All this talk of 'winter' is getting me excited for Christmas!!

Some of our Recruitment Team
and student Ambassadors waiting to greet
PG students on campus  

From recent blog posts, you will certainly be aware that we have now launched our Winter campaign. Winter is definitely the most used word around the MARC office at the moment. The teams have done a great job pulling it all together and the artwork looks really good.

We’re also in the middle of the open day rush. Since my last blog we’ve held a PG open day on 16 October and another UG open day on 18 October at our Bedford campus. Our Bedford event saw 183 prospective students on our campus, not to manetion schools we had in attendence. There is also another UG open day this Saturday (25 October) at our Luton campus. And let’s not forget our November open days too (15 November, Bedford campus and 22 November, Luton campus). Once the November open days have taken place, we have a couple of months before the next events, so we can evaluate the pre-January events, which will influence our planning for the post-January open day events. So far we’ve seen some good sign up numbers , so hopefully this will continue. We currently have 656 student signed up to our event this Saturday.

Photography
As part of the prospectus project, we have our annual photography session this week and next. We have five days of photography booked in total, giving us the opportunity to get new student profiles and photographs of our new and upgraded facilities. As our prospectuses hold a lot of images, it’s really important that we get the images right, to really show off our campuses and reflect what we can offer our students. A picture speaks a thousand words, as they say! Clare spent two days with the photographer this week to get shots of students and video interviews and I will be working with photographers next week to get shots of our facilities and campuses. I’m excited to be art directing the shoots, as it’s the first time I’ve done photography at the University and it will give me the opportunity to meet some more of our academics and students, as well as experiencing some of the facilities that I have not yet seen.

My lovely CIM certificate

My CIM Training

I recently went to London for a one day CIM course on how to write an integrated marketing plan. I was really keen to attend the session as one of my main responsibilities in the team is putting together our open day plans, which this year need to produce a 25% increase in footfall. The day was quite useful, it was a good refresh to some of the things I learnt at university (which seems like forever ago) and also gave me a few things to think about. Now that I have been at Bedfordshire for eight months and I have been writing integrated open day plans for the past five months, it was really good to leave the course feeling reassured that what we do in terms of our planning is really robust, and we really use insight and evaluations from previous events to influence our future plans, which is key to improving. I also got a little certificate at the end of the day, to show I had taken part in the course.

Welcome to Maria

And finally, on behalf of the marketing team, I’d like to give a warm welcome to Maria, our new marketing administrator, who will be working with the team two days a week for the next six weeks. She is a recent University of Bedfordshire PG graduate and we look forward to working with her in the coming weeks!

Speak soon,

K

Graduates, gavels and a glowing awards 'do

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Going live with our Winter visuals.

You'll see from previous blog posts that winter has well and truly arrived. And we're not talking seasons here. The central marketing team has been working behind the scenes for a few months now to create our new Winter campaign artwork (above), which I'm sure you'll agree looks fantastic and takes the 'journey' concept that one step further, as we show some of our successful graduates reflecting on their success and how it all began back at Bedfordshire. We're really excited as our campaign goes live across the many print and digital platforms. However, as we firmly move into our Winter campaign, it seems that not everyone can bear to part with our creative Clearing concept just yet...

Studying Law in Beds ;-)

Much to the amusement of the marketing team, this years' visual has really taken the media by storm and has really got people talking; from a select few websites taking issue with our use of a gavel and wig as props to represent a stereotyped image of Law, and hysterically likening the wig to 'the one worn by the Prince Regent in Blackadder the Third', through to the Guardian placing us in the top 5 for campaign faux pas' for the use of what they deem to be a 'risque hasthag'. It's certainly been an interesting few months for us here at Bedfordshire as we take on a more confident and commercial advertising approach to increase stand out in a crowded market place, whilst still having a little fun along the way!

For us, the Clearing campaign has been a resounding success, and so whether you love it or hate it, we can safely say that you knew about it. What did you think of this years campaign?

Good luck to @uniofbeds post grad sports dept, finalist in best faculty campaign category #pgawards
— postgradawards (@postgradawards) September 30, 2014

Short-listed for Best Faculty Campaign.

In other news, I was really excited to see that we've been short-listed for yet another award, at this years' Prospects Postgraduate Awards. We're up against three other universities including Brunel University London, Cambridge Judge Business School, and the University of Sunderland in the category of Best Faculty Campaign - for our work undertaken last summer to promote our PGT Sport courses, which generated an overall increase in applications by more than 60% compared to the previous year.

The awards dinner is taking place in November up in Manchester, so we'll keep you posted as to how we do. Keep everything crossed for us!

Another busy month!

I'm finding it hard to believe that a whole month has passed since my last post; it feels more like a few days! So much has happened in the last few weeks so I'm just going to pick out a few highlights to talk about…

Tender Pitches
As Krystle mentioned in the last post, the team was recently part of the panel listening to agencies pitch. My particular interest was in how the agencies presented their creative ideas for our 2016 suite of publications; as I'll be working with the team on the 2016 prospectuses, I wanted to know lots about the look and style of the publications but also the processes that will be help us reach an outstanding final result without too many issues along the way.
It was fascinating to see how each agency approached the tender process in their own unique way, and some of the creative ideas they came up with were really impressive. I found it a massive challenge to pick a favourite at the end of the day!

Can't wait to see what the 2016
prospectuses will look like!

 2016 Prospectuses

While we finish off our work on the 2014 entry and start work on the 2015 cycle, the Marketing Team has begun work on the 2016 suite of prospectuses! So, as well as trying not to get confused, I've been working with Kylie to arrange a photo shoot for prospectus images. The shoot is due to take place at the end of October. We'll be taking profile photos of students and also photographing as many of our brilliant facilities as we can.

Verbal Brand

In that past week or two I've met up with colleagues from the Students' Union and the Department of Computer Science and Technology. In these meetings we've discussed the University's new Verbal Brand strategy.
As ever, it's great to talk to colleagues. I always come away from meetings like these full of new knowledge about the impressive things that are going on in the University. The verbal brand project is exciting because it's going to allow us to use all the information we find out to positively explain what we do here and why we do it so well.

Catch up soon.

Clare

The Wanderer Returns

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

Since my last blog I have been on holiday to Gran Canaria.  It was a relaxing, sun drenched week filled with ice cream sundaes, sea, sand and beautiful sunsets.  We stayed in a safari themed hotel that had animal sound effects to plunge you into the depths of the amazon, life-size animal sculptures that transport you to the Serengeti and there were even terrapins in ponds lining the walkways on the ground floor.  (The temptation was great but I can confirm that I didn’t steal a terrapin).  It was wonderful.  Here for your viewing pleasure is me doing a double teapot next to one of said statues.

Now it is back to the world of work with a bump.  I spent a good day just going through my emails but now I’m back in the groove (Groove is in the heartttttttt…anyone, no. OK.)

 

Winter is here

 

The Clearing advertising schedule has finally come to a close; I have been arranging for all our outdoor advertising to be taken down.  The next step will be reviewing all the data collated during the campaign and scrutinising it to produce a detailed and comprehensive campaign evaluation that we can use to hone our future activity.  It will be interesting to see which platforms performed best and to look into how new forms of advertising fared in comparison to the tried and tested methods.  I will let you know. 

I have been progressing the Winter artwork and as promised will unveil it in this blog.

“It was on a dreary night of September that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me (pens, note pad, shutterstock images)… the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my hard drive was close to full capacity, when, by the magic of dropbox’s online function, I saw the bright glowing eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and convulsed as letters emerged from its keyboard…Behold… (too dramatic?)”

 

The strap continues and develops the ‘student journey’ message set out in Clearing and conveys that our outstanding teaching, based on world leading research and excellent student support will bring out our students potential. 

The artwork sets out to visually representing UoB unearthing students hidden talents/skills/passions.  The imagery encapsulates the idea that UoB students enter as ‘diamonds in the rough’ and emerge as globally connected entrepreneurs.  

The imagery used is dynamic to appeal to creative thinkers.  It demonstrates that as an institution we nurture and encourage the entrepreneurial mind-set of our students.  The graduates used embody entrepreneurial spirit; the glowing vector in each artwork symbolises that which is unique in each graduate that makes them stand out from the competition.   We are very proud of our 2014 NSS results so that also features prominently in the artwork.

I have really been up against the clock with this project and am relieved to see it finalised.  I am a perfectionist and feel that I could have developed the designs further but sometimes you just have to do the best that you can in the time that you have to work with, so I’ve done just that.  With the scheduling, briefing, developing and delivery complete, most of the Winter Campaign artwork is now live, so look out for it on buses, trains, phone boxes and in cinemas etc. 

Our digital team have created a bespoke landing page where you can watch the graduates talking about their experiences, get information on our forthcoming open days and live chat with our advisors.  Check it out here: http://www.beds.ac.uk/discover
 

Tender Time

It is that time of year when we tender for a new prospectus/creative campaigns agency.  Last week the Marketing Team received pitches from the shortlisted agencies.  This is the first time that I have been on the panel for a university tender; the appointment process is very different in the private sector.  It must have been a very nerve wracking experience for those presenting, my heart went out to them.  Lucky for us there were some strong contenders to choose from.  I felt really inspired seeing the different agency designs and I am really looking forward to embarking on a new creative partnership.

Later Skaters,

Krystle