Hello from the new FMA!

My name is Ingrida, although most people call me Inga. I am one of the two new Faculty Marketing Assistants that Sarah mentioned in her blog post in February. I have worked for the university before, but last year I left my job to go traveling. It’s my fourth week on the job and I cannot complain about the lack of activities here!

I look after the faculties of the Business School, and Health and Social Sciences. My work closely relates to the Digital and the Press teams within MARC department, and of course the majority of activities within the faculties.

For example, at the moment I am working on the new issue of BedsBiz, the Business School’s quarterly magazine showcasing student, alumni and staff stories, achievements, and collaboration with businesses and the community. Whenever I visit the Business School, I always find out something new that is happening or about to happen! In April-May we will have the Digital Marketing Manager of Bugatti evaluating student suggestions on the brief provided by the company earlier this year, and a visit from the remarkable Colonel Emmanuel Kotia.  

Health and Social sciences also have a lot going on. We have been allocated 20 more spaces for our Nursing degree at our Aylesbury campus for a May start (accepting applications now). We have hosted the annual Sports Therapy Conference in Luton where apart from learning and networking opportunities students could present their dissertation posters showcasing their projects: I went along to capture some of that on video.

I have been updating faculty and course pages with additional information, having meetings with staff about publications, interviewing students about their experience, getting trained to work with different software, and drinking lots of coffee!

I will be delighted to share more of faculty developments and more of what I do in the next post.

Same difference - achieving stand out in a crowded market place

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Standing out from the crowd has never been more important. Gone are the days of simply shouting about the big 5: high quality teaching, state-of-the-art facilities, student support, great location, and employment. Times are changing, and these are now simply a basic expectation towards any student experience. Universities are having to up their game, and showcase what makes them truly special and distinct, after all, any and every university fundamentally offers the same product: a degree, and so the need to focus on brand building and highlighting what makes us different, is becoming increasingly important.

And it's for this very reason the University of Bedfordshire launched its Verbal Brand Project - a re- positioning exercise to establish our basic truths and aspirations, and promote our extra added value in order to boost our brand reputation and present a distinct and attractive proposition against our competitors.

Shift in messaging, sector wide

Spotted!
When in London I often think to myself; have I seen this ad because they are quite simply everywhere, and quite frankly there isn't much else to look at when waiting for the tube, or would I have still noticed this ad if I didn't work in marketing? IE are adverts so ingrained into my brain that you know you're never far from a lurking competitor ad. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Nevertheless, on my recent travels to London St Pancras I bumped into an advert from our neighbouring competitor, Anglia Ruskin and in true tourist style, papped away to snap their latest messaging to feed back to our Market Research team in the hope of making it into Andy's special editions of Competitor Watch. Anglia Ruskin's latest campaign messaging is quite similar to one branch of our new verbal brand messaging: focusing on entrepreneurship and not just employability, and so they are firmly on our radar as one's to watch. However, the good old saying "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" springs to mind :-) and we're more than confident that our new marketing materials and planned activity will keep us distinct and showcase the very best of what Bedfordshire has to offer - more on this soon!

Phone company or University?

We're better, connected
As social media remains a force to be reckoned with, so does the need for younger, new generations to build their own profiles and provide their own platforms to be heard. Suddenly a person's worth is dictated by how many 'likes' or 'follows' they have from many different networks. But more importantly, it's about extending reach and opening doors of opportunity on a wider scale. And that's where this idea of being connected really becomes important. Luckily I haven't spotted any of our competitors on this thread yet, so here's hoping! I have however, included an example from Southampton, who are definitely worth a watch if you haven't yet seen some of their videos, and their video on research in particular is very nicely done, if you ask me! At the risk of all sounding like phone companies, the focus on staying connected is growing in importance, but not just from a social media, and a 'it's good to talk' point of view. From a University perspective, the ability to offer opportunities to travel, network and operate on a global scale adds a whole new dimension to offering a well rounded, all encompassing 'international' experience. This is really quite an exciting concept for the UoB Marketeer, and really gives us something meaty to work with. So you may see us out and about around campus on the quest for case studies, content and concrete examples to back up these exciting messages, so we can feed them into our communications.

For current staff members, if you haven't yet got involved in the verbal brand project, take a look at the MARC staff intranet pages where you'll be able to look at/download a tool kit for your own department.

In other news, the Marketing team, and colleagues from the Digital Marketing team spent a day over at the Bedford campus this week as part of our PG Media Day. We had a day full of interesting insights, talks and discussions from PG Media providers, and discovered more about external factors affecting the sector, barriers and obstacles to PG study, as well as getting an overview into some new digital platforms which we're considering trialing over the coming weeks to grow our PG brand and our digital presence. As we progress this, we'll continue to share updates with you via this blog.

We also welcomed our two new Faculty Marketing Assistants, who will be part of the Marketing team until July - and will provide a central 'go-to' contact for the Faculties, to ensure that central and Faculty initiatives are not only collaborative, but well aligned to our overall objectives. It's great to have both on board, and I'm sure we'll be able to share some updates on the exciting content that they will be producing to support our recruitment efforts in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet met your FMA, let us know, and do get in touch!

All change, all change on the marketing front

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Lots of new friendly faces!

A lot has been happening on the staffing front since my last blog post a few weeks ago. I think I've spent most of my time sat on interview panels lately, but it's great that we'll be welcoming lots of new friendly faces to the Marketing team in the coming weeks.

First up; we've been joined by James Blackburn, a final year BSc (Hons) Advertising and Marketing Communications student from the University. He's joined us for 10 weeks as Temporary Marketing Assistant to help us during a busy time in the recruitment cycle. It's great to have James on board as he's able to provide some valuable student insight to enhance our marketing initiatives.

As I mentioned above, I've been on countless interview panels, with the most recent one being for the recruitment of two brand new and shiny Faculty Marketing Assistants. We've only just appointed and so it's still very early days, but we're really looking forward to being joined by two new recruits. I'm now looking to get out and about into the Faculties in the next few weeks to discuss key priorities and to cement our focus on collaborative working before our new colleagues join us. More on this in early March.

New recruits - coming soon!

And what better way to round of my week, than by sitting on an interview panel once more; this time for our vacant Marketing Assistant position. We'll be meeting a group of fantastic candidates over the next two days, and we're really excited, as the quality of applications has been really high, and so I'm sure we're going to be in for some tough decisions. Hopefully by early April our team will be fully replenished, and so we'll be back up to full speed as we approach what we can only describe as our busiest time of the year, also known as Clearing!

As we come to the end of February, the team is rejoicing as our 2016 publications have now finally made their way to print. We're working with a new printer this year, so we're really keen to see the finished product in early March. But if you can't wait to take a look, then why not have a sneak peak at our Undergraduate 2016 Prospectus and Undergraduate 2016 Mini Guide online - go on, we know you want to!

Checking out the new Gateway building, Bedford

In other news, of the none staffing variety, I was able to spend an afternoon over at the Bedford campus yesterday, and so I took the opportunity to check out the new Gateway building whilst meeting up with colleagues from the Department of Education Studies to discuss short-term and longer-term marketing and recruitment strategies for our PG courses. It was a really productive meeting and it's always a real treat when we're able to step away from our desks for a while and mingle with the wider university. Dave, our Head of Recruitment was there also, and so I was able to get a quick tour around the building, which I have to say looks fantastic. It's always really useful for us to be able to get out and about once in a while to see the new facilities and developments around campus, as it helps us to keep an ear to the ground and get a good feel for what our students experience, which in turn helps the way in which we market and get our messages out.

As I come to the end of this weeks blog post, I can't help but feel sad that my partner in crime and digital counter part, Paul Fryer, Digital Marketing Manager, is leaving the University for pastures new. I've worked with Paul for a number of years now, and we're all really going to miss him. And the office will certainly be a quieter place without him! We are however, looking forward to giving Paul a great send off in the usual Brewery Tap after work drinks style,  and we'll look forward to hearing all about his new adventures with Kier Construction.