A love affair with Northampton is a journey into space? Really?

Back in the dark ages, Luton Borough Council and/or another well-meaning civic body (or bodies) ran something called Luton’s Looking Up. Lurid yellow t-shirts with a vaguely Breakfast TV, vaguely Acid
House logo were run off and worn by a few local lunatics and well-meaning friends of the town. That's what passed as social media in the late 1980s. As I recall - possibly incorrectly - no one knew what was going on and the campaign didn’t amount to much.

I’ve written before about Luton’s image problems, although it appears that at long last, there’s a real and serious set of exciting initiatives which will transform our loveable old environs into something which hopefully will still be loveable, but new and shiny too.

On our doorstep - proposed new ground for Luton Town FC

While work is nearing completion on our very own eight-storey ‘state of the art’ library, even more exciting, for many townsfolk, are the plans for Power Court, within a stone’s throw of our main town centre campus. Readers of this blog may recall my fondness for the mighty Luton Town, so it’s hard to put in words how exciting the prospect of the proposed stadium is. We will rise again - by beating Arsenal in the 1988 League Cup, we gave Gooners like Nick Hornby plenty to moan about long before their perennial navel gazing and dreary irritation about always finishing fourth set in under current manager Arnold Fenders.

Last known happy Arsenal fan

Enough about football. Again. The Power Court development also includes restaurants and commercial enterprises, but most significantly, an 1,800 capacity music venue. This, again, is ludicrously good news for a town which, in addition to our very own Student Union, has always been well served by small venues like The Edge, The Four Horseshoes, The George, The Castle, the Hat Factory or the jewel in crown on the town’s live music scene, The Bear Club. When it comes to national acts, Luton has, up until now, had to rely on nearby venues like the St Albans Arena or the Bedford Corn Exchange – a venue of the size proposed will hopefully attract some pretty significant touring acts. Not that either St Albans or Bedford are easily reached on Thameslink.

And that’s not all Luton town watchers – light rail to the airport, the busway, bridge installations, a new shop called Smiggle and new doughnut shops in The Mall….. there’s so much going on, it’s hard to keep up. Luckily, the excellent Luton Developments on both Facebook and Twitter deliver regular updates on what’s going on in the town, building-wise.

Looking back, the Luton’s Looking Up campaign didn’t do any harm. This may have been because it didn’t leave a legacy. Unlike Northampton, whose musical invocations of a new Eden in middle England only 60 miles by road or rail from London is not only huge fun, but also ridiculous; anyone who knows their local history knows that the Garden of Eden was in Bedford.

Enjoy the Northampton song? The A-side is even more bonkers…….

We're feeling simply the Beds. with another award accolade

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

After spending a week in sunny Las Vegas, USA, it's back to the not so sunny Luton, and a mountain of emails and campaign work to catch up on.

Another accolade to add to
the marketing shelf

Whilst ploughing through the hundreds of emails (yes really, and I was only gone for a week!) I happened to stumble across one particular email which caught my attention - from UKBA - the UK Blog Awards.

A while back, Andy our Market Research Manager and I decided on a bit of a whim to enter this here blog for an award, to see how we fared amongst the sector and our fellow marketing peers and HE professionals. I was pretty happy to see that whilst we didn't secure the big win, we did receive a 'Highly Commended' recognition from the judges.

It was great to see that we'd made the short-list in the first place as it was very competitive. There were 2,000 entries submitted for the award, and 79,000 public votes were cast resulting in our Marketing Blog beating off stiff competition to make it into the top ten short list. So we're very pleased with the result and to make it that far, considering our humble blogging beginnings.

UKBA sent us an email notifying us of the big result:

"Congratulations on being awarded highly commended at the UK Blog Awards. The judges assessed your Blog against a rigorous criteria of: Design, Style, Content, Marketing, and Usability which was then assessed against five sub-criteria’s. Some of our judges have said that the criteria is the most intense that they have critiqued against. Therefore, you should be super proud of your highly commended blog achievement!" - And indeed we are!

So, a big thank you to everyone who voted to help us secure the short-list, and we'll be sure to continue to share our marketing updates and insight and to build on the good work here, ready for UKBA 2017, next year!

A varied few weeks

Over the last week or so I’ve been away from my desk more than usual; helping with photoshoots and filming, and attending media presentations. The last few weeks and been super busy and really varied, from the more creative aspects (photoshoots) to the less creative (proofreading publications). But that’s what I enjoy about marketing, it can be so varied and it keeps you on your toes!

As Sara mentioned last week, we’ve had three days of photoshoots for our clearing and annual campaign. They were hectic but exciting, and we’ve just received the images from the photographer. We’ve been looking through all of the images and choosing the best ones to take forward for our campaign, taking into consideration the different platforms they will be used for. It’s now over to the photographer to work more of his magic and edit the selected pictures. We’re hoping to get these next week so our designers can start working on the visuals and we can start working on the microsite.  

I’ve also been filming student videos for a forthcoming e-zine edition – and as the weather has been so nice, I even took the opportunity to do the filming outside which was great! So I’ll be editing these over the coming weeks as a start to put my e-zines together.

There are also a few publications I’m currently working on:

1. The PG 2017 prospectus – this is at first proof stage, so I’ve been proofing my allocated sections; five sections down, one to go…  

2. The UCAS visitor guide – we’re hosting a UCAS Exhibition in June at our Bedford campus for the third year running and I’m working on the main guide. This is at final proof stage and I’m expecting to send it to print on Tuesday

3. Welcome 2017 guide – each year we produce a welcome guide that we send out to all of our applicants following results day. This gives an overview ahead of students starting with us – how to register as a Beds student online, social events taking place in the first week, finance, student support, campus maps and lots more! I briefed this in to the designer yesterday and first proofs are due wc 16 May

Our UCAS Exhibition guide

We’re also looking ahead to the 2017 cycle – I sent the first enquirer edition of our B4Beds e-zine last month, and we’ve got some email communications going out over the next month or so. This is the part of the year when it can often get confusing as we’re working on the 2016 cycle and the 2017 cycle at the same time. All in a day’s work! 

Speak soon,

K