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Writer's pictureNiche Magazine

Three top national awards nominations for Covid-19 support

A 'heroic' business has been nominated for three top awards for its unprecedented Covid-19 support work.

KuKu Connect Co-Founders Philip Brooks-Stephenson and Stephen Goddard

Unique business networking service, KuKu Connect, has supported Leicestershire and Rutland businesses and charities free-of-charge for over 170 days.

The company has been recognised at home and internationally having been nominated for three different awards programmes; The Best Business Awards, The National Business Awards; and The Global Business Excellence Awards. The accolades are in recognition of its outstanding and selfless impact in combatting the results of the pandemic upon organisations.

Supporting over 30,000 organisations and charities every day throughout the pandemic since March, the KuKu Connect team has been called ‘inspirational business heroes’ by those who have been supported.


The company's social media posts have promoted organisations and charity appeals with over 30m hits for different businesses that have been helped so far.

Co-founders Stephen Goddard and Philip Brooks-Stephenson launched KuKu Connect in Leicester in 2016. In March this year, they set-up a number of innovative free support services at the outset of the pandemic open to any business or charity.


Stephen said: “The power of social media and digital technology along with some KuKu-style creativeness has been immense in terms of keeping people connected and to carry on doing business.”


KuKu Connect’s Covid-19 support services have included the ‘Carry On KuKu’ video-bulletins, broadcast over social media. The bulletins are kitsch-style news shows giving out daily business tips, events, opportunities, business news and offers to help viewing organisations, which has been refreshing and humorous.

They have also featured daily shout-outs for a range of individual businesses, venues and charity appeals. Over 100 videos have been recorded from their kitchen, which they turned into a mini-studio.

Another free service is the popular KuKu Cocktail Hour, a networking event which uses Facebook Live. Dressed in black tie, Stephen and Philip connected businesses and charities together over virtual cocktails, offering something completely different to online networking events.


The networking event has been described as a "breath of fresh-air”, “a vital life-line for business”, and "almost as good as Goggle Box”. It's had a record 5,000 viewers on just one of the cocktail hour networking events.

KuKu Connect has been supporting businesses all over the UK, even reaching international audiences in Europe and in the USA.


The support has impacted the mental health and wellbeing of their viewers, has raised funds with a myriad of different Covid-19 charity appeals, the NHS, and even resulted in PPE materials being manufactured and distributed to hospitals and care homes.

Philip commented: “We are really touched that we have been nominated for these prestigious awards.


"We are really looking forward to hosting our physical business networking Connect Reception events as soon as is safe to do so. We know that face-to-face networking will always be more powerful for building great business relationships.”

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