A love affair with Northampton is a journey into space? Really?

Back in the dark ages, Luton Borough Council and/or another well-meaning civic body (or bodies) ran something called Luton’s Looking Up. Lurid yellow t-shirts with a vaguely Breakfast TV, vaguely Acid
House logo were run off and worn by a few local lunatics and well-meaning friends of the town. That's what passed as social media in the late 1980s. As I recall - possibly incorrectly - no one knew what was going on and the campaign didn’t amount to much.

I’ve written before about Luton’s image problems, although it appears that at long last, there’s a real and serious set of exciting initiatives which will transform our loveable old environs into something which hopefully will still be loveable, but new and shiny too.

On our doorstep - proposed new ground for Luton Town FC

While work is nearing completion on our very own eight-storey ‘state of the art’ library, even more exciting, for many townsfolk, are the plans for Power Court, within a stone’s throw of our main town centre campus. Readers of this blog may recall my fondness for the mighty Luton Town, so it’s hard to put in words how exciting the prospect of the proposed stadium is. We will rise again - by beating Arsenal in the 1988 League Cup, we gave Gooners like Nick Hornby plenty to moan about long before their perennial navel gazing and dreary irritation about always finishing fourth set in under current manager Arnold Fenders.

Last known happy Arsenal fan

Enough about football. Again. The Power Court development also includes restaurants and commercial enterprises, but most significantly, an 1,800 capacity music venue. This, again, is ludicrously good news for a town which, in addition to our very own Student Union, has always been well served by small venues like The Edge, The Four Horseshoes, The George, The Castle, the Hat Factory or the jewel in crown on the town’s live music scene, The Bear Club. When it comes to national acts, Luton has, up until now, had to rely on nearby venues like the St Albans Arena or the Bedford Corn Exchange – a venue of the size proposed will hopefully attract some pretty significant touring acts. Not that either St Albans or Bedford are easily reached on Thameslink.

And that’s not all Luton town watchers – light rail to the airport, the busway, bridge installations, a new shop called Smiggle and new doughnut shops in The Mall….. there’s so much going on, it’s hard to keep up. Luckily, the excellent Luton Developments on both Facebook and Twitter deliver regular updates on what’s going on in the town, building-wise.

Looking back, the Luton’s Looking Up campaign didn’t do any harm. This may have been because it didn’t leave a legacy. Unlike Northampton, whose musical invocations of a new Eden in middle England only 60 miles by road or rail from London is not only huge fun, but also ridiculous; anyone who knows their local history knows that the Garden of Eden was in Bedford.

Enjoy the Northampton song? The A-side is even more bonkers…….

Full of PRide after awards win

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

After a week off in the sunshine, I'm finally back in the office and what a first few days back it's been.

Two Gold Awards for Team UoB!

On Friday the Marketing team got glammed up and headed on over to the CIPRide Awards, as we had been short-listed for not one, but two coveted awards. As I was still over in Gran Canaria, I sat with cocktail in hand, in the hotel bar (the only place with wifi!) sporadically refreshing my twitter feed to see how we had done. Much to my delight, we scooped a Gold award for Best Publication - for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus. After whooping in the bar and celebrating with a few more cocktails, I was surprised to see that we had won another Gold award - this was a special judges prize (and the second consecutive year that we had won this award) for the Best Use of Research, Planning, Measurement and Evaluation.

Celebrating on stage with an
award win

This really was a great achievement for the Marketing team, and really is testament to the hard work that is undertaken throughout the year. A lot of time and effort is placed into producing our university publications, but in also evaluating the performance of all work, and assessing the ROI and value in all that we do. The team I'm told, had a great evening out, although were left a little on the hungry side after letting the canapes pass them by.

Gold for Best Publication: @uniofbeds for their Undergraduate 2015 Prospectus #PRideATC
— CIPR East Anglia (@CIPR_EastAnglia) November 7, 2014

Midland Hotel - Manchester

And just when you think it can't get any better! Paul and Lauren from the Digital team, alongside Beverley and I headed off to the Midland Hotel in Manchester only yesterday, as we were up for another award. This time the Marketing team was up for Best Faculty Campaign at the Prospects Postgraduate Awards for our work done last year to increase applications to PGT Sport courses.

Celebrating our award win

After a hearty three course dinner, and a good catch up with our contacts at Prospects, the awards were upon us. We were up in the penultimate category, against three other universities and so left to sweat it out until the end. As the speaker started to talk about the winner, I could see that Paul was already celebrating - I of course had missed the subtle references of a 'photo finish' - which of course was relating to our sport campaign. Once it was announced we cheered as we made our way up to the stage to collect our very first award for a marketing campaign.

Award for Best Faculty Campaign

This brings us to a close for this years' award season. So, until next year it's back to work on our 2016 Undergraduate Prospectus, as well as our main corporate campaigns: Winter, Jan Start and Pre-Clearing - and who knows, maybe next year, it could be one of these initiatives that we'll be celebrating... :-)

Team outings

Photo-booth fun

Last Friday we all spent the afternoon at the staff summer party, celebrating our hard work over the last six months, eating ice cream and generally having a good time (see embarrassing brilliant photo-booth picture for evidence). 

Putteridge Bury not only played host to the Brazil-themed summer party, but was the location for another team outing this week too; the marketing team got together to discuss the implementation of the verbal brand research that has been taking place over the last months.

Though the implementation of the verbal brand is quite a daunting task, there was a lot of good discussion about how best to use all the research that has been undertaken to our advantage. 

Our location: Putteridge Bury

During a creative session at the end of the day, we broke down the wording of the verbal brand and discussed how it could be used to communicate with some of our extensive audiences. We also discussed it on a subject by subject basis and, while we only really scratched the surface of what we can do, it quickly became clear that the verbal brand will be useful on every level of the organisation and in every task we undertake.

We plan to have further creative sessions where we will go into even more detail about how the verbal brand will be implemented in the marketing materials we are producing. I already feel positive about the impact it will have on our ability to communicate effectively with our audiences but I think, as time goes on and we understand it in ever more detail, the task ahead will feel a lot less enormous!

As well as being out of the office, I’ve been working hard on my sections of the 2015 PG prospectus; the deadline is getting ever closer and I still have some work to do, so I’d better stop blogging and get to it..!

Clare