when they think they can get away with it, when really they have no idea what kind of knock on effects it's having.
What made you consider hiring our UX expertise for your web project?
We wanted to make sure people could actually find the content we are writing. It’s all well and good us guessing and placing it where we think it works, but for people who are not in the care sector and do not know what they are looking for, we wanted all information on our website to be really easy to find, easy for people to get in contact with us and find the information they need. We wanted to work with someone external to our sector, who would carry out the correct research to make sure all content was accessible for all users. Hancock and Rowe did just that.
