Introducing Sidekick: The app helping junior marketers build confidence, skills and momentum
A practical, insight‑led digital companion giving junior marketers the tools, prompts and structure they need to thrive in fast‑paced marketing environments.
Marketing Moments has today announced the launch of Sidekick, a new app designed to support junior marketers with the practical tools, prompts and guidance they need to grow with confidence. Built for early‑career professionals navigating the realities of modern marketing roles, Sidekick helps them develop the habits, behaviours and mindset needed to stay curious and act with clarity.
The idea for Sidekick emerged from Founder Natasha Milsted’s MBA research project, which explored what marketing teams need in order to anticipate and respond to customer needs. Through interviews with senior leaders, one insight stood out: early‑career marketers are expected to demonstrate curiosity and make insight‑led decisions, yet very little support exists to help them build these habits in a structured, sustainable way.
As a sector, we talk a lot about the importance of curiosity, but far less about how to nurture it. Sidekick aims to close that gap by blending theory and practice, introducing junior marketers to core marketing concepts while giving them activities, scenario‑based simulations and reflective prompts that build real‑world capability. It’s part of our mission to demystify marketing and empower emerging talent.
Sidekick supports marketers through a mix of habit‑building nudges and structured learning. Daily curiosity prompts encourage small, consistent actions that strengthen strategic thinking and creative confidence. Alongside this, the app currently includes five Knowledge Quests — bite‑sized lessons written in plain English and packed with practical examples that show how decisions play out in real organisations. Each module includes activities designed to encourage reflection, experimentation and skill reinforcement. With built‑in progress tracking, users can see their growth, build momentum and celebrate development over time.
“Junior marketers are often expected to ‘just know’ how to do things — but the reality is that marketing is complex, fast moving and full of nuance. Sidekick gives them the structure, clarity and confidence they deserve. It’s the companion I wish I’d had early in my career.” Natasha Milsted, Chartered Marketer, Founder of Marketing Moments Agency
Sidekick offers value for both individuals and organisations. For teams, it supports onboarding, accelerates development and helps junior marketers work more strategically, not just tactically. For individuals, it builds confidence, autonomy and a stronger understanding of how marketing decisions are made.
Access Sidekick today. Pricing has been kept intentionally accessible — the cost of a takeaway coffee when you’re in the office: £3 a month or £30 a year. New features and additional Knowledge Quests will be added regularly to support marketers as they grow in their careers.
The role of brand values and identifying enablers to increasing recall
We’ve recently done some research with marketing professionals from Marketing Execs to Directors of Marketing on brand values. Read our thought leadership article to find out what people said.
We’ve recently done some research with marketing professionals from Marketing Executives to Directors of Marketing on brand values. We wanted to build our understanding on:
how many businesses have brand values and to what extent employees are able to recall them;
explore to what extent brand values underpin marketing and communication activity;
understand the barriers or challenges to embedding brand values within organisations;
identify enablers and opportunities to embed brand values within organisations.
Brand values research findings
So, what did we find out? 86.7% of our respondents said that their organisation had brand values, with all respondents being able to recall the brand values. Brand values capture the essence of what your organisation is about, your beliefs, ideals and how you behave.
The following word cloud shows the commonalities between respondents brand values:
As you can see there were some words that were more prominent than others; enjoyment, passion, collaborative, care and quality. We also asked respondents what they liked and disliked about their brand values that raised some interesting commonalities, there were three themes that stood out for what people liked that are:
Reflective of who we are and what we do
Clear and simple
Bring people together and unite teams
“Feel reflective of the breadth and depth of our activity. Feel aspirational”
The common themes for what people disliked about their brand values can be grouped as follows:
Not fully embedded
Difficult to live by the values and not lived by in practice
Nothing
“There are too many components to too many values, making it very difficult to live according to the values. This can result in ‘lip service’ trying to express that we are considering and living the brand values by force.”
Employee recall levels for brand values
Our Brand values are well established
We regularly refer to our brand values within internal communication activity
We consider our brand values when creating marketing strategies
We understand how our brand values align with customers
Our brand values are evident throughout our marketing activity
We understand which of our brand values are the most important to customers
Planned work relating to strategy
The following piechart shows the percentage of people concerned with developing their brands.
The respondents mentioned that they had following brand development activity planned:
Launching a new brand strategy
Recent rebrand, so embedding the new values
Brand building, awareness and oversea expansion
Logo animation and brand awareness literature
Establishing sub brands
New organisational strategy
All respondents felt that brand values would be important or very important for their brand development activity. However, only 55.6% felt that they would be working on their brand values in the next 12-18 months. Those that are planning to do work on their brand values were:
Looking to ensure they are still fit for purpose with organisational changes
Redevelopment of core brand to appeal to new audiences
Aligning the brand values to the new organisational strategy
Brand refresh, website and tone of voice
Barriers and challenges to embedding brand values within an organisation
There were a lot of barriers and challenges highlighted with everyone’s responses, but the following were some of the ones that came up more frequently:
Newly developed and need an internal comms and engagement plan
No clear ownership
Organisational buy-in
Lack of staff resource
“Lack of staff resource, lack of clarity on diversifying brand within individual departments. Too many projects, lack of clear direction.”
What do marketers need to enable them to focus more on brand values
Internal buy-in was the most popular enabler identified in this research, with a third of respondents stating this. Other common enablers were:
Alignment with marketing goals
Values to clearly connect with organisational strategy
Visibility of values
Clarity and stability
Time
Clear priorities and areas of focus
“Marketers need to be constantly reminded of brand values and ensure that they are worked the into each marketing campaign or brand activation that is done and live and breathe them.”
What do you think are the main benefits of focusing on brand values?
Support with prioritisation of work
Clarity of vision and comms
Remember why we do what we do
Differentiation
Consistency
What tactics do you think are the most effective at increasing the recall of brand values?
They need to be visible
Engaging and regular content using the brand values
Employee advocacy and engagement
Simple brand values and not too many
Over the next few weeks we are going to be delving deeper into this and what might mean for marketing professionals and the brand work they are doing.