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

Looking forward to 2019!

Whilst most people are busy making plans and resolutions for the New Year, the Beds Marketing team have been busy working on the 2019 Undergraduate prospectus. Although 2019 may seem like a long way off for most, the 2019 UG prospectus will be appearing at a recruitment event near you from March.

We’ve been co-ordinating the list of courses that we offer, placing bets on how many times I will have to re-do the flat plan this year (my guess is eight – I’ll keep you updated), and liaising with various departments across the University to ensure that all of the information we hold is correct and up-to-date.

One of my favourite aspects of working on the prospectuses is working with the photographers to capture new images. We work with two freelance photographers (Roy Meta and Scene) who capture a range of images for us, from profile shots, to shots of students in situ.

It’s great to be able to get into some of the sessions and see first-hand what our students are working on, as well as the facilities available. This year we were able to see the new nursing simulation labs at both Luton and Bedford, and had the opportunity to explore the Forest School at our Bedford campus. We also had the opportunity to see some of our media and dance students in action.

This year we have renewed the profiles for most of the subject areas within the prospectus too. This provides us with a great opportunity to meet with some of our students and talk to them about their experiences at Bedfordshire, which we can then use to influence future communications.

We’ve also been getting into the Christmas spirit here in the Marketing department with Christmas jumpers and inflatable Christmas characters galore! As this will be my last blog before the holidays I'd like to wish you all happy holidays and I will see you in the New Year! 

Sara

Marketing Officer

Back to the office...

I’m back from my Aussie adventure - I had an amazing time, it's such a beautiful place! And Ithink I’m back up to speed with everything. I don’t have too much to update you on this week as I’ve only been back in office for two weeks. But here’s a picture of me feeding a kangaroo in Australia…

So,work is well underway on the undergraduate 2018 prospectus. The team has been writing copy and sending it over to the design agency and we’re expecting the first proof on Monday. The first proof is usually quite raw as there is often still some uncertainties on copy and courses, but it’s good to see the first proof with the new design approach.

Alongside the undergraduate prospectus, we’re also starting work on the undergraduate mini guide, which is a smaller A5 version of the main guide. So we’re reducing copy to fit the space allocation and getting that off to the design agency too.

I’ve also been working on the applicant newsletters, playing catch up with proofing and sourcing outstanding stories and pictures. We’re expecting second proofs of these next week, with final sign off next month.

Planning ahead…  

As Christmas is almost upon us (yes,I said it!) I’m also looking ahead to the new year and working on the Spring season open day plans – planning activity and allocating tasks to the relevant teams.

I also attended a meeting this week to start planning the UCAS convention for June next year, so I’ll be working up production schedules so we can make sure we have a good head start on the project.

I think this is my last blog of 2016 so speak to you all in the New Year!

K

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

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

Why every HE marketer should own more than one hat

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

From the woolly to the wacky variety, I've never really been a big fan of hats. No matter where I look or what I try I just can't seem to make it work for me. It's either the wrong size, or style, or in most cases the wrong price. Whatever the reason, it's always something extra to carry! But over the years I've had a change of heart, and have warmed up to the idea of an extra accessory, both literally and figuratively speaking.

Up until a few months ago, the marketing team pretty much took care of itself. We wrote and actioned our plans, we produced publications, and we worked towards our own objectives and corporate priorities. However, the scope of our role is always changing, and never more so than now. And that's why owning more than one hat becomes all the more important, whether you like the look or not!

Take a look below to see just how many hats a HE Marketer needs:

Everyday Flat Cap - business
as usual

The first hat of the day is the Flat Cap, otherwise known as the everyday hat - a must-have staple for any marketer. This is the run-of-the-mill, day-to-day operations that forms the back bone of any team and its output. From processing prospectus requests and crunching data, to formulating briefs and campaign plans, to monitoring budgets and platform performance, the daily role of a university marketer is a varied beast. Our day-to-day roles involve rolling out and implementing a series of marketing plans and initiatives, optimising and modifying existing work, whilst planning for, and working on, 3 consecutive recruitment cycles at any one time. Did I also mention juggling skills are essential?

Creative hat - brimming full of
inspiration and ideas

Without any doubt, a marketer will always need a Creative Hat. Whether it's conducting photoshoots to get that impactful image, writing dynamic copy to hook in the reader, or conjuring up new ways to reach an audience and appeal to their interests, there's always an element of creativity involved in a marketers day job. After recently writing a creative brief, I've spent some time meeting with three design agencies over the course of the last week, to discuss their artwork interpretations, and to shape the look and feel of our impending campaigns: Clearing and 2017 Annual. We've also just launched our 2017 Undergraduate prospectus, which has been 5 months in the making, and another creative outlet to showcase our points of differentiation, and market positioning. It's also been great to see that my More than a degree brain child has manifested itself as a brand-new section of the website, courtesy of our Marketing Assistant, Sara. Again, it presents another creative outlet to market the University and present a niche against our competitors.

Safari explorer hat at the ready - on an
Open Day discovery

A quick change of costume and it's on to the Safari Explorer Hat for us. Over the last few weeks the Marketing team has been working hard to promote Open Days as the perfect opportunity to discover more about university and student life, to both applicants and late enquirers alike. But we haven't just been supporting on the marketing frontier. It was all hands on deck recently, as we helped set up for the big event over at our Luton campus (and I gave the team, and our Head of Recruitment a master-class in the art of table origami aka folding the corners nicely, much to their amusement). We also manned the open day registration desks and were chatting with, what we hope to be the newest crop of students come September, and getting them to sign in, whilst talking them through the wealth of shiny new publications and information we had on hand. It was great to see all of the marketing materials that we produce being used and so warmly received.

Future-thinking - a digital shift

Back in the office, and there's another switch to be made. This time, we've got our Digital Hat on to complete the task in hand. Over the last few months the team has been undergoing a series of (very) early Monday morning training sessions to up-skill in the digital arena. We've been adding another string to our bow, progressing on from being a 'traditional' marketing team, and predominantly print-led. This has seen us leading on the implementation of Google Search, Display and Re-targeting, as well as driving forward the text, artworking and targeting for paid Social Media content.

Whilst all the extra work makes for a busy day, with us sometimes having to wear all hats at once, it definitely adds even more variety to our roles and makes us even more versatile and knowledgeable about our craft. We're well on our way to making the move from a traditional team to multi-tasking, multi-function and multi-platform marketers.

To make it in marketing you have to be able to adapt with the times and move within a constantly changing environment. For us, if something isn't changing, we're wondering why it's still standing still and why we're getting left behind. For us this has meant diversifying our skills and our remit to ensure optimum performance and results, even it if it has affected our head wear, or in my case, the previous lack there of.

There's no quiet before the storm, not yet anyway!

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Marketing wants your votes!

With the new year, comes the start of 'awards season', and the first one to catch my attention was the UK Blog Awards 2016. It's the first time we're entering a blog, and best of all it was free to enter; so our Market Research Manager (a regular contributor to the blog) and I thought, why not?

We've entered this very blog into this years awards, in the categories of PR, Media, Marketing & Communications; and Education. So, if you are a regular reader, enjoy having a browse and are inspired by our insight, then be sure to vote for us! Voting is open until Monday 25th January, and then the short-list will announced soon after. Ok, shameless plug now over, ahem.

We do love a good excuse to enter an award, but it's not all fun and games within Marketing at the moment. It's what we currently call 'crunch time' - one of our busiest times of the year. The run up to Christmas is always quite hectic as we juggle campaigns, but now that the 15 January deadline has passed, the work continues to come in thick and fast.

As Kylie mentioned in her previous post, we're juggling a lot of publications at the moment with the 'biggie's' being our main Undergraduate Prospectus for 2017 and our Mini Undergraduate Prospectus, both of which are at the final stages of design and proofing. The process has run surprisingly smoothly this year, which had many of us questioning, what's about to go wrong. But no, our schedules have stood firm; even when faced with a massive audit of entry requirements to prepare for the new tariff being rolled out for 2017, all has gone surprisingly well. We're days away from approving for print - hurrah! So stay tuned in the next week or so, for an exclusive preview of our cover.

Influencing our applicants -
all in a day's work

We've now seamlessly moved into what we call Pre-Clearing and Conversion, aka the time after the initial UCAS deadline, but before Clearing starts to take over our lives. It's a key time for us marketers as we send out a series of meaningful communications to further support our applicants in their decision making. And so, another flurry of activity is about to take place. It's all go, go go, as we send out our applicant newsletters, and advice features to welcome the newest crop of potential students, and gather lots of exciting content to showcase why Beds is Best. We've also got an exciting web project being rolled out to further cement our positioning and verbal brand messaging, which we're all really excited about, and keen to share with our applicants. It should be up and running in February - so more on that later.

Who said print was dead

The second week in after the Christmas break and things are going rather smoothly (despite my silly picture on the right!) We usually have a busy period the last two months of the year and then we have a bit of a lull before pre-Clearing starts. So I’m enjoying having time to catch up on reports.

Publications

So, we’re working on a few publications at the moment. We’ve recently briefed back the second round of amends to the undergraduate 2017 prospectus. It’s been relatively easy this time around considering the changes we’ve had to make – absorbing the international aspects as we’re no longer producing a separate international publication, UCAS point changes, plus other factors.

We’ve also briefed back the first round of amends to the mini guide, so this is also going well. It’s such a small publication compared to the main prospectus so between the three of us in the team, this isn’t too big of a task.

The final publication I’m working on at the moment is our fees brochure. We’ve not produced a solus fees brochure for a couple of years, so I’ve been working with our freelance designer to create this in line with our 2016 suite of publications. I’ve just briefed back the final amends on this and we’re two weeks ahead of schedule, which I love!

Once we sign off the undergraduate prospectus, it won’t be long before we’ll be starting work on the postgraduate 2017 prospectus.

I know a lot of people think that marketing is moving towards a more digital focus, which is largely right to a certain degree, but there’s still very much a need for supporting printed collateral, and we always have at least one printed publication on the go at any one given time throughout the cycle.

To help with future projects I’m going to be working on an error log – where we will log all common errors that we come across time and time again when working on publications and campaigns, in the hope that by doing this we can eliminate them for future projects and therefore make our job a little bit easier. I’m also going to be working on updating our in-house style guide. Our style guide is a little bit outdated so it’ll be good for us to be working from new ones later this year. I’ll be liaising with the digital team and the communications team as well to ensure we take into account their needs, as we all use these guides as part of our daily role, whether its creating artwork or writing copy and news stories. 

Come in, we’re open

We’re also in the thick of the open day season with three UG open days taking place in February – Luton and Bedford, UCMK and Aylesbury, and we’ve also got our PG open day in February too. So we’ve been sending out emails, creating artwork, sending items to external media, and setting up more Google activity; all in a day’s work!

Some of our artwork for our forthcoming open days

And besides the above, like I mentioned earlier - I‘ve got a little down time to catch up on my evaluations before pre-Clearing kicks off!

Speak soon,

K

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.

Bye bye sunshine, hello real world!

Dressed up in the Cuban sunshine!

I’m fresh back from Cuba and back into the swing of things after a few days back at the office. The holiday was great- I attended a lovely family wedding and met lots of people from around the world; Scotland, Prague, Canada. It really was a fab holiday! Here’s a little picture taken just before the wedding...

As I’ve not been here since my last blog post, this one is going to be pretty short.

My priorities for the next couple of weeks are implementing the remainder of the activities from the UG February open day plan, including creating and sending emails, posting on social media, working with the CRM team on conversion and reminder communications and finishing open day brochure inserts for the students who come along to see us on the day.

I‘m also working hard on my backlog of open day evaluation reports; looking at activity performance to ensure we are putting together well thought out plans which provide good ROI. This will then feed in to my next open day campaign plans for future events. We love a good evaluation report here!

A newbie on my list is working with the recruitment team on new marketing collateral for forthcoming HE and UCAS fairs. I’m going to be creating a large banner for the team to use when they are travelling around the country talking to our prospective students. I’m also working on a UCAS convention brochure for the summer.

A sneak peek at our prospectus cover

And, while I’ve been away Sarah has been busy signing off the undergraduate 2016 prospectus; so all that’s left to do is sign off the book proof when we receive it from the printers at the end of the week. The undergraduate 2016 mini guide is also signed off- Sarah has been a busy bee- nothing new there!

So, I should really finish with a big ‘thank you’ to Sarah for picking up some of my work while I was away!!

Speak soon,

K

Off to a flying start

Well, it’s my first blog of 2015 and we’re mega busy in the office. I feel like we’ve had a flying start to the year so far- I’m feeling really productive! We’re at the second proof stage of the undergraduate 2016 prospectus- it’s looking really nice, but there are still a few things to sort before the print deadline in early February! And we’re also at the first proof stage of the undergraduate 2016 mini guide, which will be signed off around the same time as the main prospectus.

PG open day artwork

On top of that, I’m half way through implementing the PG open day plans for February- two weeks to go. And I’ve also developed an open day plan for our UG open day in February, in line with the pre-clearing campaign that Krystle is busy working on. 

UG open day artwork

As part of the UG open day campaign I will be reworking the open day brochures, so I’ve been working with recruitment to try and finalise how these will look and the correct information to include. We’ll send these out by email to all registrants prior to the events taking place.

I’ve also started work on the January e-zine edition, which will be the first applicant edition following the 15 January UCAS deadline, so the messages will have a slightly different focus; informing applicants about life on campus, our student bloggers, accommodation and lot’s more! We’ve recently had two new email templates designed too, so I’m getting used to the new layout as I build the email.

I was also busy at the beginning of the month sending out email communications to enquirers during the build-up to the 15 January UCAS deadline, offering advice on lifestyle and what’s next after submitting an application. We like to provide applicants with as much information as possible to help them through their journey.

I’ve also finished my first open day evaluation report of this cycle; only another four to go to play catch up. Lots of number crunching coming my way I think!

Get me there now...!

Well, that’s all from me for this month. But I’ve got to finish my blog on a totally none-work-related subject by letting you all know that I’m jetting off to Cuba for two weeks on Wednesday (‘Off to a flying start’- get it now?!).

Speak soon, K

Team away day

This Wednesday the CRM, market research and marketing teams escaped the office for an afternoon of team bonding at our away day at Putteridge Bury campus.

It provided the perfect opportunity to step back and look at the great things we've achieved as a team over the past year, and gave us a chance to have some fun too. From quizzes to photograph missions to drawing challenges, the day had something for everyone.  I was almost entirely useless during the quiz, but a highlight was my team's creative efforts during the Christmas selfie task.

The team put some serious effort into our selfie...

It was great to get out of the office for an afternoon, and to have some festive fun with the whole team.

Amongst all the fun I've been working hard on lots of different jobs, from the 2016 undergraduate prospectus and departmental conversion newsletters, to verbal brand notes and video filming for the next virtual open event. As always, there's a lot going on and there are lots of deadlines on the horizon.

On a slightly different note, this may well be my last blog post! I'll be leaving the University and my last working day will be Christmas Eve. In the new year I'll be going to America for a couple of months to travel. I've really enjoyed working for the University and a huge bonus has been working with the really great people in the MARC department. I'll definitely keep in touch!

Have an excellent holiday and a very happy Christmas.

Clare