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

More speed, less haste!

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Plate spinning - a busy time for
the HE Marketer

Well where did that week just go? It's been an incredibly busy week over here at Marketing HQ.

Not only have we been busying ourselves with the post 15 January communications to our applicants, but we've been implementing our open day campaign; readying ourselves for open day season which kicks off next week for both UG and PG, and helping the recruitment team with marketing collateral to support their events and upcoming UCAS fairs, which seem to be briefed in en masse at the moment.

One man band - the multi-
tasking Marketers

But the biggy for this week, most definitely has to be the fact that we're in the final stages of both our main UG 2016 prospectus, and the mini guide. 'So what?' I hear you say. All in a days work you may think. Well, that may be the case if I wasn't trying to do all of the above, and then some, by myself, on top of my day job. As mentioned in previous posts, our Marketing Assistant Clare left just before Christmas to embark on an adventure as she travels along the west coast of America. And Kylie, our Marketing Officer, is also away at the moment, holidaying in the tropical destination of Cuba, which means that we're a little depleted at the moment and for a few more weeks still to come. It certainly makes the days go by very quickly considering the volume of work I've been ploughing through lately, and a big nod has to go to Krystle who has been great in holding down all of the campaigns which we're running at the moment.

New recruits joining the team
shortly

In between all of the madness and mayhem, we've been able to get our new Marketing Assistant vacancy advertised (hurrah!), and so we'll keep you posted on how the interviews go towards the end of February, and we should hopefully be welcoming a new member to the team very shortly. I've also taken part in a number of interesting discussions, as the Marketing team is set to expand once more - we're also currently advertising for two Faculty Marketing Assistants who will hopefully be joining us within a matter of weeks. I couldn't be happier. These new roles will present a much needed resource and link to the Faculties, and will really cement our focus on collaborative working across the organisation. I'm particularly excited, as the two new post holders will be heavily focused on content generation - and so if you've been reading this blog recently, you'll see that one of my main priorities and favourite buzz words at the moment is content marketing, and it will be great for us to further enhance the work of the team by demonstrating value through producing and sharing engaging and dynamic content. So I can't wait for all of these exciting team developments to start taking shape.

It's all in the Heist...

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

On the first day back after my week away in sunny Greece I came back to the most exciting news: The Marketing team have only gone and got themselves short-listed for a coveted Heist Award!

#heist2014 nominations released. See the full list. http://t.co/QEjCNqRSnx #goodluck #lovehe @havaspeople
— Heist Awards (@heistawards) May 12, 2014

The who's who of Marketing:
The Annual Heist Awards 

I must admit it was a rather last minute entry, and so a big thanks go to Andy Kingston our Market Research Manager, and Michelle Ramsumair our Marketing Administrator for helping me put the entry together in record timing. Usually it would take approximately one month to have an entry worthy of entering, and that's only if your stats stack up! For this particular deadline, we had the almost impossible task of putting together an entry in less than a week. So, to say that we were excited at the news was a complete and utter understatement. For us, and for many other Marketing professionals, the Heist awards is our version of the Oscars - the pinnacle of a HE Marketers career, and benchmark of best practice amongst the sector. A little over the top you may think, but to even make it to the short-list is an achievement in itself, so we're going to enjoy every moment in the run up to the big awards dinner. It may even warrant a new dress for the occasion :-)

Pretty pleased to hear that the @uniofbeds Marketing Team has been short-listed for Best UG Prospectus at this years' @heistawards #Excited
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) May 12, 2014

Our short-listed entry for:
Best Undergraduate Prospectus

Up until this point I've only ever written award submissions for our Postgraduate work, and so this is the first (and hopefully not the last!) piece of Undergraduate work to be short-listed since I've been in the post of Marketing Manager. I was joking with other colleagues in the department to say that I find quite a lot of my time is spent compiling and writing awards these days as opposed to getting on with our actual Marketing work, but laughs aside, we are always looking to benchmark our work against industry and demonstrate best practice, as not only is it a great pat on the back, but helps raise the profile of our work, and always helps our cause when liaising with academics and the wider university in being able to prove that we really do know what we're talking about! We're up for the title of Best Undergraduate Prospectus (for our 2014 publication), against 12 other universities, including the likes of Manchester Metropolitan, Edge Hill, Loughborough and the University of Leicester. You can read the full list here.

On my travels to the
University of Birmingham

In other news, I took a trip over to the University of Birmingham last week to attend the '2015 Postgraduate Market Changes Conference', run in conjunction with FindAMasters, Heera and UKCGE. I must admit I didn't have high expectations at first, purely based on previous one day training sessions I've attended over the last few months, but as soon as the sessions started I was very impressed with the quality of the sessions and speakers, and how willing people were to share their PG initiatives. I was frantically scribbling throughout the whole day and came back feeling very inspired.

Feeling like a student after
spending a day in the
Learning Centre

Sessions which stood out to me in particular included the talk from Future Index on 'Making Postgraduate Education Marketing Brilliant' - which focused on current and future trends, and some exemplary case studies of Universities not just in the UK, who have some interesting initiatives set up for PG Marketing. The networking sessions with other Universities were great also. I was able to pick the brain of a key competitor, unknown to them, which proved very insightful. I'm hoping to find a quiet hour or two this week to revisit my notes, and to see whether I can progress a few ideas in time to make it into our 2015 Postgraduate Annual Plan.

Stay tuned and I'll keep you informed once I've organised my thoughts.

Keeping busy!

Alongside hectically proofing the UG prospectus, lots of the work I’ve been doing over the past week or so has revolved around the Postgraduate Virtual Open Event coming up on Wednesday 5th February. Advertising, emails, flyers and notices have all been arranged and it sounds like sign-ups are going well. I’m looking forward to it as it’ll be my first experience of a virtual open event and it’ll be good to see how it all works from behind the scenes. I think a virtual event would’ve been really helpful when I was applying to my universities myself, so I hope those who have signed up will get a lot out of it.

I've been doing lots of filming and
editing over the last couple of weeks.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spent quite a bit of time out and about filming students and staff members for various projects. I’ve done lots of this since I started working at the University and it’s something I really enjoy. It’s great to meet the students - after all, they are what all of our hard work is for. It’s really interesting to listen to their opinions and hear about their University experience. Despite my computer struggling at times to cope with the editing process, I really like putting together the clips I’ve filmed – it’s good to see a process through from start to finish.

Nobody says goodbye like the
Von Trapps...

It’s been a whole week since we said goodbye to Rehanna. She made me feel very welcome when I was brand new and finding my feet in the department and I will certainly miss her! What’s more, Friday marked the end of Sophie(our intern)’s time with us. She spent the last three weeks working on various projects with the team, and was a huge help to us. With all the goodbyes have come lots of delicious lunches with the team – every cloud has a silver lining I suppose! I’m really looking forward to welcoming new members of the team over the next weeks and months; it’ll be good to have somebody sitting in the (currently very empty) seat next to me again – it’s lonely over this side of the pod!