Same difference - achieving stand out in a crowded market place

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Standing out from the crowd has never been more important. Gone are the days of simply shouting about the big 5: high quality teaching, state-of-the-art facilities, student support, great location, and employment. Times are changing, and these are now simply a basic expectation towards any student experience. Universities are having to up their game, and showcase what makes them truly special and distinct, after all, any and every university fundamentally offers the same product: a degree, and so the need to focus on brand building and highlighting what makes us different, is becoming increasingly important.

And it's for this very reason the University of Bedfordshire launched its Verbal Brand Project - a re- positioning exercise to establish our basic truths and aspirations, and promote our extra added value in order to boost our brand reputation and present a distinct and attractive proposition against our competitors.

Shift in messaging, sector wide

Spotted!
When in London I often think to myself; have I seen this ad because they are quite simply everywhere, and quite frankly there isn't much else to look at when waiting for the tube, or would I have still noticed this ad if I didn't work in marketing? IE are adverts so ingrained into my brain that you know you're never far from a lurking competitor ad. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Nevertheless, on my recent travels to London St Pancras I bumped into an advert from our neighbouring competitor, Anglia Ruskin and in true tourist style, papped away to snap their latest messaging to feed back to our Market Research team in the hope of making it into Andy's special editions of Competitor Watch. Anglia Ruskin's latest campaign messaging is quite similar to one branch of our new verbal brand messaging: focusing on entrepreneurship and not just employability, and so they are firmly on our radar as one's to watch. However, the good old saying "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" springs to mind :-) and we're more than confident that our new marketing materials and planned activity will keep us distinct and showcase the very best of what Bedfordshire has to offer - more on this soon!

Phone company or University?

We're better, connected
As social media remains a force to be reckoned with, so does the need for younger, new generations to build their own profiles and provide their own platforms to be heard. Suddenly a person's worth is dictated by how many 'likes' or 'follows' they have from many different networks. But more importantly, it's about extending reach and opening doors of opportunity on a wider scale. And that's where this idea of being connected really becomes important. Luckily I haven't spotted any of our competitors on this thread yet, so here's hoping! I have however, included an example from Southampton, who are definitely worth a watch if you haven't yet seen some of their videos, and their video on research in particular is very nicely done, if you ask me! At the risk of all sounding like phone companies, the focus on staying connected is growing in importance, but not just from a social media, and a 'it's good to talk' point of view. From a University perspective, the ability to offer opportunities to travel, network and operate on a global scale adds a whole new dimension to offering a well rounded, all encompassing 'international' experience. This is really quite an exciting concept for the UoB Marketeer, and really gives us something meaty to work with. So you may see us out and about around campus on the quest for case studies, content and concrete examples to back up these exciting messages, so we can feed them into our communications.

For current staff members, if you haven't yet got involved in the verbal brand project, take a look at the MARC staff intranet pages where you'll be able to look at/download a tool kit for your own department.

In other news, the Marketing team, and colleagues from the Digital Marketing team spent a day over at the Bedford campus this week as part of our PG Media Day. We had a day full of interesting insights, talks and discussions from PG Media providers, and discovered more about external factors affecting the sector, barriers and obstacles to PG study, as well as getting an overview into some new digital platforms which we're considering trialing over the coming weeks to grow our PG brand and our digital presence. As we progress this, we'll continue to share updates with you via this blog.

We also welcomed our two new Faculty Marketing Assistants, who will be part of the Marketing team until July - and will provide a central 'go-to' contact for the Faculties, to ensure that central and Faculty initiatives are not only collaborative, but well aligned to our overall objectives. It's great to have both on board, and I'm sure we'll be able to share some updates on the exciting content that they will be producing to support our recruitment efforts in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet met your FMA, let us know, and do get in touch!