Wednesday 16 December 2015

A challenging year



Challenged
Not long before it’s time to button down hatches, bust the Baileys and pile up box sets ready to feed into the roaring open fire. But before work memories are banished in a cloud of booze, dioxins, carbon monoxide and stuffing, time for a reflection on 2015.

This year’s General Election returned a Government which, cut loose from its erstwhile Lib Dem-ish stooges, oversaw the much touted removal of student number controls and meddled with student finances. The latter has seen the replacement of maintenance grants with loans and the introduction of financing for PG students (yup; more loans; welcome as a start, but not looking out for folk averse to debt.....).

The University of Bedfordshire’s approved adjective summarising 2015 probably is “challenging”. Which translates, in certain areas, as “very difficult actually”. Here is what would be nice for 2016…..
  • A big production opening of Luton’s new nine-level, cafĂ©-tastic library. Things are shaping up very nicely on the corner of Park Street and Vicarage Street. Most of the facilities will almost certainly be ‘state of the art’ and hopefully someone smart, local and bookish will be lined up to open the place. Stephen Kelman? John Hegley?
  •  International students to be removed from migration figures. Immigration has been high on everyone’s agenda over the last few years. International students are seen as a good thing by most mainstream politicians – no, really – if only for the income they bring in. Bizarrely, however, the Home Office insists that international student numbers are included in migration figures, thus helping exert a pressure which has led to more barriers to international students than there have been in the past. Even more bizarre is the fact that the Home Office stands alone and has consistently overruled even its own Conservative party colleagues, from those responsible for universities to others who usually jerk to the right in political debate, or those who just 'jerk' e.g. Boris Johnson and George Osborne. Recent comments from the Chancellor suggest that, finally, sense may prevail and international students are finally taken out of migration numbers. Fingers crossed.
  • More encouragement for part-time and mature students. Bedfordshire, in common with most HEIs up and down the country, actively support learners of all ages. Loans may widen participation in the postgraduate market, although there are those concerned they may only subsidise the passage of those from more secure financial backgrounds. who do not mind accruing more long term debt.
    Would you buy a degree from this man?
  • Checks maintained on emerging private providers. Opening the market to non-traditional providers gives a wider range of institutions and a range of different prices. Fine, until you look a little deeper – for example at a recent report from Higher Education’s Quality Assurance Agency, reporting poor administration, attendance and higher dropout rates than in the established public sector institutions. Of course, there are excellent private providers out there, but extra attention is needed when choosing providers.
  • Town and gown becoming a reality. Certainly in Luton (sorry Bedford, MK and Aylesbury; I live in, breathe and love Luton and don’t know how things work anywhere else…..). With exciting events coming up – including Wordfest, the Luton Fringe, the Carnival and others – it would be nice to see the University up its involvement.
    Was Clippy so bad?
  • Talent shows to be purged from tv schedules and replaced with documentaries about rock formations, knitting, quantum physics and Clippy, the Microsoft Office ‘office assistant’. And steam train documentaries for my Dad. If Clippy had his own show, I'd watch it in preference to, say, Lord Sugar’s Jungle Ballroom Bake-off.
  • Luton Town for promotion? NO CHANCE. For two home games running, we’ve conceded four (yes, FOUR) goals. Square pegs are being played in round holes, which doesn’t help. 4-4-2 with Wilkinson instated as captain and Guttridge fit and firing, then “we’ll see”.

Friday 11 December 2015

Fire, Flood and Fury - crisis communications scenarios


I like a good disaster movie so the title of a UCEA conference Fire, Flood and Fury – crisis scenarios in HE piqued my interest.   I’m not so happy though when movie themes play out in real life.

The conference brought together HR and communications specialists from HE to examine the issues we face from government, media and public interest around potentially high profile crisis scenarios.  Universities are at risk of being subject to incidents, both minor and major, which could result in the disruption of services and threaten the reputation of the University through negative media coverage.

The venue was the UCEA offices in Tavistock Square was a rather sobering location for the theme, given the events of 7/7 just outside the building.

Our University has a Business Continuity Plan and the Registrar has a procedure for convening the Incident Management Team for major incidents and emergencies, as well as an on-call policy and rota.  But in any incident it is the communications team that is tasked with fielding calls from the media wanting facts and commentary.

Ulrika and I heard some excellent case studies from:
  • Aberystwyth University about how they protected and communicated with their students through a storm and flood situation
  • Glasgow School of Art about the fire in the Mackintosh Building
  • Journalism students don't let a flood
    get in the way of a good story
  • Newcastle University about a student who had being making bombs in his room in a hall of residence.

And the key points we took away were:
  • ·     What we say will go to the outside world in seconds through social media
  • ·     Be the source of information, so that people come to us first and we can control it
  • ·     Any member of staff could identify the source of an incident, which may not be in office hours – it was a cleaner who alerted the University to the bomb making equipment in the hall of residence at Newcastle University – we all need to be alert
After a calming cup of tea Ulrika and I were left questioning the preparedness of our University to respond in similar crises - we do have a crisis communications strategy, but this will only be tested at the point it is needed.
So, next step – role play some disaster movies of our own….

Thursday 26 November 2015

Adding another string to our bow

I mentioned in my last blog that the [traditional] marketing team have been dipping our toe into the digital world a little more; briefing Google search and display activity as well as promoted social media.

Well, this week we’ve taken it a little bit further and had some digital training on actually implementing the activity. On Monday (at 9am!!) we had a 1.5 hour training session on setting up Google search and display ads in Google Analytics. It was a really good session and Sarah and I have since had a go at setting up our own ads. We’ve started off with a smaller campaign while we get to grips with everything – and it may have taken us way longer than the average digital marketer to set up two ads each – but we did it. We definitely felt a self of accomplishment afterwards and in our daily report we’ve already seen small numbers coming through to the website from our ads, which we got a little too excited about perhaps.

It’s really good, as marketers, to be able to add to our skillset and not only understand digital aspects of marketing, but be able to actually implement and amend them ourselves too. Next week we’ll be setting up the remainder of the campaign and having further training sessions on monitoring and tweaking on-going campaigns and setting up promoted social media posts.

I think as a team we’re really excited about being able to do more digital marketing, and help our currently small digital marketing team – there’s no I in team!

Another day, another photography shoot
I also directed another photography shoot last week, this time for our 2017 prospectus front covers. We took pictures of different groups of students in different locations/settings around our Luton campus. 
It was a busy day, but we got some great pictures. We’re now working with our design agency to choose the best photos for each version of our prospectus.

Some of our lovely students taking
part in our photography shoot

Wednesday 18 November 2015

Content is king

This week I've had the opportunity to attend the Postgraduate Marketing Forum in Manchester. It was my first time attending one of these forums and, as I've heard lots of good things about them, I was very excited. The theme of the day was content and tracking - as even the name caused debate I knew that I was in for an interesting day!

Content comes in all shapes and sizes, to your traditional printed collateral to a social media post - content can be anything that we produce. But what about things that we're not responsible for - a tweet or blog post by someone outside of the university? Well, it's still about us, it could affect the decision of a potential student - and therefore it still counts as content - just content that's a little bit harder to control!

One of the guest speakers was from a copy writing agency and he presented us with this picture, a scene from the movie The Incredibles. He suggested that many universities often describe their facilities and their key features in the same way, raising the issue that if everyone is saying the same thing in the same way, is anyone really standing out?

It's an interesting challenge that the higher education sector is faced with - students tend to want to know about the same things: location, facilities, accommodation, teaching, research, careers etc. - so it's understandable that universities are talking about similar things. And it's not just as easy as just finding something that's different - it has to fit the context - it has to be right for that particular situation, for that particular audience. 

It was an interesting concept, one of many throughout the day, and I've certainly come away with many thoughts and ideas to explore. 


Thursday 12 November 2015

What's in a name? Weird and wonderful course titles



Not so long ago, it seemed quite the thing to criticise and even ridicule certain universities for offering so-called “Mickey Mouse” degrees. These courses came from a variety of disciplines and bore little resemblance to those which were doubtless considered more ‘academic’. Classics, Latin, or Archaeology always managed to miss the cut, which must have come as a huge relief for institutions with Medieval lawns and huge resources. But still, the notion of studying the media or sport seemed one small step from chaos, anarchy and the very end of time.

Golf hats
Don't get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with studying Classics, Latin or Archaeology. These are important subjects, although detailed knowledge of Ovid, pots, old ruins or sieges aren't the most obvious tools for dealing with business, psychology or a life in PR. And they wouldn’t help too much in, say managing a golf club. At this point, I should mention that all I know about golf is that involves weird clothing, sticks, balls and holes. So, if I’m not up to the job, who should we turn to? Perhaps someone with a golf management degree?

Football Studies?
John Still, master tactician
In a not-entirely unrelated sphere, Football Studies is also a minority interest subject. Or is it? Football Studies doesn’t involve people pretending to be pundits and trotting out lame clichĂ© after lame clichĂ©. Like it or not, and for better or worse, football is big business these days. Or, more accurately, football is a huge, corporatised juggernaut, the study of which might involve looking at sports, nutrition, development, business, media, finance, hospitality, sociology, psychology …. The list goes on. Football Studies course managers
may also be looking to add Criminology elements to their offer, given the recent shock revelations and investigations around the less-than-squeaky clean operations of the international game.

A few years ago, The Telegraph compiled a top ten “unusual degrees” list, which ranged from institutions such as South Bank and Liverpool Hope, to Plumpton College and UCL. The subjects tellingly included degrees with a very specific vocational and almost artisanal flavour (Baking Technology Management or
Brewing and Distilling) to those with clear roots in anthropology (Viking Studies) or those looking at a specific cultural phenomenon with a view to a wider academic discipline (The Beatles, Popular Music and Society).

Klingon??!!
Still, if these, or Surf Science don’t float your boat – and yes that is surf as in the waves not the web - our friends over the Pond have, not too surprisingly, an even more diverse range of courses for consideration. Last year, QS put a list together of degrees which would make most people’s eyes and mouths start watering – it would seem there really are opportunities to study Harry Potter, Klingon, the tv show Lost, zombies, the joy of garbage, the history of the pig in America and – perhaps most alluring – the science of superheroes.

Friday 6 November 2015

Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything

By Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager


So much data, and so little time
to write awards...
As the 2015 September recruitment cycle officially comes to a close, it's time for us marketers to bury our heads in the mountains of metrics that we've put in place, on our usual quest to evaluate our performance and effectiveness, to demonstrate ROI, and to churn out those all important reports which provide valuable insight to inform our future work. Whilst on the one hand it's quite an intense aspect to our roles, with many an hour spent crunching numbers, and getting bogged down in the data wondering why I didn't pay more attention in maths classes at school, I quite like ploughing through the reams of insight and analysis to do a round up - it's always nice to see our contribution, and to assess our highlights and successes (as well as identifying what we can do better, which is a constant learning curve and central to all that we do). But as many of our regular readers will know, I'm also guilty of writing reports for dual purposes. That's right, I'm a cereal award-writer, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

Who needs sleep when you
can write awards!
Since I started writing awards in 2013, we've gone on to win eight awards, with two award wins and a Heist short-list in this year alone, which we're mightily proud of. Winning, and even being short-listed for these coveted awards is a massive coup for the team, and I'll be the first to admit that it's nice to see the office adorned in our achievements. Not only is it a great big pat on the back and morale booster, but it's great to be recognised by our peers and the wider sector, as being the best in the region, or nationally at what we do.

And so, with all of the report writing that's going on at the moment, we'll soon be able to see if we have some pieces to enter early next year, when awards season for us typically kicks off. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some helpful hints and tips on writing a winning award entry, should you choose to give it a go for yourself in the new year...

Before you start
Look beyond the marketing hype
- do the facts speak for
themselves?
First things first, before you do anything you should assess your goals and ask yourself these questions:

  • Why I am doing this?
  • What do I want to get out of it?
Writing awards is a lot of work, so make sure it's worth your while. In other words, be brutal. Is your initiative really good enough? Remove the bias, and look at the facts. Does it stand out, and do you have the evidence and hard facts to back up your claims?

Getting started
Be individual - sometimes small
or niche can win big
So once you're certain of what you're setting out to do, it's time to search through the different awards, and scour the categories to see what's on offer, and where you think you might be able to contribute and make a submission. It's always worth noting the deadlines at this point, to make sure all your award writing won't be in vain. Once you've selected the categories it's time to write that entry!

Tip: Really consider your category and who you may also be going up against. Whilst we all want to win big, sometimes the niche categories make for an interesting and successful submission. And whilst we fully believe our initiative is amazing, you never know what, or who, you're up against.

Writing that award winning entry
So it's time to write that entry. Anyone can write and submit entries, but to secure the short-list, it requires time, effort and dedication.

  1. Research previous winners - and take a look at their entries - most winner's entries are hosted online, and can provide a great resource when looking at format, and the level of detail needed
  2. Really look at the entry criteria - and the questions that you're being asked. Stick to the point at all times, and keep the entry focused on fully evidencing the success and ROI of the work
  3. Keep it concise - brief and to the point. Most awards have strict word counts, and so you have to make every sentence and every word count - cut the waffle
  4. Keep it simple - whilst it's important to include the relevant lingo and jargon in the entry to showcase your expert knowledge, remember who your reader is - they may or may not be a specialist in that particular area, and they have many to read! Keep it simple and understandable - after all, if they don't get your point, you won't get the marks
  5. Be bespoke - tailor the information to what is being asked, and the specific category - especially if you're entering the same initiative for multiple awards. A simple copy and paste job will not do
  6. Make it pretty - spend sometime on the layout, and devise the sections so that they correspond with the criteria and questions being asked, to make it easy for the judge to give you marks. But make sure you know the restrictions on including graphs and images (in most cases you can place these in an appendices if these are allowed). 
  7. Make it stand out - showcasing new initiatives, or novel ways of working and achieving your objectives provides a great way to catch the judges attention. Think our Clearing Flash mob from the 2014 Clearing campaign. Different is interesting. But only include it if it's relevant and you have a point to make.
  8. Make it personable - in some entries they ask why you should win. Whilst the stats are great here to evidence this, don't shy away from adding a personal narrative. If it's relevant, talk about the people involved and play on the emotive aspects. Celebrating real people and real achievements is great, and adds a bit of personality to the entry.

Failing to plan, is planning to fail
But most of all. It's important to allocate time to this. Balancing writing award entries alongside the day job is a challenging task. Conducting research and analysis to collate the evidence is time consuming but a crucial aspect, as without the evidence it's just an opinion piece. And carefully constructing an entry to satisfy the criteria takes focus and determination. So be prepared to put in the hours if you take it on. But if you secure the short-list it's always a nice rewarding feeling.

Tip: Carefully select your award categories and make sure that the stats stack up. After all, no matter how proud of the work you are, if you've spend ages pulling an entry together which has weak evidence, you won't get very far. It's important to remember quality over quantity.

What to do if successful
After submitting, make a note of the short-list confirmation date - after all that hard work, you want to make sure you know if you made the cut!

If you've made it to the short-list, here's what you do next:

  • Shout about it - it's great news, why wouldn't you? But get in touch with the press team and give them all the details
  • Get your seats booked - for the coveted 'do, and get planning what to wear (check if the 'do has a theme or dress code)
  • Befriend twitter - especially on awards night. Many awards have their own twitter handle and hashtag and encourage you to tweet throughout the evening - great for fun and profile raising 
  • Talk to us - keep the MARC department (and the press team) informed of the evenings events - whether it was a win, or not! Being short-listed in itself is an amazing achievement
  • Make space - in the office to proudly display your winners or finalist certificates and awards

Writing awards has many rewards, and I'm not just talking about the certificate if you win. Quite often, we're so busy with our day-to-day work that taking the time to truly reflect on our achievements and performance passes us by. Being able to see success, and just how well a piece of work or an initiative has performed is great. So if you do write award entries and go on to win, great! But remember, it's not just about the winning.

Thursday 29 October 2015

Becoming the digital marketer

So, we all know how important digital marketing in these days, and I’m slowly dipping my toes in the water and getting to grips with more digital activity. Not necessarily the implementation, but more the briefing process – putting targeted Google and promoted social media briefs together for different aspects of the annual campaign.

As we like to be as targeted as possible using analysis from previous campaigns, there are a lot of ideas and thoughts to get down as coherently as possible; search ads, display ads, re-targeting, mobile ads, promoted social media posts. And then there's targeting, reaching new audiences, which subjects get more traction in which areas of the UK, different visuals for different subjects or locations, key words, affiliate websites, hidden landing pages…the list seems endless.  

I’ve got to admit it was daunting pulling together the first large brief, but I’ve just recently finished this and it’s now up and running. So, I’m now working on the next. Now here comes the issue; when we’re targeting some similar subjects in different campaigns how do we ensure we don’t compete with ourselves for the likes of key words or affiliate websites? And so it starts again; targeting, reaching new audiences, which subjects get more traction in which areas of the UK, different visuals for different subject or locations, key words, affiliate websites, hidden landing pages…the list seems endless.  Have I said that already?!

Although all of this has been a lot to get my head around, I am feeling excited that it’s giving me the opportunity to broaden my knowledge in terms of the digital aspects of marketing, which is great for my own development. Keep your eyes peeled for some analysis on my first large Google campaign...

Fruits of our labour
As Sara mentioned last week, we directed some photo shoots earlier this month and I thought I’d share a couple of images below as we’ve now had these back from the photographers we worked with. I'm looking forward to seeing these in our 2017 publications. We’ve still got one more shoot to do mid-November for the prospectus cover, and that’s photography done for 2016. Well that’s all from me this week and I’ve got a nice day off tomorrow! :)
Speak soon,
K
Students in our Go Global Cafe


New library at our UCMK campus













One of our business, Luton campus

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Lights, camera, action!


Over the last couple of weeks, Kylie and I have spent a few days out and about at the different campuses with photographers for the 2016/2017 prospectuses. We've got some great images from the photo shoots and I'm really excited for everyone to see them once the prospectuses are published.

I was mainly working on profile shots, taking photos of individual students and filming them talking about their university experience. I really love this aspect as it gives me the chance to meet some of our students and hear their thoughts and opinions on their course and the university (although I spoke to one student about the Go Global programme and it's set off the travel bug - help!). 

Much to our surprise, the weather was on our side yesterday so we managed to get some really nice profile shots and group shots outside too! As much as I hate the cold this time of year brings, I do love the colours of Autumn!

It was really interesting to work with the photographers as they have such an intricate way of seeing things. I also got to act as the photographers assistant a couple of times and hold some of the lighting equipment - although knowing the price of the equipment made that a little scary!

We've also started writing and collating copy for the 2016/2017 UG prospectus. This is my first time working on the UG prospectus so it's really exciting for me to be involved in every aspect of the project.

A big thank you to all of the students that got involved with the photo shoots! And to anyone wondering how/if they can be involved in our next shoot, please drop me an email.

That's all from me for now,

Sara

Thursday 15 October 2015

Culture - a Luton thing?



Funny things have happened on campus over the last few weeks. Stands, pagodas, stalls, marquees, student ambassadors and freshers’ angels have sprouted where before, there was a distinct lack of stands, pagodas, stalls, marquees, student ambassadors or freshers’ angels. The last week of September and first week of October saw the beginning of the new academic year and soaring campus energy levels which have since been ever so slightly jaded by a downturn in the weather and an upturn in beach parties and other luridly themed student nights.

A warm welcome should continue to be extended, not only to the University of Bedfordshire, but also to Luton. Or Bedford. Or Milton Keynes, or Aylesbury, Barnfield, Arthur Mellows, Majan or wherever else University students are. Wherever you’re studying, welcome.

Those arriving at Luton – our biggest campus – may be wondering what they’ve let themselves in for. Yes, we have state of the art buildings, but Luton – the town - often makes the news for the wrong reasons and has been the butt of many stand ups sitcoms, adverts and novelty hit parade smashes. Like this. Or this. The town has been an easy target over the years, but its folk always bounce back.

Luton's Bear Jazz and Blues club
From a student’s point of view, part of Luton’s appeal may be that it’s on London’s doorstep with fast trains linking town to capital in less than half an hour. That’s less than half an hour assuming there are no weekend engineering works or staff shortages and assuming, too, that travel is undertaken in a southerly direction. It would take a deluded or strange fellow to suggest Luton is London’s equal, but outside the Uni, the town boasts a vibrant jazz club, art centre, as well as a range of clubs, museums, galleries, sport and – according to a few  – “by far the greatest (football) team the world has ever seen”. Gems may be hard to uncover, but for precisely this reason, they’re more rewarding when you do find them.

Here are a few choice facts about Luton you may or may not be familiar with and which you might want to bandy about if and when the need arises:

  •  The aforementioned Luton Town was the first club in the South of England to turn fully professional in 1891;
  •  Peripatetic Polish literary giant Joseph Conrad lived, for a while, just outside Luton (in a building which still stands and is visible from the southern side of the airport runway);
  • Luton Hoo is hugely popular as a film location and has been used in films and programmes including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Call the Midwife, War Horse, Gosford Park and A Shot in the Dark (the last of which features cinema’s greatest Billiards scene ever);
  • When it was completed in the early 1970s, The Mall was – very briefly – the largest covered shopping centre in Europe;
    The Mall in the 1970s looking like The Mall in 2015
  • Music and musical acts associated with Luton include flute wielding folk rockers Jethro Tull, goth punk pioneers UK Decay and best-forgotten potato-like 80s soul pop sensation Paul Young;
  • Luton has had more than one castle built within the town's limits in the Middle Ages, with the silver line on the pavement running into the main entrance of the Campus Centre showing where the moat of one of these castles ran;
  • The M1 was officially “inaugurated” in Luton in 1953;
  • Luton's town hall was built in the 1930s after the original structure was burned down in the Peace Day Riots of 1919.

So, for all those who run Luton down; no, we don’t have Bedford’s history, Milton Keynes; shopping, St Albans’ money or those cosy, quaint English Chiltern village greens and whatnot. That said, they’re all pretty close, and for the curious and those looking for opportunity and a chance to carve a niche, make a mark and all that good stuff, Luton really isn’t such a bad prospect.