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?

Clearing the way

By Sarah Hampton - Marketing Manager

In my last post, back in July, I mentioned that we’d started off the preparation for our 2015 publications. Well, a lot has happened since then. The briefs have been written, the print specs have been set, and our tender has now officially gone out with the help of the University’s procurement team. It’s all very exciting. So, it’s over to the creative agencies now to impress us with their designs. Our creative pitches are due next month, and so we’ll be able to bring you more details on the tender then – so continue to watch this space as we keep you informed.

Tube car panels - London underground

We’re now well into this years’ clearing campaign, but then you already knew that didn’t you? Our campaign has been bigger and better than ever, and we’re getting a lot of fantastic, positive comments from staff and students alike, as they see their University’s presence out en masse in the community. Last week Michelle and I took a trip down to London to meet with CBS Outdoor, as they gave us a run through of all of our media platforms where we could see our campaign running live – it was also a great opportunity to see what all of our competitors are doing, and how we compare! As marketers, we’re always keen to be sussing out the competition and benchmarking the work that we do on our quest for perfection.

Your Guide to Starting
with us - 2013

Clearing has definitely been a big team effort. Rehanna has also been busy over the last few weeks with our publication that is sent to all new starters, entitled Your Guide to Starting with us. This publication was delivered to our Admissions team ready to send out with our student offer letters on results day. Since it was printed, we have had a lot of colleagues from the wider University getting in touch to tell us what they think (all very positive, of course!), and wanting to get more involved in this key publication, which is great for us! We’re always keen to involve others in our work. It's the first year that we have sent this to both Undergraduate and Postgraduate students, so we're very interested to see what our students think. Take a look at the online version of this guide.

Time to celebrate!

In other news, I'm very pleased to share with you that earlier today I was appointed to the permanent role of Marketing Manager for the University of Bedfordshire - yay me! I'm very excited to get my teeth into this new role and look forward to being able to inject my creativity into our upcoming plans and projects - so be sure to keep your eye on this blog as we share ideas and tackle next years' marketing challenges. For my first week as the new manager I'll be off to the Case Conference in Manchester to soak up lots of knowledge and network with other Marketers in the sector, so if you too will be at the Case Conference, don't be a stranger! 

One month in and busy with exciting Graduation, Clearing and other campaigns

By Scott Buist – Marketing Assistant

Well what can I say? It’s been a busy four weeks since I started working within the University’s marketing team and I’ve settled in well. I feel I understand the dynamics of the team now and have a much better understanding of the University and how it operates.

As a team we have all been very busy with various different projects which we are running. Namely our subject guides which are now almost finished. We’re working closely with our in house designer to make sure they’ve got the most up-to-date and exciting information in them, ready to send to our Undergraduate students later in September. The main difference this year is that they’re going to be digital versions only, so watch this space for when they go live on our website. As mentioned in the previous blog posts, our 2014 prospectus has been put to bed and is with the printers – we’re really excited to see the printed thing after all of this time. Plans are now well underway for our 2015 publications; plan early as they say!

I am currently working on our award-winning e-zine: PG Life, which we send to our Postgraduate enquirers and subscribers each month, and so far it’s going well. I’ve been out and about on campus this week interviewing some of our students which you’ll be able to see in the next issue. We are working to a tight deadline but I am sure we will succeed. Sign up via: www.beds.ac.uk/pgstudy if you’re not already subscribed. And, if you have any University news and stories to share with us, let us know – we’re always on the hunt for exciting content to share with our prospective students.

Normally it would be Sarah and Lauren who produce the e-zine, but for the next month or so it’s all down to me! I wanted to say a huge congratulations to Lauren who having completed a degree in digital media; her move over to our digital team seems like a natural career path for her and I am sure she will love it and, it’s only a stone’s throw away from us at the moment, so I am sure we will be able to benefit from her expertise.

With Clearing about to kick off this week (15 August to be precise), I am sure that the next few weeks will keep us all as busy, if not more so than we have already been.

Celebrations, campaigns and clearing

By Sarah Hampton - Marketing Manager

Our blog posts are coming in thick and fast, and we’re very excited to be sharing an insight into all of our work and the many projects that we’re working on at the moment.

Postgraduate 2014 Prospectus

This week has seen the culmination of five months’ hard work come to an end, as we approve the 2014 Postgraduate Prospectus for print. Working on our prospectuses forms a key part of the work we do here in the Marketing team, and so we were very pleased to get another one under our belt this week. At the time of writing this blog post our latest prospectus has made its way over to Mansfield (where our external printer is based) and is currently on press. Here’s a sneak peek (left) at the cover. You can also flick through it online – we hope you will all like it as much as we do!

Just as one project comes to an end, another one begins. And the fact that we are already preparing for our next Undergraduate Prospectus, for 2015 entry, is an incredibly scary thought. More on this in future posts, as we approach the Prospectus tender stage and the creative pitches – my favourite time of the year!

For any of you who happened to be at our graduation ceremonies last week, I’m sure you will have seen a member of the Marketing team roaming around, armed with a video camera and microphone as we join in on the festivities of the day. Scott and Lauren ventured out to interview some of our graduates at both our Luton and Putteridge Bury campuses last week, and spoke to some of our graduates about their time at Bedfordshire. They were also on a mission to capture the fantastic buzzy atmosphere that comes with celebrating our students’ success. You’ll be able to see the video interviews in the next issue of our award-winning monthly e-zine, Postgraduate Life. If you’re not already subscribed to receive it then fear not, as you can sign up here.

Congratulations to all graduates from the University of Bedfordshire who are celebrating their success today! @uniofbeds
— Iliyan Nanchev (@IliyanNanchev) July 23, 2013

August is by far one of our busiest months for us as we prepare for Clearing. The team has been hard at work for the last few months; working with creative agencies to develop our campaign visuals; our key messages; arranging photo shoots; and devising and costing out the activities that will form our marketing campaign for this years’ Clearing period. Since some of our visuals have now gone live, we can exclusively share some highlights with you. We currently have some outdoor media up and running including bus advertising, both in the local area and in London. Keep looking out for other aspects of our campaign over the coming weeks, and be sure to let us know what you think.

Clearing Campaign 2013 (bus rear)

Watch this space for more Clearing updates as our campaign gets rolled out.