Taking PRide in our work

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Pre-drinks at Homerton College -
Sarah, Kylie, Beverley & Sara
(Left to right)

For those who keep up to speed with us on Social Media, this post will come as no surprise, as last Thursday we dusted off our log ins for our Twitter accounts to document our evening through a series of tweets - keeping everyone at MARC HQ informed as the evening unfolded. After many discussions over what to wear, we were on our way to this year's CIPRide Awards, which was being held at the lovely venue that is Homerton College, which had a slightly Harry Potter-esque vibe about it - much to the joy of our Marketing Assistant and die-hard HP fan, Sara.

After failing miserably at the dinner entertainment last year, we were back with a vengeance ready to take that quiz by storm. We teamed up with our friends from the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who we also sat with last year, and were ready to showcase our improved trivia knowledge. After some quick fire rounds, covering some of our specialty topics of Peppa Pig, trashy celebrities, movies and music, we got stumped at the questions about sport and the Olympics - note to self for next year! After a solid collective performance, we were pipped to the post - but this didn't dampen our mood, as it was finally time for the big event - the awards...

Scooping the Silver

Hurrah! It was great for us to win Silver in the category of Best Low Budget Campaign - for the second year running! Marketing Officer, Kylie had put this award entry together, celebrating the achievements of our marketing work to drive footfall to our open days. The submission showcased some great results, with a 16% increase in footfall against target, and a 24% increase against the previous year. It was such a great achievement to win a Silver, as it was a big category; we were up against six other companies. And it really is testament to the hard work of the team and showcases our ability to be really creative and innovative, especially when budgets are tight.

Best Integrated Campaign

It was time for our second category: Best Integrated Campaign - yet another big category with six companies all vying for the top spot. The Silver winner was announced as Carter Jonas Bradshaws: Your Next Chapter. That's when we all start to feel a little nervous, wondering whether we've done enough to win. I have to admit, I did have doubts - we were in one of the largest categories of the night, but we had also won Gold in this category last year, so all I was thinking was surely not, surely we won't win again? But win we did! Amazing!

Seeing the competition we were up against, and having scooped Gold in the previous year, we were nothing short of delighted to see that we have retained our title for the second consecutive year! A lot of hard word goes into the planning, implementation and evaluation of our Clearing campaign, and to see the results that we were able to generate, and to see that our work is being recognised as the best in the region is no mean feat, and it's great recognition for the team!

Going for Gold

We were really pleased with the campaign results: in an environment which saw our applicants increasingly using external sources (eg The Student Room), our unique page views to our main website still increased by 26%. Call volumes to the clearing line increased by 33%, live chats increased by 27%, with Live Chat offers increasing by 17%. And, the judges were also pleased, and gave us a glowing endorsement:


"A solid and comprehensive campaign based on sound research. It had a focused approach based on smart objectives, with a clearly targeted audience that delivered an exceptional return on investment, using all available channels to achieve the highest impact possible. It turned what can be a stressful time for many students into a positive experience and this entry demonstrates how PR helped the University of Bedfordshire make this happen"

Celebrating our big wins!

Once the awards were over, it was over to the photobooth for some celebratory team pics, and then it was time to hit the dance floor; busting out our best disco moves. 

After a busy few months implementing the 2016 Clearing Campaign, we're already seeing some great results, so fingers crossed we'll have some solid entries for next year's awards!

To round up this week's post, I'll share what was quite possibly my favourite memory of the awards evening...

Highlight of the night: Kylie whipping her hair to Tina Turner, and a group dance to Bewitched! Classic! #PRideATC #PRideAwards

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) September 22, 2016

Taking PRide in our achievements

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Desk pride in the office today :-)

Writing award submissions takes a lot of time and commitment. From scouring our marketing reports to assess campaign performance, reviewing the market research results from our Market Research Manager, to number crunching to demonstrate a return on investment, each and every submission takes a significant investment of time and effort, alongside the day job. But here in Marketing HQ we do like to squeeze in time to do just this.

Of course it's fantastic if you secure the short-list, but it's also a great nod to the hard work carried out in the team, and provides a great opportunity to reflect on our successes which can often be overlooked in the day-to-day busyness of campaign planning and implementation. And not forgetting to mention the kudos in being able to benchmark ourselves against our industry peers.

And that's why we were absolutely overjoyed to see that we'd been short-listed for not one, but two CIPRide Awards this year! A fantastic testament to all of the hard work undertaken this year - especially since we're rather depleted in resource as of late, and have had to be more frugal than in previous years - making every penny count in our campaigns.

Hurrah! Amazing to see that we've been shortlisted twice @CIPR_Awards -Low Budget & Integrated Campaign #PRideAwards pic.twitter.com/PKBp0ayhTb

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) July 18, 2016

The short-list may be out, but it looks as though we have some stiff competition - having entered two of the most competitive categories for our region this year.

We're up for Best Integrated Campaign - for the Clearing Campaign to support recruitment for 2015 entry, as well as Best Low Budget Campaign - for the performance of our September Open Day campaign, the latter award being Kylie's very first award submission - so a great result to secure the short-list first time round!

The Awards culminate in a 'do later in the year in Cambridge, so we'll keep you posted on how we do nearer the time. We've won Gold awards three year's in a row at CIPRide, so no pressure to keep the record going! But in the meantime, we're going to take a moment to relish in our achievements, before we get our heads crammed back into the beast that is Clearing to see if we will have another entry worthy of submission next year. Here's hoping!

And, we're live!

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Clearing Campaign 2016 - microsite is live!

It's been months in the making, but we've finally gone live with this year's Clearing Campaign. Hurrah!

After all of the research, planning and photoshoots, it's all now starting to take shape, with the first set of ads going live this week pushing our 'Beat the Clearing rush' and 'Received your BTEC results? Apply now' messaging as part of our early targeting strategy.

Graeme, the Digital Marketing Officer meanwhile, has also worked his web magic on a brand new, shiny microsite (see above left) which you can check out via: www.beds.ac.uk/makeithappen. We hope you'll agree that it looks great; clean layouts, mobile responsive, clear conversion goals and call to actions, and dynamic visuals to sustain engagement. It's got a professional feel to it - strongly aligning it with our core marketing messaging.

It's still early days, so keep checking back over the next few weeks, as we add more rich media and dynamic content to the Clearing microsite.

For many our fellow Bedfordshire peers, I'm sure you've already caught a glimpse of this year's artwork in the latest edition of the staff newsletter @Beds. But for those who missed it, check out the images below to see how the whole campaign looks together as a full set. This year's campaign is led by 6 creatives: Media, Life Science, Performing Arts, Business and Computer Science (both of which double up as our generic visuals), and last but not least Sport Science & Physical Activity.

This year we've kept with the employability and student experience themes, and have continued to build on our creative proposition of 'Graduate as a Professional'. Importantly for us as Marketers, we've spent months developing this concept and the artwork, and every aspect of the visual has been carefully considered and composed. Think bold aspirational hooks, clear and uncluttered artwork, dynamic imagery of real students engrossed in real practical student experiences, central call to actions, and digital and social media integration. We feel this year's campaign is stronger than ever, and really feel it presents the University in a strong and confident manner. It's still early days, but we're really excited to see the campaign in full flow, in a few week's time.

And whilst our focus is now firmly rooted in the 2016 Clearing Campaign, we've spent some time reflecting back on last year's campaign activity, and have even managed to get another award submission in for the CIPR Pride Awards 2016, for our work on the 2015 Clearing Campaign, in the category of Best Integrated Campaign (we're hoping to retain our title, as a Gold Winner last year).

And so our first submission has now been entered for this year's @CIPR_Awards for Best Integrated Campaign. One more to write! #PRideAwards

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) June 3, 2016

This follows on from Kylie's earlier submission to CIPR for best Low Budget Campaign. We should find out the result in July, so keep everything crossed for us! And who knows, maybe next year we could be entering the 2016 campaign for a top award. Here's hoping!

Will we be beaming with PRide again soon?

So you know I always mention my open day campaigns – like a broken record! – well, I’m finally writing my first award entry for our September 2015 open day event.

I’m hoping to enter it into the ‘Best Low Budget Campaign’ category at this year’s CIPR PRide awards. We entered this category last year for the previous September open day and we won silver, so hopefully we can pull off a similar, if not better, performance this year – my evaluation report showed a good YOY increase and we substantially beat target, so fingers crossed!

I’ve also been helping out with the Clearing campaign. I’ve been editing some short student videos and also taken some computing related pictures, both are part of our Clearing social media campaign. I can’t believe Clearing is almost here again – it comes round so quickly – like Christmas?! (Yeah, I said the word Christmas in June – shame on me).

Welcome guides
We’re now also at the final stages of the 2016 Welcome guide which goes to print this week and I’ve recently briefed in the Nursing welcome guide – one publication ends another begins.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be working on some collateral for our new foundation years, creating some advice emails for our 2017 enquirers, and working my way through the last open day campaigns for this cycle.

On that note, I best get on…
Speak soon,
K

We’re still beaming with PRide

So, I mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago that we were shortlisted for two CIPRide awards. Well I’m super excited to say we won both – Gold for best integrated campaign for our 2014 Clearing campaign, and Silver for best low budget campaign for our 2014 September open day campaign . The team were really pleased, but the dilemma now is where to put them in the office; our cabinet is getting pretty full, which is a nice problem to have.

We're winners!

The awards were held at Homerton College in Cambridge this year and it was a lovely venue; the buildings were great, and the room that held the awards ceremony was really grand. The food was also really nice, so all in all a good night. I attended the awards for the first time last year, and Sarah has attended previous CIPRide awards, but it was the first time for Sara and Charlotte.

Accepting our Gold Award

The event started with some welcome drinks, before we sat down for a hearty three course dinner; Goats cheese and golden beetroot salad to start, Honey roasted duck breast and veg for main, and finished off with chocolate fondant and caramel ice cream, which was delicious- I could eat it all again now!

After the dinner (and a couple of glasses of wine) it was time for a quiz and then the awards ceremony. As our categories and the finalists shortlisted were read out I could feel the tension from the team, it’s great to be shortlisted but after all of our hard work, and because we’re quite competitive, we really wanted to come away with something. And we did, which was fantastic!

Accepting our Silver Award

The event had great use of social media too – there was a photo booth which allowed you to upload images straight onto Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and they were also shown around the room on various screens throughout the night, which was great. I’ve shared some pictures of the team throughout this blog, but you can see all of the pictures here.

Hopefully, we can enter and win more awards as the year goes on. The 2015 September open day campaign generated some good numbers again this year, so watch this space…

As Sarah mentioned last week, we are now down to a team of three, so winning the awards was great for the team morale. And as we continue through this cycle, we will continue to be targeted in our approach to campaigns and hopefully continue to yield some great results for the University. Throughout the year, the marketing team try to enter numerous awards, by numerous awarding bodies, as it’s not only great for the team to have our hard work recognised, but it’s also good to showcase the work that we’re doing.

Speak soon,
K

Celebrating our wins in the photo booth!

A constant state of change

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Back to the day job
after a wonderful few
weeks!

This weeks post is focused on change. No matter how much we all try to resist sometimes, its the one thing that's always remains constant. And for us fellow Marketers, embracing change, and being responsive to change is all in the job. The sector and marketing environment is constantly adapting and changing, and therefore so must we!

Slightly off topic, but a change nonetheless, is me! After three long weeks, I'm back in the office and back to the day job after taking a few weeks off to get married. So, if you start to see Sarah De Guzman popping up every now and then in your inbox don't be alarmed, it's just me!

Getting back into the daily grind always takes some time, especially when there's literally hundreds of emails to catch up on. And so that's exactly how my first few days have been spent. It's amazing how quickly you can switch your mind off as you go into holiday mode, and then all the information, meetings and work updates come flooding back upon your return, as though that holiday was a thing of the past. I wish the same could be said for the jet lag!

Pretty much what my desk
looks like at the moment!

Well, it's now week two, post holiday, and the emails have been read, the calendar has been updated, and it's pretty much back to normality for me. Clearing is still underway, just about - we expect this to slowly tail off in the next week or so, as we firmly focus our attentions to the 2016 cycle, which has quietly been ticking along in the background since April this year.

Change in tactic
Ok so back to the focus of my blog post - change. The main focus of the marketing team has been in supporting the Recruitment team in the promotion of the September open day and lots of changes have been made to this years plan; from the media inventory selected to the times of communications. We've implemented a much more aggressive Digital Marketing campaign this time round, pulled back some communications based on intelligence learnt from previous plans, and we're very pleased with the results. If you happened to be on campus (Luton and Bedford) on that day you'll have seen that it was very busy indeed, and had a great vibe on campus, and that's always great to see. Take a look at our open day picture gallery - kindly taken by Sara, Marketing Assistant. And a big shout out to the recruitment team who really pulled it out of the bag with the number of schools in attendance. The day was a resounding success. That's one event down and on to the next, as we're already busily preparing a promotional push for our October events.

Krystle, far left, is setting off for
new adventures

Team change
This week will be offering up a bit of a mixed bag for the Marketing team. Krystle, our Campaign Officer is sadly leaving us on Wednesday, after being part of the Marketing team for about 18 months now. We're really sad to see her go, and to see our mighty marketing team reduced to just three colleagues now. In the relatively short time that Krystle has been with us, she's made a significant difference to the way in which campaigns are planned, implemented and evaluated, and she will be very much missed by us all. We'll be sending Krystle off and wishing her well over lunch on Wednesday. And, to pick up our mood, the remaining Marketing team will be heading off to Homerton College in Cambridge on Thursday, for this year's coveted CIPRide awards. We're up for two awards: Best Integrated Campaign for our 2014 Clearing campaign, and Best Low Budget Campaign for our September 2014 open day promotions. So a good evening out shall definitely pick up our moods, and provide a much needed evening out to re group, celebrate our achievements and look ahead to the future.

Keep everything crossed for us, and follow @CIPR_Awards to watch the evenings events unfold!

So change can mean many different things to many people. And boy are we experiencing a lot of it at the moment. From changing the way we do things and implemented planned changes to be more effective, all the way through to adapting to unforeseen changes, and changes in team resource and dynamics, we remain a positive marketing force to be reckoned with - it may just take us that bit longer to reply to your email, so please bear with us!

Multi-channel, Multi-tasking Marketers - The Digital Frontier

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

We 'do' digital

In true 'the Fast show' style: This week I have mostly... been in training sessions and agency meetings. Sounds fun right? Well, with current changes taking place within the department, and being part of a team who are always keen to expand our repertoire and skills set, we've taken it upon ourselves to shadow other colleagues and enhance our knowledge, particularly in the digital arena. The need to be fully integrated, and shift the weighting of our campaigns towards a stronger digital focus, means that it's becoming more and more important for us marketers to have a firm understanding of the many digital platforms available to support us in campaign planning and implementation. And so, to help us on our merry way, we've been working closely with the digital team this week, to grasp a firmer understanding of Google advertising and analytics, as well as getting some handy hints, tips and techniques to engage with our audiences through social media. It's all very exciting, and so we look forward to sharing some learnings and insight as we get more involved in upcoming campaigns, on the digital front.

Taking PRide in our work -
 to gain regional recognition

In between all of the meetings, training sessions and Marketing tasks, I've still somehow managed to squeeze in two more award entries - there's just so many exciting things going on at the moment and so it's hard to resist. This week, we've submitted two entries to the CIPRide Awards for the Thames and Chiltern region, in the categories of best Integrated Campaign (for our 2014 Clearing campaign), and best Low Budget Campaign (for the September 2014 Open day campaign, where we almost doubled the footfall compared to the previous year). The short-list is out in mid-July. It's always great to showcase the effectiveness of the work undertaken within Marketing, and it's great for the team to be able to see the results of their hard work; especially after Kylie wrote an 87 page report on Open Day insight. So it's always nice when we're able to use the wealth of data, insight and analysis to further bolster the reputation and credibility of the team through bench-marking against our fellow industry peers.

Delighted to see @uniofbeds have been shortlisted for Best Student Recruitment campaign at the @heistawards - yay! pic.twitter.com/DRxYcuht5U

— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) May 15, 2015

Making a PR splash - with
our Clearing flash mob

In order news, I was absolutely over the moon to see that we had been short-listed for Best Student Recruitment Campaign at this year's Heist awards. The award entry, which was wonderfully written by Krystle Hall (Campaign Officer), showcases the very best from the 2014 Clearing campaign; from our community events and recruitment roadshow, to a range of wide spanning activity which made up a fully integrated, multi-channel approach - it's all in there. And don't forget the University's very own flash mob which took place in the Mall Luton. It's quite a large short-list, but we're going to keep everything crossed that we scoop the big win at these coveted awards. The ceremony dinner is on the 9th July, so stay tuned or keep an eye on twitter @uniofbeds to watch the evening's events unfold.

Finally, as we come to the end of the week, it becomes time to bid farewell to some more MARC colleagues. Lauren Hague (Digital Marketing Officer) and Mick Hart (Publications Officer) are leaving the University this week; Lauren is leaving us to pursue new challenges in the digital marketing arena, whilst Mick is retiring after serving almost 19 years as part of the team. We wish them all the best for their future endeavours, and look forward to sending them off in the traditional MARC way. It's going to be a quiet office, come Monday!

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!

Offline To Online; The Big Debate

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

It's good to talk:
Postgraduate Marketing Forums

As usual, it's been another busy few weeks in the central Marketing team. I've been getting out and about; this time attending one of my favourite training sessions: the Postgraduate Marketing Forum. Run by Postgraduate Studentships, these forums are great for two reasons. 1: It's like group therapy, where we get to share problems in the sector and get some great reassurance that we're actually ahead of the game when it comes to many marketing initiatives. 2: It's great to talk to other Postgraduate Marketers from universities across the UK, and hear what they are up to and what they are planning.

One of the many slides: discussing the many
media platforms

This particular forum was entitled "From offline to online... and keeping them there". It was a great nod to the shift towards digital marketing, but had a strong emphasis on not leaving traditional media (print) behind - sounds like a recipe for integrated marketing if you ask me! The slides provided an overview of the national picture, which showed a decline in Postgraduate recruitment nationally. However we're pleased to share that for our September intake of PGT students we had a 30% increase compared with the previous year - so it's great to see that we're bucking the national trend ;-). Overall it was an engaging and informative session. The forum highlighted what we're already doing really well, and threw up some ideas which we may dabble with, and test, over the coming months to see what impact this has, if any, on our marketing and recruitment strategies.

Back in the office, and it's been all go on the publications front. Not only have we signed off the Mini Undergraduate guide for print, but as of today the main Undergraduate 2015 Prospectus has been approved for print (hurrah!). It'll be making its way over to our printers for tomorrow morning, and then we move swiftly into the print production stage of our schedule. That means there's one more round of proofing standing in the way of the finished product. It'll be ready for the 7 March (ready to be included in the Heist mailing to schools and careers advisers nationally) so we'll keep you posted as to when it's ready for your perusal.

Moving online: Postgraduate Virtual Event

This week has also seen us take part in our third Postgraduate Virtual Open Event - a culmination of 6 weeks of hard campaign work from our Marketing Assistant Clare, as she actioned a lot of marketing activity to drive up enquiries for this event. This year a lot of work was done from our digital counterparts (thank you!) to refresh video content and the way in which we capture data for the event so that we can continue with our conversion efforts post event. Now that the event is over we'll be pulling together all of our stats for an event wash up report, and will be able to make some further recommendations as to how we can improve these events in the future.

There's still no progress in writing awards entries, and we're coming up to the CIPR deadline. And Heist are not far behind; they're already touting their deadline dates. So, now that the main UG publications have been completed, here's hoping we can turn some attention to report writing and demonstrating our success!

Full of pride after going for Gold

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

It wouldn't be a typical week at work if we didn't have some form of urgent job to do. And this week was certainly no different, with the urgent task taking the form of a January start campaign. Here in the Marketing team we do love a good challenge and so we set about planning and preparing for this marketing push. Our freelancer Pippa was devising the activity itself, and so we have been busying ourselves with arranging and scheduling a photoshoot that will form the creative for the campaign. Easy you say? Think again.

Marketing meets Freshers
Left to right: Michelle, Forrest, Pippa, Bayleigh, Max,
Anita, and Me!

Since the ITV2 show, Freshers, had just finished showing on TV, we decided to link our campaign with the story of the freshers' that we had been avidly watching for the last three weeks on our screens, as they settle into student life at Bedfordshire. A few phone calls and emails later and we had a photographer booked, and all four freshers confirmed. Now all we had to do was source the locations, devise a shot list and brief the digital team on filming requirements.

Each of the freshers did an excellent job and gave up a lot of their time to take part in our photoshoot. It was a packed day, with back-to-back photography sessions, but boy were we impressed with the end result... I must confess that we absolutely loved meeting Forrest, and even managed to get a sneaky picture with the freshers before the end of the day - all for the purposes of blog writing and informing our audience, of course (see above).

You'll see our January campaign taking shape over the next few weeks, so as it goes live we'll share the creatives with you - and do let us know what you think!

In other news, we attended the Thames and Chiltern CIPR PRide awards on Friday (1 Nov) at Sopwell House in St Albans as we were up for Best External Publication for our 2013 Postgraduate Prospectus. We were joined by the Digital Marketing team who were short-listed for Best use of Digital, and Best use of Social Media.

Celebrating our award success on centre stage
Left to right: Lauren, me, Andy, Elisabeth and Paul

Our Digital Marketing team won awards in both of their categories: with a Silver for our Corporate film in the Best use of Digital category, and won an impressive Gold accolade for Best use of Social Media in our Clearing campaign - a massive congratulations! And we were amazed and absolutely thrilled to also win not just one, but two Gold awards, even though we only entered one category! In addition to bagging a Gold award for our Postgraduate Prospectus, we were awarded an additional Gold award from the judges for Best use of Research, Planning, Measurement and Evaluation, for the Postgraduate Prospectus (which made me very pleased to see that all of that number crunching and analysis hasn't gone un-noticed). However, Lauren and I were still in celebration mode after winning Gold earlier in the evening and actually missed this announcement. So, after a short nudge from Paul, our Digital Marketing Manager, and we swiftly made our way in a rather dazed state to receive the award. Indeed a fabulous evening! Read our award-winning entry here.

Read a #PRideTC award winning case study from @uniofbeds who picked up gold for their use of measurement & evaluation http://t.co/eXJHePgdq5
— CIPR (@CIPR_UK) November 4, 2013

Supporting our Business academics
over at Bedford

In and amongst all of the above, I managed to squeeze in some time to join our Business academics over at the Bedford campus. I was invited to sit on an assessment panel for our final year students who were tasked with presenting a business case for a charity event to raise money - it was great to hear about their project management, as well as their innovative ideas for the actual event itself, and generating awareness for their cause, but most importantly (for me anyway) their marketing and how they were ensuring ROI.

Finally, I'm pleased to share with you that we have now been joined by our new Marketing Assistant, Clare O'Brien, and so we've been busy setting up inductions and introducing Clare to the wider MARC team, kicking off with an obligatory welcome lunch at none other than Pizza Express. Clare's joined us at a great time, as we're just about to get going with the 2015 Undergraduate Prospectus. What better way to find out about the University, than by researching, writing and arranging photoshoots all around campus?

All change!

By Lauren Hague - Marketing Assistant

Well what can I say, no week in marketing is ever the same, and I can definitely say that for the past week!

Firstly we have shortlisted for another award, this time the CIPR PRide awards for the Best External Publication for our Postgraduate Prospectus! 

We are all very proud. Not only does a lot of work go into the finished publication but the actual award submissions can be pretty grueling too. You often have to prove how you have met the objectives set and prove why the publication was not only successful but innovative too. This sometimes involves a great deal of number crunching and some (a lot of) pestering of our Market Research Manager for help with the research! (Thank you Andy!)  So it is always nice when our hard work pays off and we are shortlisted.

Wayhay! We have been shortlisted for a #CIPR #PRide award for Best External Publication for our Postgraduate Prospectus! Happy Friday :)
— The PG Team (@uobpg) July 26, 2013

This week are nearing the sign off of the new postgraduate prospectus, which we are all very excited about, it, is always great to see a project completed (and off our desks!) Just in time to start working on the revamp of the UCMK prospectus.

Me, Rehanna and Scott are also currently working on updating 13 subject guides between us. These are designed to show prospective undergraduate students what is going on in their subject area they are interested in. They contain news stories, student profiles, what courses are available, what the facilities are like and staff updates. I like doing these kinds of jobs as it means a lot of liaising with different departments and is a great way to update your knowledge about what is going on around the University, which is vital when you are working in marketing.

Bye Bye Marketing pod! :(

In other news… it’s all change again in the team as I will be leaving *sob *sob. I have accepted a position in the Digital Marketing Team as Digital Marketing Officer. I won’t be going too far (3 rows of desks to be exact) and will still be working closely with the team but in digital capacity instead. I am very excited about taking on the role and to get stuck in. I did my degree in Digital Media Design so digital communication is where my interest lies.

Hello Digital Marketing pod!

I have loved working in my team and will be sad not to be sitting with them anymore (which will just mean more lunches to catch up!),  I have learnt an enormous amount since I have started and great deal of that is down to the team taking the time and being patient enough to show me. Thank you!:-D 

So overall I’d say a pretty good week all in all. Shortlisted for an award and a new job, can’t complain…