Full of PRide after awards win

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

After a week off in the sunshine, I'm finally back in the office and what a first few days back it's been.

Two Gold Awards for Team UoB!

On Friday the Marketing team got glammed up and headed on over to the CIPRide Awards, as we had been short-listed for not one, but two coveted awards. As I was still over in Gran Canaria, I sat with cocktail in hand, in the hotel bar (the only place with wifi!) sporadically refreshing my twitter feed to see how we had done. Much to my delight, we scooped a Gold award for Best Publication - for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus. After whooping in the bar and celebrating with a few more cocktails, I was surprised to see that we had won another Gold award - this was a special judges prize (and the second consecutive year that we had won this award) for the Best Use of Research, Planning, Measurement and Evaluation.

Celebrating on stage with an
award win

This really was a great achievement for the Marketing team, and really is testament to the hard work that is undertaken throughout the year. A lot of time and effort is placed into producing our university publications, but in also evaluating the performance of all work, and assessing the ROI and value in all that we do. The team I'm told, had a great evening out, although were left a little on the hungry side after letting the canapes pass them by.

Gold for Best Publication: @uniofbeds for their Undergraduate 2015 Prospectus #PRideATC
— CIPR East Anglia (@CIPR_EastAnglia) November 7, 2014

Midland Hotel - Manchester

And just when you think it can't get any better! Paul and Lauren from the Digital team, alongside Beverley and I headed off to the Midland Hotel in Manchester only yesterday, as we were up for another award. This time the Marketing team was up for Best Faculty Campaign at the Prospects Postgraduate Awards for our work done last year to increase applications to PGT Sport courses.

Celebrating our award win

After a hearty three course dinner, and a good catch up with our contacts at Prospects, the awards were upon us. We were up in the penultimate category, against three other universities and so left to sweat it out until the end. As the speaker started to talk about the winner, I could see that Paul was already celebrating - I of course had missed the subtle references of a 'photo finish' - which of course was relating to our sport campaign. Once it was announced we cheered as we made our way up to the stage to collect our very first award for a marketing campaign.

Award for Best Faculty Campaign

This brings us to a close for this years' award season. So, until next year it's back to work on our 2016 Undergraduate Prospectus, as well as our main corporate campaigns: Winter, Jan Start and Pre-Clearing - and who knows, maybe next year, it could be one of these initiatives that we'll be celebrating... :-)

Pride of place: Beds Marketing team going for Gold

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Making the final cut: Short-listed
for two CIPR Awards

With Clearing activity now in full swing, I completely forgot that Friday (1 August) was a very special day in our working calendar - it was the short-list announcement for the CIPRide Awards 2014! As it suddenly dawned on me what day it was, I had a sneaky peak online and was very excited to see that we'd been short-listed for not one but TWO awards this year: Best Publication (for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus), and Best Low Budget Campaign (for our work on increasing PGT Sport applications by 60% for 2013 entry).

We're up against, 4 and 5 other organisations respectively in our short-listed categories, and will find out the final result later this year in November, so watch this space (and keep everything crossed for us).

Yay very pleased to see that we're short listed for not one but TWO @CIPR_Awards - Best Publication and Best Low Budget Campaign #CIPRide
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) August 1, 2014

As many of you will know from my previous posts, writing award entries is no easy task. You always know when an awards deadline is approaching, as both Paul (Digital Marketing Manager) and I are scrambling around to get our entries in on time - a fine juggling act when you have your day job to carry on with too! And as always, a big shout out to the Market Research team whose data filtering and analytical skills are always much appreciated :-)

Entering awards has become quite an important focus of my role. Not only is it a great pat on the back, and testament to all of the hard work that the team has completed over the year, but it's a great benchmark against our peers and the wider sector - a glowing example of best practice. For me personally, it's a great way to elevate our teams' profile amongst the wider University, further reiterating that we are specialists in our field, with tried and tested initiatives that yield great results.

Planning ahead for 2016
and beyond...

Ok so back to work, and back in the office. Aside from Clearing, there have been a number of other exciting projects going on recently. The first of which has been preparing the 2016 tender documents. Yes, you read that right: 2016! It's an interesting challenge here in the Marketing team, as in any given day we can find ourselves working on collateral across three consecutive years: We're still working on the 2014 intake (through our Clearing campaign); and we're already engaging with our 2015 enquirers and gearing up for enquirer open days which will take place from September in preparation for the 15 January 2015 UCAS deadline. And now to add to the mix, we're planning ahead for 2016 intake, which involves the production of our core corporate publications.

Over the past few months we've been meeting with a selection of new agencies to discuss the tender process, our suite of publications, and to find out a little more about their structures and ability to deliver on a series of quite demanding and time sensitive projects. The tenders have now gone live, and we're excited to see which of the companies will submit to work with us over the coming year, and help shape the look and feel of our publications - we'll keep you posted on this process, and may even share an exclusive first-look of publication visuals, once an agency has been appointed, so stay tuned!