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!