Another week closer to Clearing

With A-level results a week today it's been an interesting week in the office! Clearing is the no. one topic of conversation and everyone is prepping last minute bits and pieces to ensure everything is in place. I hope by now you've all seen some of our new artwork, either online or around campus. We're all really pleased with the finished result and hope you like it!

This week I had a tour of the new library and I must say it looks fantastic! It's a great space and it certainly helped to get my steps up for the day walking down the nine floors (yes I have a fitbit and yes I did take the lift up - I'm not that crazy!). I'm currently arranging some student videos for the PG e-zine, PG Life, so I'm going to see if I can film in the new library and show it off a bit - watch this space!

I've also been working on the more than a degree site and finding out about some more initiatives at the University including the psychology film club and various trips run by the Business School. It's great to still be finding out about various activities that our students can get involved in, and it just shows what a wide variety of co- and extra-curricular activities we have on offer. 

Over the next few days I'm also going to be working on our Postgraduate online profiles - making sure our profiles on external websites are as up-to-date as possible. It'll be great to be able to add the information about the new library to the various websites as well as the latest NSS results.

I'm also looking ahead to next month when the new set of freshers will start their university journey! I'm hoping to be able to do some photography and videography at some of the events which we will be able to use on social media and in our e-zines throughout the year. I love going out and meeting our students - it also helps me build a nice list of contacts to call upon when we're planning our marketing photo-shoots!

Culture - a Luton thing?

Funny things have happened on campus over the last few weeks. Stands, pagodas, stalls, marquees, student ambassadors and freshers’ angels have sprouted where before, there was a distinct lack of stands, pagodas, stalls, marquees, student ambassadors or freshers’ angels. The last week of September and first week of October saw the beginning of the new academic year and soaring campus energy levels which have since been ever so slightly jaded by a downturn in the weather and an upturn in beach parties and other luridly themed student nights.

A warm welcome should continue to be extended, not only to the University of Bedfordshire, but also to Luton. Or Bedford. Or Milton Keynes, or Aylesbury, Barnfield, Arthur Mellows, Majan or wherever else University students are. Wherever you’re studying, welcome.

Those arriving at Luton – our biggest campus – may be wondering what they’ve let themselves in for. Yes, we have state of the art buildings, but Luton – the town - often makes the news for the wrong reasons and has been the butt of many stand ups sitcoms, adverts and novelty hit parade smashes. Like this. Or this. The town has been an easy target over the years, but its folk always bounce back.

Luton's Bear Jazz and Blues club

From a student’s point of view, part of Luton’s appeal may be that it’s on London’s doorstep with fast trains linking town to capital in less than half an hour. That’s less than half an hour assuming there are no weekend engineering works or staff shortages and assuming, too, that travel is undertaken in a southerly direction. It would take a deluded or strange fellow to suggest Luton is London’s equal, but outside the Uni, the town boasts a vibrant jazz club, art centre, as well as a range of clubs, museums, galleries, sport and – according to a few  – “by far the greatest (football) team the world has ever seen”. Gems may be hard to uncover, but for precisely this reason, they’re more rewarding when you do find them.

Here are a few choice facts about Luton you may or may not be familiar with and which you might want to bandy about if and when the need arises:

•  The aforementioned Luton Town was the first club in the South of England to turn fully professional in 1891;
•  Peripatetic Polish literary giant Joseph Conrad lived, for a while, just outside Luton (in a building which still stands and is visible from the southern side of the airport runway);
• Luton Hoo is hugely popular as a film location and has been used in films and programmes including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Call the Midwife, War Horse, Gosford Park and A Shot in the Dark (the last of which features cinema’s greatest Billiards scene ever);
• When it was completed in the early 1970s, The Mall was – very briefly – the largest covered shopping centre in Europe;

  

  The Mall in the 1970s looking like The Mall in 2015

• Music and musical acts associated with Luton include flute wielding folk rockers Jethro Tull, goth punk pioneers UK Decay and best-forgotten potato-like 80s soul pop sensation Paul Young;
• Luton has had more than one castle built within the town's limits in the Middle Ages, with the silver line on the pavement running into the main entrance of the Campus Centre showing where the moat of one of these castles ran;
• The M1 was officially “inaugurated” in Luton in 1953;
• Luton's town hall was built in the 1930s after the original structure was burned down in the Peace Day Riots of 1919.

So, for all those who run Luton down; no, we don’t have Bedford’s history, Milton Keynes; shopping, St Albans’ money or those cosy, quaint English Chiltern village greens and whatnot. That said, they’re all pretty close, and for the curious and those looking for opportunity and a chance to carve a niche, make a mark and all that good stuff, Luton really isn’t such a bad prospect.

Stress?

It’s not all about Clearing…..

…. Although it’s felt that way over the last few weeks.

On July 2 I mused on what Clearing means for universities and how – as many commentators have pointed out – it has changed from a blind panic for underachieving A level students to something quite different. At this point, it would be wise for me and my career prospects to reference our very own Vice Chancellor Bill Rammell’s views on the matter. Which are, of course, spot on.

These days, people use Clearing not so much as a race for places as simply an extra few weeks to make a key life decision. Fair enough. It’s also increasingly an opportunity for those who have surpassed BTEC and A level expectations and predictions and who are looking afresh at “if” and “where” to study at uni. Yet having said all that, as this year’s first day showed there’s still a significant number of those who didn’t receive the grades they thought they were going to receive or were predicted.

State of the art - c'mon!

This year, the first day of Clearing was as insane as ever. Web, phones and footfall rattled the furniture, fixtures, fittings of the usually savannah-like atmosphere of our state of the art Postgraduate and Continuing Professional Development Centre, where the turbo-charged, chocolate-powered extended Admissions team and academics worked their socks off. Things were quieter over the first weekend, but steady again the following week. And then - and now - the long tail, with slow, steady traffic coming in, sending university managers, admissions, recruitment and market research teams twitching and refreshing spread sheets as if there's no tomorrow.

Nouvelle Vague; Mkt Research in Paris 1963

For universities, Clearing can last a few weeks, after which it's ‘business as usual’. For students involved in Clearing, the whirlwind will have started much earlier, will carry on much longer and carry far more emotional intensity. Kudos and Quailty Street should certainly be heaped upon University colleagues working through the process, although for applicants, once an offer is accepted, there are only a few weeks to prepare accommodation, travel, budget, reading lists, Freshers’ wristbands, Facebook status, Luton Town season tickets, napkin, cruet and cutlery etc etc. Not to mention those groovy Tarantino, Smiths, Pixies, Star Wars, Nirvana, Bob Marley, Bob Hope, Tiswas and French New Wave film posters. And blu-tac. Oh, and the rag-rugs, incense holders, kaftans, spider plants and Super Noodles.

Transport is arranged

Then there’s the whirl of arriving, working out which clubs or societies to look at (or avoid), who to ‘buddy up’ with, how to approach the induction and enrolment processes, how to find the library, which of the multitude of coffee outlets to patronise etc., etc., etc. All of which feels like five years mashed into as many weeks. It’s exciting, for sure although there will be a few puffy eyed souls we all need to keep an eye out for, who may have hit one beach party too many and might need a hand with working out where they are or who may need a shoulder to cry on.

At the time of writing - we still have a few places left through Clearing. Best be quick - like other institutions, we're at the tail end and have already welcomed frazzled colleagues back from the Postgraduate and Continuing Professional Development Centre (it's state of the art y'know), who’ll be picking themselves up for the main cycle recruitment and the beginning of another round of encouragement and cajoling.

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?