VCCP and OLIVER partner with The King's Trust to further The Challenger Academy. Partnership will see VCCP and OLIVER support students across Staffordshire and Nottingham to create a national advertising campaign for The King's Trust, gaining hands-on experience and the confidence to navigate their next steps Editorial Series People moves, company launches, account wins and other business news. Creative industries educational charity The Challenger Academy, global integrated agency VCCP, and global in-house marketing transformation company, OLIVER, have launched a new partnership with The King's Trust for this year's 'Biggest Pitch of the Year' - giving young people across Staffordshire and Nottingham the opportunity to create a brand campaign for the charity. Now celebrating its 50th year, The King's Trust helps young people build the confidence, skills and opportunities they need to move into work, education or training. Its support includes one-to-one mentoring, hands-on skills training and employability courses, connections with industry experts and employers, and a non-judgmental environment where young people can build confidence at their own pace. The programme will challenge students to develop a social-first campaign encouraging young people to use The King's Trust to help them figure out their next step. The brief responds to the uncertainty many young people experience when transitioning from education into work, training or their next chapter, and asks students to create ideas that make their peers feel understood, supported and optimistic about their future. The Biggest Pitch of the Year builds on the success of The Challenger Academy and VCCP's programme in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, while continuing its expansion into Nottingham with the help of OLIVER. This eight-week crash course in advertising provides students with mentorship from agency professionals across research, ideation, and campaign production. OLIVER will once again partner with Bilborough College in Nottingham to mentor their students. Meanwhile VCCP will collaborate again with Stoke-on-Trent College, Stoke Sixth Form College, NSCG Newcastle (Under-Lyme) and NSCG Stafford. Since its launch in 2021, the Biggest Pitch of the Year programme (formerly the 'Intercity Student Challenge') has grown from working with one college to five, has engaged over 350 students and has delivered more than 12,000 hours of work experience. The programme kicks off in Nottingham on 7th October, followed by Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire in the week commencing 12th October. Over the following weeks, students will experience the process that creative agencies go through to develop campaigns for leading brands and organisations, working through research, strategy, creative development and production with support from industry professionals. Students will first research the experiences of 16-25 year olds, exploring the pressures young people face during moments of transition, how they use social media and what types of content they trust and engage with. They will then use these insights to develop a social-first campaign for The King's Trust, including a big creative idea, campaign line or slogan, examples of social content and a clear call to action. The programme will culminate in semi-finals in the week commencing 7th December, when The King's Trust, OLIVER and VCCP will select a winning team from each participating college. Those teams will then go head-to-head at the grand finals in London in March 2027, competing for the opportunity to see their creative vision brought to life in a real-world campaign. Following the final pitch, the winning team will collaborate with The King's Trust to refine and adapt their campaign, ensuring it aligns with the organisation's brand voice, strategic goals and production guidelines ahead of its public launch. The brief asks students to challenge the idea that young people need to have their futures figured out, exploring messages around there being no single path to success, the value of taking small steps and the reassurance that young people are not falling behind. Ian Baxter-Crawford, head of youth marketing at The King's Trust, said, "Talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn't always equal. That's why The King's Trust is proud to support The Biggest Pitch of the Year, giving young people the chance to build confidence, develop real-world skills and show the power of their creativity. The best ideas come from young people themselves, and we can't wait to see the fresh perspectives and bold thinking they bring to this challenge." Michael Lee, chief strategy officer at VCCP and co-founder of The Challenger Academy, said, "The Biggest Pitch of the Year is about giving young people access to the kind of creative experience and industry connections that can be difficult to find at the start of their careers. This year's partnership with The King's Trust gives students the opportunity to tackle a genuinely important issue for their generation, while showing what they can achieve when given a real brief, real responsibility and the support of experienced creatives." Nick Myers, UK chief strategy officer at OLIVER, said, "The Biggest Pitch of the Year gives young people the opportunity to stop being the audience and become the authors, experiencing what it is really like to work on a live creative challenge. Partnering with The King's Trust makes this year's brief particularly meaningful, because the students will be developing social-first ideas aimed at helping people their own age navigate a period of uncertainty. We're looking forward to seeing the insight, creativity and fresh perspectives they bring to the challenge." The 2026/27 programme comes at a pivotal time for young people navigating the transition from education into employment, training or further study. By placing students at the centre of a real creative brief, The Challenger Academy, VCCP, OLIVER and The King's Trust aim to provide practical experience, industry exposure and an opportunity for young people to demonstrate their creative potential. The Biggest Pitch of the Year programme will continue to bring together education, the creative industries and brand partners to create meaningful pathways for young talent, while giving participating students the opportunity to build confidence, develop industry skills and work on a campaign with the potential to reach a national audience.

MATRI and VCCP win Best Targeted Mental Wellbeing Campaign at This Can Happen Awards Global 2026. An incredibly proud moment for MATRI Coaching, celebrating a partnership that began with an idea and has gone on to make a real difference to working parents. Well, this is rather wonderful news to be sharing! On 15 October 2026, MATRI Coaching and its founding client, VCCP, won Best Targeted Mental Wellbeing Campaign at the This Can Happen Awards Global 2026. And I have to say, I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed by it all! I've been lucky enough to attend quite a few awards ceremonies during my years in advertising, but there's something very different about seeing your own business recognised, particularly alongside the organisation where the whole idea began. And judging by the photographs, I don't think MATRI Coaching Ltd. did a particularly good job of hiding its excitement! What makes this award so special is that it recognises something I've believed in passionately for years: that supporting people through the transition to parenthood isn't simply a nice thing for employers to do. It can make a genuine difference to people's lives, careers and the organisations they work for. And, importantly, MATRI Coaching Ltd. has the evidence to show it. Why MATRI. MATRI grew out of my own experiences of navigating motherhood alongside a senior leadership career at VCCP. As a working mother, a leader and someone training to become a coach, I became increasingly interested in how organisations support women through what is arguably one of the biggest transitions of their working lives. Because becoming a mother changes things. Not necessarily your ambition, your ability or how much you care about your career. But often your confidence, your priorities, your identity and how you see yourself at work. And yet, so much of the support traditionally available during this period focuses on the practicalities. Maternity policies, leave arrangements, keeping-in-touch days and return dates. All important, of course. But what about everything else? What about the woman preparing to tell her manager she's pregnant, wondering how it might affect her career? Or the mother preparing to return to a workplace that has carried on without her? Or the experienced professional who suddenly finds herself questioning her confidence and abilities? These were the conversations I wanted MATRI Coaching Ltd. to be having. VCCP gave me the space and support to explore those questions, listen to women's experiences and develop an approach that offered something more meaningful throughout the whole parental transition. What began as an internal coaching initiative evolved into MATRI Coaching, which became my full-time business in 2024. The impact: maternity return rates increased from 82.5% to 93%. One of the things I'm particularly proud of about its partnership with VCCP is that MATRI Coaching Ltd. can demonstrate the impact. Over the period of its collaboration, VCCP's maternity return rate increased from 82.5% to 93%. That's a significant improvement, and one that matters for so many reasons. For employers, retaining experienced employees means retaining valuable skills, knowledge and talent, while reducing the considerable costs associated with replacing people. But behind those percentages are real parents, real careers and years of hard work and ambition. People who have invested in their careers and deserve to feel that becoming a parent doesn't mean stepping away from everything they've worked towards. And that's why these results mean so much to me. MATRI Coaching Ltd. talk a great deal about the importance of supporting working parents, improving workplace wellbeing and retaining female talent. But being able to demonstrate measurable change makes those conversations so much more powerful. While no single initiative can account for every change in an organisation, the results from its partnership with VCCP show what's possible when employers make parental transition support a genuine priority. Why parental transition support matters Something I've always believed is that support for working parents shouldn't be treated as a one-off intervention. Becoming a parent isn't something that happens neatly between a leaving date and a return date. There are so many moments in between when people need reassurance, perspective, practical guidance or simply the opportunity to talk things through with someone who understands. And those needs don't disappear once someone is back at their desk. This thinking is at the heart of MATRI. Today, MATRI Coaching Ltd. work with organisations to support mothers, fathers and working parents through pregnancy, parental leave and the return to work. Its programmes combine one-to-one parental coaching, on-demand learning, live group coaching and community support, alongside training for managers who play such an important role in shaping the experience. It's about giving people the right support at the right time, helping them navigate the personal and professional challenges of becoming a parent while continuing to feel confident, valued and supported at work. And while MATRI began with a focus on motherhood, I'm incredibly proud that its work has evolved to support all parents and the people managing them. What the judges said. One of the loveliest moments of the evening was hearing what the judges had said about its work. They described the MATRI and VCCP initiative as: "Excellent and much-needed initiative with a holistic approach and strong evidence on impact." Another comment particularly resonated with me: "Excellent and much-needed initiative addressing a significant workplace transition and an area where employees can often feel under-supported." That second comment really gets to the heart of why MATRI exists. The transition to parenthood is such a significant experience, both personally and professionally, and yet it's still an area where people can feel surprisingly unsupported. To have that recognised by an independent panel of judges, alongside the evidence of the impact MATRI Coaching Ltd. has achieved, means an enormous amount. It's also a lovely reminder of why MATRI Coaching Ltd. started this work in the first place. A partnership worth celebrating. Winning this award alongside VCCP feels particularly meaningful because of its shared history. I'm hugely grateful to all of its clients and everyone who has been part of that journey, particularly the women who shared their experiences, challenged its thinking and helped shape the programme into what it has become. A huge thank you, too, to This Can Happen Global for recognising the work and impact of this partnership. Looking ahead. For me, this award isn't just about celebrating what MATRI Coaching Ltd. has achieved so far. It's also about continuing the conversation around what meaningful support for working parents really looks like. As organisations focus increasingly on gender equality, employee wellbeing and retaining experienced female talent, I believe parental transition support has a really important role to play. My hope is that the work MATRI Coaching Ltd. has done encourages more employers to look beyond policies alone and think about how they can genuinely support their people through the experience of becoming a parent. Because when MATRI Coaching Ltd. get this right, the benefits are felt by individuals, families, teams and organisations alike. And that feels like something worth celebrating. MATRI Coaching Ltd.'d love to hear from you! Whether you're a working parent navigating parental leave, returning to work, or an organisation looking to support your team with the MATRI platform, MATRI Coaching Ltd. is here to help. Have a question or feedback? | Would like to request a call? | Have a suggestion to share? Simply fill out the form, and MATRI Coaching Ltd.'ll be in touch soon. Let's start the conversation! Welcome. Sophie Maunder Sophie Maunder, is a qualified Executive Coach who specialises in Parental Coaching. Her passion for supporting the working parent came from being the first woman in her company to return after maternity leave, going on to have two boys and then become a single working mother at an Executive level. Are you an organisation looking to support your working parents as they return to work? Click below to find out more. Connect with Sophie