Once upon a midnight dreary

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

As it was Halloween on Friday and you may have noticed my mild obsession with macabre literature…

“and the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door…” – bit of Poe (The Raven) there for you.  Bringing a bit of culture to the blog.

…I jumped at the chance to go and see a screening of Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein in London last week.  It was the version with Benedict Cumberbatch (‘that one off of BBC’s Sherlock”) as Dr Frankenstein and Jonny Lee Miller (‘the bloke who dated Angelina Jolie when she bared semblance to a vampire’) as the Monster.  It was standard Boyle, amazing.  It was really visceral, cathartic and sombre; compelling.  If you get a chance, go and see it.

I hope that you all had an excellent Halloween, whatever you got up to.  I ended up going to a local fun fair and fire work display which was great fun. 

The Marketing Team never ceases to amaze me with their hidden talents; our resident Marketing Manager Sarah, emerged as quite the skilled pumpkin carver; who knew.  Ask her to see pictures of her Tigger creation.   

Camp-whaaaaat-CAMPAIGNS

So “what’s the latest in the world of campaigns” I hear to cry, well I’ll tell you.

We are in the middle of delivering a robust, multichannel Winter Campaign which will run until 15 January 2015 UCAS application deadline.  We are using a range of platforms including bus streetliners, cinema 6 sheets, digital display ads, open day listings, Google search, display, keywords  and retargeting, along with Facebook promoted posts.  We also have a range of online profiles on UCAS, Complete University Guide, Student Room, and Hotcourses.

I have been working closely with our in-house teams, our advertising agency SMRS and the media as part of live reporting to closely track an optimise activity.

Beyond Winter Campaign, we are about to launch activity for the January Start and UCMK Campaigns.  I have been busy finalising plans, organising media and arranging artwork for those.

After that will come Pre-Clearing.  I am meeting with the new appointed design agency for campaigns, Fabrik, on Thursday to get the ball rolling with the artwork concept.  I will be finalising the creative brief in readiness for our meeting.  I am very excited about this new collaboration and am looking forward to get going.  I am also arranging graduates and putting together a schedule for the photography.

I have been working with the Market Research team to arrange focus groups to get feedback on the Clearing Campaign and the current Winter Campaign.  We will be running interactive workshop sessions on Wednesday to get student feedback on our artwork and on competitor campaign activity.  This will feed into future briefs.  I will let you know the outcomes.

A really important part of my job is evaluating campaigns.  By using all the data at my disposal I am able to analyse activity and reflect on what worked, what didn’t and recommend progressive measures.  I have recently been working on the Aylesbury and Pre-Clearing evaluations, the recommendations of which will feed into the brief for this year’s plan of activity.

There’s a lot going on as ever so I better get back to it.  

Later skaters,

Krystle