Case Study: Hedgehog Digital

Introducing Help Together

In unprecedented times such as these, the focus understandably falls on the difficult situations many suddenly find themselves in. But alongside these newfound challenges, you’ll find businesses and members of the community alike uniting to do whatever possible to help each other out.

Hedgehog Digital are a prime example of what can be achieved with this community spirit. Their newly-launched service, Help Together, utilises their expertise of marketing and website building to bring together those that want to help and those that need it.

Help Together works effectively like an online noticeboard for people in need all across Cornwall. The whole process of posting or responding to a listing only takes a couple of minutes, but to those in need of help it could make all the difference in the world.

The idea started out as a creative exercise for Hedgehog Digital for staff during the Coronavirus lockdown, looking for the fastest way to help as many people as possible. Drawing from their extensive experience designing and building websites for clients, Hedgehog created Help Together in record time, from conception to going live in under a week.

Turning Web Users Into a Helping Hand

“We basically wanted to try and do something which would be able to help the local community. But being a digital marketing agency, we don’t have anything tangible to offer,” Alan Spurgeon, MD of Hedgehog Digital says. “We’d seen people on social media saying ‘how are we going to do this help’ and others saying ‘if you need any help, we can be there’. And that was the seed of the idea: there were all these people that through their own networks were trying to offer or receive help. We just thought: ‘maybe we can marry these up’.”

Help Together has already benefited dozens across the county and is primed and ready to support countless others.

Remote Working: The Way Forward?

Oxford Innovation Cornwall continues to provide business coaching to Hedgehog Digital throughout the lockdown, moving to video conferencing for the one-to-one coaching sessions between Alan and Lead Coach Karen Biggs.

“When I spoke to Karen maybe a week or two after the lockdown… I put together what I felt was a good plan for us as an agency to try and work through this,” Alan explains. “The great thing about having that access to Karen was I could share where we were, what I was trying to do and confirm what (government) support was available… That sounding voice gives you that confidence in what you’re doing.”

With offices in Hayle, Bedford and São Paulo, the team at Hedgehog are living proof of just how to effective remote working can be.

Book an online coaching session with Oxford Innovation Cornwall at no cost to your business.

 

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This programme is fully funded by the European Regional Development Fund 2014-2020.