What to ask for when you ask for market research

Right, so I didn’t read the leave calendar properly and have had to take a load of leave time for the end of the year, rather than lose it. My fault. Or “my bad” as the kids probably don’t say anymore. I had something prepared, but it’ll have to wait until next time. Here’s a filler; a rather rushed but hopefully useful guide to what’s useful for me when you ask for market research from MARC.

Precise needs – Aims and objectives. Right? Stuff we teach on a huge proportion of our courses, but which curiously goes AWOL when initiatives are half baked then chucked around with a clear need for action, but a panicky feeling of not really knowing what the action should be. Crystallising precise needs can be useful to you as well as to me. Many requests I have are pleasingly specific to which I respond, usually with a stunningly presented answer.  Here are some clues about what makes a nice, specific request.

If you don’t know what you’re after, say so. GO ON; SAY IT. “I’m not sure what I’m after”. As long as you’re not expecting the moon on a stick, or a silver bullet, we can work round this. It might be time to ask for a meeting……

A meeting – yes, I can be “meeting resistant”. Many sensible, sane people are. Meetings can, after all, be talking shops better covered by an email. If you have a very specific course title you want to test, or need recruitment details from competitors, again, with a set list of courses, let’s not meet. If there’s any room for misinterpretation, however, then let’s meet. Or call me. I’m on x 3379. I don’t mind woolly requests. Really. The work can often be more interesting than number crunching cohorts. 

Me and fashion parted in the mid 1970s

Background – always helpful. Often covered in meetings, though not always at other times.

Remember, I’m a man with limitations. I know nothing about Fashion, Criminology, Computing, HRM, Forensics, Sport Therapy, Civil Engineering or Marketing. You know far more about your subject area than me. You may have come from a different institution which may do things better or differently to us. The latter far more likely than the former, obviously. Sharing background is, however, a two way street. Look at all this stuff on the intranet, for example……

A deadline. I have other work. I do not sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for stuff to come in.  I do not have a team; I have spreadsheets.

When giving a deadline, try and think of a date. You know; DD/MM/YYYY. That kind of thing. It might be fun and edgy to say it, but “as soon as possible” is not a deadline. “As soon as possible” =

• “put my request at the top of your list;
• I don’t want to hear/care what else you’re working on;
• my work is more important than anything else you’re doing right now;
• I am more important than the rest of those people you’re working with”.

Right, ok. I know “as soon as possible” isn’t this really, and that it's more ‘light touch’ bribery. I’m only human and, therefore susceptible to bribes and other forms of flattery and bullying. But please, tell me when you need your work done. If it’s for a meeting, let me know it’s for a meeting and let me know how long you’d like to digest whatever I can produce before this meeting.

Put a crap deadline into the system; expect crap back

And again, “yesterday” is not a deadline. “Yesterday” is an admission of failure, on your part. “Yesterday” means the boat has sailed and you’ve been caught out. It may not be your fault, but I cannot meet a deadline that’s in the past. Please recalculate and bear in mind exactly what I’ve said about “as soon as possible”.

So that’s what would be nice to have when you ask for market research. I accept and will work to lesser briefs. I often do. Here’s The Beach Boys to wrap things up. Let’s try and forget they might be Republicans.

I don't want you to photoshop yourself. Your landscapes, however...

This blog post is kind of a two for the price of one situation. Essentially, I went to New York last week and want to talk about it (a thousand apologies to my colleagues who have heard about it non-stop for the whole week, I swear this will be the last thing). But I also want to make it work-related, so I’m going to tie it in with my role as a member of our newly formed Social Media Team. Therefore, drum roll please…

Tips and tricks for editing Instagram pictures

For the first time in my life I actually have a decent camera (the Canon G7X mark ii for those who care), so have been making extra effort to improve my photography and editing skills. I'm by no means an expert - I only started teaching myself four days ago - but this is what I’ve learnt so far.

Photoshop tricks

1) TIMES SQUARE, NY. As I've said in the title, I really don't encourage 'photoshopping' yourself in any way. However, I do think that sometimes it's allowed. For example, in the picture below I actually had chocolate on my face *rolls eyes*, but it was a really nice picture other than that, so I figured it was excusable. If you have a similar situation, I suggest the Spot Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp tools on Photoshop - which are really useful for getting pieces of fluff off your clothing or just smartening up chocolately faces. Be warned though - they are both 'blurring' tools, so if you use them over a large surface area, people will be able to tell. 

ORIGINAL

EDITED

2) FINANCIAL DISTRICT, LOWER MANHATTAN, NY. If by accident, like me, you've taken a picture at a really nice time of day - dawn or dusk or during a sunset, for example - it can be nice to enhance that. In the image below a couple of useful techniques have been used. First, to straighten out buildings or other subjects, copy a new layer of your image. Then Ctrl T (Transform) and right click and choose Distort. Then you're free to drag the corners/sides of your image to make them straighter. Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights helps to make any buildings or structures stand out, and Ctrl L will bring up a levels menu that can also brighten or darken any shapes (clouds included!). And lastly, to brighten up skies, you can go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter, which gives you loads of options to bring out different saturations of colours, to make them really stand out! 

ORIGINAL

EDITED

Image editing apps

If you don't have access to Photoshop or just can't be bothered to spend that much time on your pictures, there are some pretty good editing apps available nowadays that can improve your images just as easily. Here are some I've found. 

1) BROOKLYN BRIDGE, LOOKING BACK ON MANHATTAN, NY. I used an app called Photofox to edit this picture, which I've found is great if you want to give the illusion that your pictures have been taken on old-fashioned camera reel (like the Olympus Penn or OM-1). If colour distortion and fade is your thing, then this is the app for you! It's free and has a wide range of light overlays that can give your images that vintage feel. See below!

ORIGINAL

EDITED

2) CENTRAL PARK, NY. This is probably my favourite photo editing app to use at the minute, and it's called VSCO (although ColorStory comes in at a close second, check both out). It's no different to the filters that Instagram supply you with, other than it has a whole lot more editing options beyond that, and more colour gradients. The app is free and so are a selection of filters, but for more advanced options you do have to pay unfortunately! I like to use it to brighten my pictures and for landscapes, to give them a rustic feel.

ORIGINAL

EDITED

So I hope that helps (and simultaneously lets you know what an amazing time I had in the 'big apple'). I use these techniques on my personal Instagram account, but I don't see why I, and the rest of the team, can't start using them on the University Instagram to make our pictures stand out. So get downloading, social team! 

Hope this is useful, and I'd love to see if anyone tries any of these photo editing options in their own work, so please let me know! 

Until next time. Over and out. 

An exciting delivery

This week we received our printed 2019 undergraduate prospectus. The team laugh at me for getting excited at this, but I love holding the prospectus in my hands, and seeing all the hard work from the previous months come together as a final product.

What people may not realise is that we start thinking about design concepts and layouts in the summer, start organising photo-shoots in September, and collating and writing copy in October, so when we receive the finished product, it’s a culmination of over six months of hard work.

This year we made the decision to move some of the content previously

located in the back section of the prospectus to the front, so prospective students have more information about things like the Students’ Union, student support, and accommodation initially. We also spent a lot of time changing the layout of our course openers. In previous years the openers had been quite busy, with multiple photos and blocks of text with coloured backgrounds. This year we’ve focused on one main image, and tried to incorporate some white space to make the pages more appealing, and easier to read.

The new simulation labs opened in Luton last year, and we were lucky enough to be able to sneak into a couple of sessions and take some photos of the fantastic, new nursing facilities. We were also able to update most of the profiles for this year’s prospectus. We often liaise with academics, asking them to recommend some students, and try to feature at least one student from each subject area, so prospective students can hear first-hand what it’s like to study at Bedfordshire. I’m in the process of contacting postgraduate students to feature in the 2019 PG prospectus at the moment, so if you’re a PG student that would like to feature in one of our prospectuses please get in touch!

My task for today is to send a couple of boxes of the new prospectus to all of our reception desks around campus. They should be available from next week, so if you see one please pick one up and let us know your thoughts!

Sara

Marketing Officer