Clearing the way forward: 2014 and beyond

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Getting Creative: On set with one of our
current students, Joseph, who came
via Clearing

For many, the months of June and July signify the end of term. Students are winding down after sitting their final exams and submitting their final assessments, and all of a sudden the campus seems to feel like a bit of a ghost town, as everyone starts to kick back, relax, and enjoy their summer break - but not the Marketing team! For us, the summer months are some of our most busiest and important, as we gear up for the Clearing Campaign, which is without question, our biggest burst of activity throughout the academic year. But Clearing doesn't just start on 14 August when the A level results come out. For us at least, Clearing involves months of preparation, as we plan and book in a host of activity, and devise a creative concept which we know will deliver results.

So in the last few weeks, we've been working with our agency Z3 Design, to come up with a number of concepts for this years big campaign. We're really pleased with the one we've chosen, as we feel that it really pushes the brand to an exciting new level, and is a bit more commercial in its approach meaning it will definitely not fall into the 'safe' box, and will most definitely turn heads in a rather crowded market place. We ran two days of photo shoots last week, which were crammed packed full of weird and wonderful shot lists with our current students. It's taken a while to get the creative to where we wanted it to be, but we're happy that it's direct and functional enough to drive enquiries, and quirky enough to show personality and differentiation, so we're really excited to share the visuals with the wider University over the coming weeks - keep a look out in future posts, for a first look of this years visuals.

We're live: our CRM system
is up and running

Although our activity is firmly rooted in Clearing - for 2014 entry, we're already beginning work to communicate with our 2015 enquirers by inviting them to Open Days and sharing relevant content via our CRM system: Belong at Beds. But what many don't know is that we're already thinking ahead to 2016. We've been meeting with agencies over the last few weeks to discuss our plans and publication timelines as we slowly approach the tender stage for our 2016 activity. It takes up a lot of time meeting so many different companies, but is nonetheless important; it gives us a chance to find out more about the agency, their resourcing and project management capabilities, to ensure that they don't just offer creativity and innovation but have the processes in place to deliver on the development of the work, which is no easy task. By widening the pool of companies we may work with we're able to bring fresh and exiting ideas to the table.

New campus: our UCMK
prospectus cover

Aside from this, we've also been busy progressing the Postgraduate 2015 Prospectus, as we approach second proof stage, and have been supporting the recruitment team with a high volume of jobs for both the June set of Enquirer Open Days, and the upcoming UCAS convention which is taking place on 23 and 24 June. We'd had a large numbers of requests to produce leaflets and other marketing communications to ensure that each department and faculty has a variety of collateral available on the day to promote their courses effectively to potential students, and provide them with a snap shot of the courses and successes within their subjects. We've also got the UCMK prospectus off to print (see cover right), and this 40 page publication will be printed and delivered just in time for the event, so we're pleased to be able to use this great platform, to promote our new campus location.