An exciting delivery

This week we received our printed 2019 undergraduate prospectus. The team laugh at me for getting excited at this, but I love holding the prospectus in my hands, and seeing all the hard work from the previous months come together as a final product.

What people may not realise is that we start thinking about design concepts and layouts in the summer, start organising photo-shoots in September, and collating and writing copy in October, so when we receive the finished product, it’s a culmination of over six months of hard work.

This year we made the decision to move some of the content previously

located in the back section of the prospectus to the front, so prospective students have more information about things like the Students’ Union, student support, and accommodation initially. We also spent a lot of time changing the layout of our course openers. In previous years the openers had been quite busy, with multiple photos and blocks of text with coloured backgrounds. This year we’ve focused on one main image, and tried to incorporate some white space to make the pages more appealing, and easier to read.

The new simulation labs opened in Luton last year, and we were lucky enough to be able to sneak into a couple of sessions and take some photos of the fantastic, new nursing facilities. We were also able to update most of the profiles for this year’s prospectus. We often liaise with academics, asking them to recommend some students, and try to feature at least one student from each subject area, so prospective students can hear first-hand what it’s like to study at Bedfordshire. I’m in the process of contacting postgraduate students to feature in the 2019 PG prospectus at the moment, so if you’re a PG student that would like to feature in one of our prospectuses please get in touch!

My task for today is to send a couple of boxes of the new prospectus to all of our reception desks around campus. They should be available from next week, so if you see one please pick one up and let us know your thoughts!

Sara

Marketing Officer

Reflecting on the past and looking to the future

Next month I will be celebrating my third anniversary of working within the Marketing department at the University of Bedfordshire. Although at times it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here that long, upon reflection it’s been a busy three years! In that time there’s been a desk move, a few changes to the team, and a change in my job title, and that’s just me getting started! I’ve also worked on five prospectuses, written countless e-zines, and interviewed several of our students and staff for video content and case studies. The team have also won various awards from Heist and CIPR (shameless plug - sorry!).

Whenever people ask me what I love about my job I always answer with the diversity of the role. The great thing about working in a Marketing role is that no two days are ever the same – some days I’m writing copy for our marketing materials, other days I’m briefing our designers on our artwork. You may also find me roaming around campus taking photos and video footage, or even helping the Recruitment team at our Open Days and other recruitment events. There are of course tasks that are more regular, such as promoting our Open Days, or writing content for our monthly e-zines, but other tasks, such as organising photo-shoots, or having the opportunity to sit on tender briefings may only take place once a year. 

The other great thing about my role is that, due to the nature of the marketing industry and the higher education sector, my role is ever changing. Because of this I’m always learning , whether this be through

attending higher education forums, or through in-house training. When I started this role I had limited experience with Photoshop, and though I’m far from an expert, I’ve developed my knowledge throughout my time here. Over the next few months I will be furthering my knowledge of the Adobe package by learning how to properly use InDesign, which will help me when I’m creating various promotional materials within my role. I’m excited to develop my skills in this area and will hopefully be able to share some of my work with you soon!

Sara

Prospectus, and panels and pitches; oh my!

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager


Whilst a large element of my role can be desk bound - crunching numbers, planning campaigns, writing evaluations, and putting my organisation hat on to drive initiatives forward, one of the bits of my role that I happen to love the most are the chances to be 'creative'. So it's no surprise to read that this week was Prospectus pitch week. Hurrah!  

Searching for the perfect agency
to partner with.

We've been running a tender to appoint a creative agency to work alongside us on the latest publications for 2019 (2019 already, you say!). So after getting through all the paperwork, questionnaires, budgets and admin, we're at the bit I love best - the creative presentations. It's great to meet different agencies, breathe new life into our work, and ensure we're future proofing our designs, our brand and our proposition to drive recruitment for the coming years (so no pressure then?).

It's always a crammed packed day of back-to-back presentations - but it definitely gets the creative juices flowing across the team. Colleagues from the Recruitment team, and International office joined us, to ensure we had key stakeholder views taken into account, and it made for a fun day for everyone (or at least I hope). We're still deliberating over which agency to work with, and so after we've totaled all the scores I'm sure we'll be able to share with you who we've selected, and some exclusive sneak peaks as to how the visuals could be developing for our future recruitment campaigns. Stay tuned!

Can you ever be too organised?

As the chair of the panel, it's my job to lead the day, keep us on time, and to drive the questioning to ensure we get all of the information we need from each of the agencies to make a good, informed decision. (This is where my organisational hat comes into play again). After all, it's not just a pretty design and nice prospectus cover that we're looking for. A key part of producing the prospectus is all about the processes and structures in place (boring! I hear you say). Ok, so perhaps not the most exciting part of the pitches, but for me, whose produced more than 20 Bedfordshire prospectuses I know a thing or two about the logistical nightmare that can be the prospectus, and if you don't have the right people, processes and infrastructure in place to deliver your publication the whole thing can be absolute torture to deliver. Don't get me wrong, creative is definitely important, but my key driver is making sure we have a company who can deliver on the creative - there's nothing worse than having high hopes for your publication, and half way in, finding out the end result is far from your grasp.

The team (left to right: Sara,
Beverley, Kylie and Sarah).

In other news, we've sadly said farewell to Kylie, our Marketing Officer this week. She's left the team this week for pastures new - and is relocating back up north to Newcastle University. We're all really sad to see her go, after three years as part of the team. For those of you who have worked with Kylie, I'm sure you'll agree she's been an instrumental colleague in running our open day campaigns. We wish her all the best, and am sure we'll still see her round on the university circuit in the not too distant future.

But to cheer us all up, and stop us feeling all sorry for ourselves as our marketing team of three has dwindled to a team of just two, we were absolutely delighted to find out just now, that we've been short-listed for not one, but two, Heist awards - for Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative, and Best Marketing Team of the Year! Now Heist had been keeping us on our toes, and fully in suspense as to when the big reveal would be, and it certainly didn't disappoint. It's been some much needed excitement in the office as we can reflect on our achievements, and celebrate our successes - small we may be, but mighty and effective we are! Usually, we've just entered submissions for our work, but this year I decided this was the year to celebrate us as a team - and boy am I surprised to see we've been short-listed. To have been short-listed for team of the year is a massive coup, and a particular career high for me on a personal note. For our regular readers, you'll often see me banging on about awards, and how much we love them - but it's a big boost for the team, and a lovely end to the week!

Absolutely thrilled to see we've been shortlisted for 2 @heistawards. The @uniofbeds team are celebrating in the office as we speak 😜😬

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) May 19, 2017

A picture is worth a thousand words

By Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Perfecting the pose - on our
quest for the perfect marketing
pictures

Unsurprisingly, there's quite an emphasis placed on imagery when it comes to Marketing. After all, the more visual, the more it can drive engagement, right? Marketing is all about communicating value to our 'customers', and so presenting good marketing photos, makes for good marketing; as it not only conveys quality but also supports us in showcasing our 'products' and in telling the story of our brand.

We're all now living in the age of visual culture, where the focus is firmly placed on the 'show rather than tell' mentality. Don't get me wrong, there's still very much a place for the written word. Heck, we'd be out of a job if it wasn't for information hungry students; but the need to convey stories and to showcase reality means that there is a real appetite for rich media and dynamic visual content.

Projecting the right kind of content is a hot topic. With the latest technologies and must-haves, there's more or less a camera in everyone's pocket, and so practically anyone and everyone becomes a content generator. However, whilst we can all patrol campus armed with the latest iphone filled with snazzy apps and filters to capture those moments as they happen, in order to have that 'zing' factor, we bring in the professionals...

Campaign photoshoots in action -
Roy Mehta Photography

Over the last week we've worked with two professional photographers on a rather jam-packed schedule to support our Marketing work and increase of bank of photography. Scene Photography supports with our campus based imagery and architectural shots, and Roy Mehta specialises in portrait photography and executes our case studies and corporate campaign visuals.

We've spent a lot of time working on our visual identity, and carving out our creative proposition and point of differentiation. All of this culminated in this year's Clearing campaign visuals. If you haven't seen it yet, where have you been? The latest round of campaign photography was focused on plugging the gaps and expanding the range of campaign images we offer - we've broadened out to capture Sports Therapy, Psychology and Accounting & Finance, on top of the many subjects already being represented.

Prospectus cover shoot - with
Chris from Scene

In addition to the campaign photography, we've also been running the 2018 prospectus photography at the same time, which is no mean feat. You may have seen us running around campus over the last few days, dipping into classes to capture the latest goings on. The most challenging aspect of this photography by far, is the prospectus cover. A lot of emphasis is placed on this one single image. It's the one image that most of our enquirers may see as their first introduction to the University. It's the window in to university experience, and needs to appeal to a wide range of people from a wide range of backgrounds world-wide. No pressure then. Overall the shoots went really well, and the students who took part were great and incredibly giving of their time. Stay tuned over the next few weeks, and we'll keep you posted on our new imagery as the prospectus cover starts to take shape, as we select that one single 'hero' shot that sells the University.

Visual content is critical to marketing
and story telling strategies - source: Blog Hub Spot

The power of the image is reinforced by LifeLearn who state that when people hear information, they are likely to remember approximately 10%. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

Good marketing photos which showcase our campuses, the latest facilities, and the student experience go a long way in engaging an audience as opposed to text alone. And I always find it fascinating that many companies, and indeed many universities, don't always invest in commissioning custom photography, and instead turn to stock. For us at Bedfordshire, that's not an option. We pride ourselves on showcasing the real student environment and working with real students across our prospectus and campaign photography to tell our story and to convey our brand narrative. We ensure that our visual identity is unique to us, and ultimately stands out in the mind's of our prospective students.

Top tips to get the most out of your visual content:

1. Mood board ideas - and build up a bank of images or ideas that inspire you; from poses to props, it's great to have visual inspiration to help shape your shoots
2. Consider the type of image you need - is it to showcase a course or event, or are you trying to present statistics in a visual way (ie through infographics which is fast becoming a powerhouse for any content strategy)
3. Use real students - as much as possible. What better advocates for a brand than to work with the people experiencing the University themselves
4. Refer to style guides - and brand guidelines as a helpful reference for an over-arching look and feel of the brand - whether it be for profiles and case studies, action shots to exterior architecture, that way the images work towards increasing a bank of good quality content that reinforces the brand and creative proposition
5. Be aware of your environment - from the people in the shots to cultural sensitivities. And also do a reckie around campus to scout out possible locations before the day - watching out for those pesky bins in the background!
6. Get creative - an don't be afraid to try shots and set ups that are slightly 'outside of the box' - there's only one way to see if it works - and that's to snap it!

Developing my skills

With any career it’s important to develop and learn new things. So over the last few months I’ve been looking at projects I can get involved in to help my own development.

The first project I’ve been working on is managing the print tender for the 2018 prospectuses. Don’t worry – you haven’t nodded off and missed Christmas! As you’ll know by now, we’re always working way ahead in marketing. I sourced potential suppliers (it was also open to any other suppliers who wanted to put themselves forward for the job), updated the tender documents, worked on a questionnaire for the suppliers, and evaluated the pricing and questionnaire in order to select the company who will print our 2018 publications. I’ve now selected the company we’ll be working with and they even suggested an alternative paper stock which will make us a little cost saving! The next step is to meet with the company to discuss ways of working, new paper stock, timings etc.

I’m also looking to appoint people as part of the University’s graduate development scheme and student internship scheme. These schemes allow us to take on a recent graduate or intern to work in the team for a short period of time (usually 4-6 weeks) to gain valuable work experience. So I’ll be helping to choose the applicants for the department and managing them once they are here. I’m keen to lead on this project and gain more experience in managing people. So far I’m collating a list of appropriate projects they could work on and drafting up job specs.

Some current jobs...

The team have recently started work on the undergraduate 2018 prospectus – working with the design agency on the design concepts and progressing the look and feel from the current prospectus, agreeing production schedules and sourcing photography opportunities for photoshoots next month. I’m now looking to agree the definitive course list – our course offering – for the 2018 cycle and updating course copy from the current prospectus in line with any course modifications.

And as we’re well into the winter Open Day season now, as well as working on implementing the campaign plans, I’ve started my rolling evaluation report, in the hope that if I keep on top of this after each event, when it comes to the end of the season I can wrap it up quite quickly ready for the Spring season starting in the new year.

And less work related…

I’m off to Australia on 19th October for three weeks, to visit family. I’m really looking forward to some winter sun and seeing my sister, brother-in-law and niece and nephew for the first time in almost three years!! And obviously having almost four weeks away from the office isn’t bad either. So I’ve been planning ahead over the last week or so and trying to get a head start on my projects so the team just need to send things out on my behalf while I’m not around.

Be gentle with Sarah and Sara while I’m away…enjoying the sun…and the beach…and the coral reef.

Speak soon,
K

A varied few weeks

Over the last week or so I’ve been away from my desk more than usual; helping with photoshoots and filming, and attending media presentations. The last few weeks and been super busy and really varied, from the more creative aspects (photoshoots) to the less creative (proofreading publications). But that’s what I enjoy about marketing, it can be so varied and it keeps you on your toes!

As Sara mentioned last week, we’ve had three days of photoshoots for our clearing and annual campaign. They were hectic but exciting, and we’ve just received the images from the photographer. We’ve been looking through all of the images and choosing the best ones to take forward for our campaign, taking into consideration the different platforms they will be used for. It’s now over to the photographer to work more of his magic and edit the selected pictures. We’re hoping to get these next week so our designers can start working on the visuals and we can start working on the microsite.  

I’ve also been filming student videos for a forthcoming e-zine edition – and as the weather has been so nice, I even took the opportunity to do the filming outside which was great! So I’ll be editing these over the coming weeks as a start to put my e-zines together.

There are also a few publications I’m currently working on:

1. The PG 2017 prospectus – this is at first proof stage, so I’ve been proofing my allocated sections; five sections down, one to go…  

2. The UCAS visitor guide – we’re hosting a UCAS Exhibition in June at our Bedford campus for the third year running and I’m working on the main guide. This is at final proof stage and I’m expecting to send it to print on Tuesday

3. Welcome 2017 guide – each year we produce a welcome guide that we send out to all of our applicants following results day. This gives an overview ahead of students starting with us – how to register as a Beds student online, social events taking place in the first week, finance, student support, campus maps and lots more! I briefed this in to the designer yesterday and first proofs are due wc 16 May

Our UCAS Exhibition guide

We’re also looking ahead to the 2017 cycle – I sent the first enquirer edition of our B4Beds e-zine last month, and we’ve got some email communications going out over the next month or so. This is the part of the year when it can often get confusing as we’re working on the 2016 cycle and the 2017 cycle at the same time. All in a day’s work! 

Speak soon,

K

Printed hands and salad days

A few weeks ago, I raided the University archives and sneered at the design of prospectuses from our former institutions from the 1940s through until the 1980s. Before handing these back, I decided, once again, to discard the hep, groovy ‘now’ and look back to that even tattier time before space travel and bagged salad.

These days, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are back in vogue, as befitting the world's preoccupation with bytes, bits and a grim determination to find ever more inventive and/or effective ways of wiping ourselves out. Epidemics, medical cures, performance enhancers, global warming, jet packs, superheroes, self driving cars and the internet don’t invent themselves.

Universities are an essential component of this global technological push. At Bedfordshire, our recent contributions have been impressive, with undergraduate courses in Computing, Biological Science and Health and Social Sciences among those underpinning our world-leading research was is helping to change lives. This week, for example, we've been bowled over with the inspriational work carried out by our Computing department in building a hand for 8 year old William Joyner.

But back to the salad. In the 1940s, bagging the stuff was a distant dream, although food technology was eagerly pursued. Luton Technical College's offer was dominated with Chemistry, Commercial and Engineering courses, though there was a two year City and Guilds in Breadmaking and Flour Confectionery on a Wednesday or “Domestic Science and Women’s Classes", including Cookery, Dressmaking and Make-do & Mend. 1945's course offer looks as tired as the country must have been coming out of war, though the £3 fees don’t look too onerous for Bedfordshire residents (hilariously, this increases to £5 for Hertfordshire residents; £6 for those from elsewhere). 

Crazy, crazy Mrs Sew-and-Sew

In 1952, students were treated to the excellent news that the canteen served dinner between 12.50 and 1.30pm and that the College now held classes in Art and Building. Women’s courses still included Cooking and Dressmaking, although Make-do and Mend had been replaced by Millinery, Needlecraft and Tailoring.

In the 1960s, the wise decision was taken to instruct pupils not to carry bottles of ink around the campus unless they (the bottles) were transported in polythene bags. Women’s courses seemed to have disappeared, what with liberation and all, although the College's Department for Food and Clothing had courses for Brides, Hostesses and Housewives. Heston's food scientists may have sniffed at the cookery courses, but reipes included ”Rice, Risottos-Pilaffs Pasta Dishes’, ”Sauces in High-Class Cookery” and “The Use of Herbs”. Far out, man.

Two decades on, Luton’s College of Higher Education was moving forward apace. Prospective students in 1979 were promised a 36 user Computer Centre using Basic Plus, Def Leppard, Fortran, Cobol, Terry Jacks and Macro11. Business and Management courses had crept in, mainly because, by that time, the art of cookery had largely been replaced by PotNoodles; the manufacture of which needed a steadying management hand and some smart marketing rather than nutrionists.


Notes
Principles from Make-do & Mend are still applied in University Professional Services departments.
Bagged salad first appeared on UK supermarket shelves in 1986. 
Def Leppard was and might still be a band, not a computer language. Terry Jacks isn't a computer language either.

Better in the olden days?

Another sterling effort by the Marketing team

Things were always better in the old days, right? Those of us of a certain vintage love to go on an on and on about when music was music, sweets were sweets and Luton Town were a footballing force in the land.

Then again, as the team have shown again, it's always exciting to receive shiny new things. For example, our new undergraduate prospectus, which is an absolute belter.

But surely, the old folk say, ye olde prospectus was better, when things weren't so darned commercial and paper was made out of witches' hair, mud and Tippex. Right?

Wrong.

After the War, Luton's Technical College for boys developed into Luton Technical College and then the Luton and South Bedfordshire College. The institution changed, but the prospectus didn't. Marketing, as we all know, wasn't invented until people's first names were put on soft drink cans. Between 1937 and 1953, proto-Marketeers really 'hadn't got it', and quite evidently sat around, talking about cricket, scartching their heads and having a brief chat about which colour to use on the front before a decision was made, the whole thing called a good job and the committee quite possible donned gowns, mortarboards and plus fours before 'perumbulating about' the streets of South Bedfordshire.

Signs of progress, or spot the difference??

As the reproductions above show, no effort was made in design - centre justified font and lots of capital letters. Presumably, some dangerous 'young buck' went distinctly 'logocrazy' in 1945 (middle) to try and keep spirits up as the Second World War ended, but this reckless addition was swiftly removed.


Copies of prospectuses were also carefully guarded. Rationing and the make and mend culture, both of which have recently led to all that tacky "Keep Calm and Carry On" merch were actual things. The 40s and 50s may or may not have been full of village bobbies juggling babies and unexploded bombs; no one really knows. It was a time, however, when Technical Colleges were keen on 'paper economy', with the 1945 and 1952 prospectuses instructing readers that "when you have noted the particulars you require please hand this prospectus in to the College or the Public Library". Quite what the College would make of the piles of abandoned glossy publications after the average UCAS fair is anyone's guess.

A dictat to think about reintroducing in these environment conscious days? It could help the University of Bedfordshire to even greater recognition of our excellent green credentials, but might be a hard sell to the Recruitment team.

Once rationing eased and the baby boomers came into higher education, revolution was well under way. Photographs were being splashed over prospectuses with some abandon. Or at least, they were near the front and the back.

In the mid 80s, the Luton College of Higher Education made up for a lack of decent exterior shots, by showing facilities and students working, resting and playing. The 1985 pictures on this page show a bored lady watching telly (above left) and some chap with a moustache, showing revolutionary zeal in the old Park Square canteen, by smoking a fag in full view of a 'No smoking' sign (above right).

It was the 80s. That sort of thing happened. The Hatters won cup competitions at Wembley. We had shoulder pads, coal mines and Luton's very own Paul Young. And Thrilled Skinny. You had to be there........ et cetera, et cetera.


For more about the Uni's history, check our website

Happy New Year from the Marketing Team

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great break - I realised yesterday that I didn't have a single mince pie this year (well last year) so my year has started full of regrets!

We've been back at work three days now and in that time we've received the second proof of our 2017 Undergraduate Prospectus. It's looking really good and I'm excited for you all to see it. The last couple of days I've been proof reading my sections and contacting various departments across the university to finalise a few things. The first proof of the Mini Undergraduate Prospectus is also due next week. This is my first time working on the UG prospectus so I'm enjoying seeing everything come together.

Just before the Christmas break I was working on the Welcome Guide for our February and March starters. This was completed on my first day back and can now be found online.

This year I'm going to be working on a project called "More than a degree". I'm going to be gathering content for the website about extra curricular activities at the university such as RadioLab, Get Into Sport, industry talks, PAL and much more. I'm really excited to get started on this so keep an eye out for some exciting new content coming your way soon!

Kylie has been busy preparing the UG and PG open day plans so I will be supporting her in implementing these. For me this usually means sending out some emails to our enquirers, and creating the open day notices that you may have seen around the university on the digital screens.

I'm also working on a few small projects including creating some ads for the upcoming UCAS events and updating some of our online profiles.

Adding another string to our bow

I mentioned in my last blog that the [traditional] marketing team have been dipping our toe into the digital world a little more; briefing Google search and display activity as well as promoted social media.

Well, this week we’ve taken it a little bit further and had some digital training on actually implementing the activity. On Monday (at 9am!!) we had a 1.5 hour training session on setting up Google search and display ads in Google Analytics. It was a really good session and Sarah and I have since had a go at setting up our own ads. We’ve started off with a smaller campaign while we get to grips with everything – and it may have taken us way longer than the average digital marketer to set up two ads each – but we did it. We definitely felt a self of accomplishment afterwards and in our daily report we’ve already seen small numbers coming through to the website from our ads, which we got a little too excited about perhaps.

It’s really good, as marketers, to be able to add to our skillset and not only understand digital aspects of marketing, but be able to actually implement and amend them ourselves too. Next week we’ll be setting up the remainder of the campaign and having further training sessions on monitoring and tweaking on-going campaigns and setting up promoted social media posts.

I think as a team we’re really excited about being able to do more digital marketing, and help our currently small digital marketing team – there’s no I in team!

Another day, another photography shoot

I also directed another photography shoot last week, this time for our 2017 prospectus front covers. We took pictures of different groups of students in different locations/settings around our Luton campus. 

It was a busy day, but we got some great pictures. We’re now working with our design agency to choose the best photos for each version of our prospectus.

Some of our lovely students taking
part in our photography shoot

Lights, camera, action!

Over the last couple of weeks, Kylie and I have spent a few days out and about at the different campuses with photographers for the 2016/2017 prospectuses. We've got some great images from the photo shoots and I'm really excited for everyone to see them once the prospectuses are published.

I was mainly working on profile shots, taking photos of individual students and filming them talking about their university experience. I really love this aspect as it gives me the chance to meet some of our students and hear their thoughts and opinions on their course and the university (although I spoke to one student about the Go Global programme and it's set off the travel bug - help!). 

Much to our surprise, the weather was on our side yesterday so we managed to get some really nice profile shots and group shots outside too! As much as I hate the cold this time of year brings, I do love the colours of Autumn!

It was really interesting to work with the photographers as they have such an intricate way of seeing things. I also got to act as the photographers assistant a couple of times and hold some of the lighting equipment - although knowing the price of the equipment made that a little scary!

We've also started writing and collating copy for the 2016/2017 UG prospectus. This is my first time working on the UG prospectus so it's really exciting for me to be involved in every aspect of the project.

A big thank you to all of the students that got involved with the photo shoots! And to anyone wondering how/if they can be involved in our next shoot, please drop me an email.

That's all from me for now,

Sara