Marketing Team blog

Campaigns Update

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

Where am I? What day is it and what’s my name again?

I am knee deep in our Clearing Campaign, that’s where.  I have been liaising with all our suppliers and in-house teams to coordinate schedules, specifications, deadlines, market research, production, tracking and delivery of all our Clearing activity (whilst fighting off a barrage of hard selling media contacts).

Our designers have been hard at work transforming the artwork to fit the myriad of specs for buses, bus shelters, posters, billboards, phone boxes, tube car panels, banners, lampposts and print adverts.  So what does it look like?

Can I get a drum roll please… Here is the final product:

The campaign is fully integrated.  All of the digital display adverts and social media activity are in harmony with the print artwork.  The outdoor and print advertising directs you to a bespoke landing page where you can search for courses, find information on accommodation, as well as, scholarships and bursaries and a chance to chat to our CRM team.  There is lots of helpful advice in the form of a video of our Clearing students that feature in the artwork giving their tips on Clearing, tweets and a link to further information on the process.   If you go onto youtube you can also find videos of the students talking about their experiences of Clearing and the course that they are studying.  We are very lucky to have such a talented digital team, it all looks so fresh.  My personal favourite so far is the short animations leading into the youtube videos; very cool.  Check it out!

Whose bright idea was that?

This year we have been exploring forms of advertising that we haven’t done before and have added some additional activity to the Clearing plan.  Some of the bright ideas that we have chosen to take forward are:

• Twitter - #pathtobeds
• Facebook – ‘Jump into Beds’ Forum to facilitate discussion amongst students and aid conversion
• Youtube - Live YouTube broadcast of a campus tour/the Clearing room/interviews with academics/sample lectures etc.
• Flash Mob - workshop for UoB students prior to performance, video to post on social media and website, professional dancers at event (4 performances), workshop at the event for the public, sound equipment hire and technician
• Legal Fly Posting – We have called upon Media Gang to put together a legal fly posing campaign in central London
• NUS Voucher – We will be incentivising clearing offers with £12 NUS vouchers 

      Then comes the tracking

The majority of the artwork has been approved and delivered now so I will be waiting with baited breath to see it all brought to life.   I will be carefully monitoring and tracking all activity to see what, designs, locations and platforms are delivering.

Did someone say ‘Winter’?

Winter Campaign planning is well underway.  I met with our advertising agency SMRS a couple of weeks ago in Manchester to discuss the brief.  It is a very exciting time embarking upon a new campaign and great to have the agency on board. 

We want to build on the concept of the student transformational journey and develop the Clearing artwork using successful UoB graduates.  I have been working with our Alumni Team to source graduates and will be setting up the next photo-shoot in the coming weeks.

I have also been working on other bespoke campaigns for our faculties but that’s a story for another day.

Type to you soon,

Krystle