Passage from India

Eat your heart out Bernard Matthews

The last nut roast and turkey have long since been despatched to the back of the freezer and Christmas and New Year are distant memories. We’ve already passed UCAS’s January admission deadline (don’t worry; there’s still plenty of time to join either Bedfordshire or another university next year) and we – that is the wider Marketing, Admissions, Recruitment and Communications team - are furiously signing off prospectuses and talking to potential students about how we can help them onto their dream course.

I’ve been trying to balance helping Marketing colleagues and those elsewhere across the University and not getting in their way, while setting up applicant surveys, both for those who have accepted an offer from us, and for those who have chosen a different institution. It happens.

No, not the new LRC in Luton....this is Hampi

And I’ve also just got back from an indulgent holiday in India (Mumbai, Hampi, Mysore and Cochin). As I booked all the transport and hotels myself, I spent a huge chunk of time on arrangements, fending off auto rickshaws and staying healthy, and being overawed by some of the things I saw and places I visited. India, for those who haven’t been or haven’t heard, is an incredibly intense country. I wonder if the first time UKvisitor can ever really be prepared to take on the heat, the poverty, the dust, the traffic, the tendency for things to ‘work’ ‘differently’, the bureaucracy, the careful arrangements around securing drinking water, the local customs, airport customs, the veg vs non-veg, A/C vs non A/C and the cavalier approach to health and safety. I managed to stay in tip top physical condition, although at times, was mentally exhausted. From what I saw, however, India is a truly great, beautiful and incredibly friendly country. And chaotic. Thoroughly recommended.

One thing that being in India did reinforce was the desire of people across the world to widen their experience, typically through learning and/or travelling. I’d be exaggerating if I said I ‘roughed it’ at any point in my journey, but in Mumbai, Mysore and Cochin, there were numerous and often very prominent adverts and offices extolling the virtues and wisdom of studying abroad. And it wasn’t just the locals, backpackers, too, never seem that shy of recounting their own tall tales and shaggy dog stories about the dangerous and obscure places they’ve struggled through.

Blah blah blah "caught in a monsoon"
blah blah "no electricity", blah blah "dirty pants"

What does this mean for the University of Bedfordshire and similar institutions? Because of the UK’s excellent higher education reputation, it means more students. In recent years, there have been political pressures which have deterred the flow of overseas students, despite the well-known, well reported benefits to the UK of doing so. But those students who do come - whether it’s from India, or China, or Nigeria, or Europe - bring experiences and knowledge which can only enrich university life. Universities are and will hopefully continue to be cultural melting pots, where differences in cultural views and experiences are aired and welcomed. And it’s quite humbling to think of the lengths and sacrifices some make to follow their dreams of studying in the UK.

The likelihood of international students (i.e. those from outside the European Union) coming to study in the UK may have been slightly – and hopefully temporarily – dampened. A healthy curiosity to explore other cultures is still evident, however. Only this week, the European Commission reported on increasing numbers studying or training abroad, with the UK one of the main recipients of more than 250,000 Erasmus students in 2013-14. Which is fantastic news; the fact that, in brutal economic terms, higher education is a major UK money spinner is one thing – the chance to see the world in microcosm and immerse yourself with people from across the world in a cosmopolitan environment at Bedfordshire is a fantastic additional benefit.

The thrill isn't in the winning, it's in the doing

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager



Hot off the press

Friday cheer!

There was already a celebratory mood over in Marketing HQ today, as we finalised the proofing of our mini guide and prospectus, and began rejoicing in getting all of our final amends over on time - the last stage of production before we approve for print. And if that wasn't enough of a cause for us to celebrate, our day just got so much better!

We were delighted to see that we've been short-listed in the UK Blog Awards 2016, in the Education category.

Congratulations to our marketing team for being shortlisted @UKBlogAwards Education category #UKBA16 #fingerscrossed https://t.co/pUFcJQTUI7

— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) January 29, 2016

Although we entered on a bit of a whim, and didn't expect it go to anywhere, we were ecstatic to see that we made it to the short-list after a big rally of support from our colleagues and fellow blog readers - Thank you! It looks as though we're up against a few other universities such as Salford Business School, and Southampton Solent University to name a few, and will wait with baited breath to see how we do in the next round of judging; with the results announced in April.

We've spent a lot of time building up this blog over the years, and gradually recruited new blog contributors to widen the pool of insight shared and to expand on the marketing transparency, knowledge and discussions each week, so it's great to see the blog being recognised in this way, and is a big coup for the team.

A great way to kick off awards season, and a great end to the week!

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

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.

A challenging year

Challenged

Not long before it’s time to button down hatches, bust the Baileys and pile up box sets ready to feed into the roaring open fire. But before work memories are banished in a cloud of booze, dioxins, carbon monoxide and stuffing, time for a reflection on 2015.

This year’s General Election returned a Government which, cut loose from its erstwhile Lib Dem-ish stooges, oversaw the much touted removal of student number controls and meddled with student finances. The latter has seen the replacement of maintenance grants with loans and the introduction of financing for PG students (yup; more loans; welcome as a start, but not looking out for folk averse to debt.....).

The University of Bedfordshire’s approved adjective summarising 2015 probably is “challenging”. Which translates, in certain areas, as “very difficult actually”. Here is what would be nice for 2016…..

• A big production opening of Luton’s new nine-level, café-tastic library. Things are shaping up very nicely on the corner of Park Street and Vicarage Street. Most of the facilities will almost certainly be ‘state of the art’ and hopefully someone smart, local and bookish will be lined up to open the place. Stephen Kelman? John Hegley?

•  International students to be removed from migration figures. Immigration has been high on everyone’s agenda over the last few years. International students are seen as a good thing by most mainstream politicians – no, really – if only for the income they bring in. Bizarrely, however, the Home Office insists that international student numbers are included in migration figures, thus helping exert a pressure which has led to more barriers to international students than there have been in the past. Even more bizarre is the fact that the Home Office stands alone and has consistently overruled even its own Conservative party colleagues, from those responsible for universities to others who usually jerk to the right in political debate, or those who just 'jerk' e.g. Boris Johnson and George Osborne. Recent comments from the Chancellor suggest that, finally, sense may prevail and international students are finally taken out of migration numbers. Fingers crossed.

• More encouragement for part-time and mature students. Bedfordshire, in common with most HEIs up and down the country, actively support learners of all ages. Loans may widen participation in the postgraduate market, although there are those concerned they may only subsidise the passage of those from more secure financial backgrounds. who do not mind accruing more long term debt.

Would you buy a degree from this man?

• Checks maintained on emerging private providers. Opening the market to non-traditional providers gives a wider range of institutions and a range of different prices. Fine, until you look a little deeper – for example at a recent report from Higher Education’s Quality Assurance Agency, reporting poor administration, attendance and higher dropout rates than in the established public sector institutions. Of course, there are excellent private providers out there, but extra attention is needed when choosing providers.

• Town and gown becoming a reality. Certainly in Luton (sorry Bedford, MK and Aylesbury; I live in, breathe and love Luton and don’t know how things work anywhere else…..). With exciting events coming up – including Wordfest, the Luton Fringe, the Carnival and others – it would be nice to see the University up its involvement.

Was Clippy so bad?

• Talent shows to be purged from tv schedules and replaced with documentaries about rock formations, knitting, quantum physics and Clippy, the Microsoft Office ‘office assistant’. And steam train documentaries for my Dad. If Clippy had his own show, I'd watch it in preference to, say, Lord Sugar’s Jungle Ballroom Bake-off.

• Luton Town for promotion? NO CHANCE. For two home games running, we’ve conceded four (yes, FOUR) goals. Square pegs are being played in round holes, which doesn’t help. 4-4-2 with Wilkinson instated as captain and Guttridge fit and firing, then “we’ll see”.

Fire, Flood and Fury - crisis communications scenarios

I like a good disaster movie so the title of a UCEA conference Fire, Flood and Fury – crisis scenarios in HE piqued my interest.   I’m not so happy though when movie themes play out in real life.

The conference brought together HR and communications specialists from HE to examine the issues we face from government, media and public interest around potentially high profile crisis scenarios.  Universities are at risk of being subject to incidents, both minor and major, which could result in the disruption of services and threaten the reputation of the University through negative media coverage.

The venue was the UCEA offices in Tavistock Square was a rather sobering location for the theme, given the events of 7/7 just outside the building.

Our University has a Business Continuity Plan and the Registrar has a procedure for convening the Incident Management Team for major incidents and emergencies, as well as an on-call policy and rota.  But in any incident it is the communications team that is tasked with fielding calls from the media wanting facts and commentary.

Ulrika and I heard some excellent case studies from:

• Aberystwyth University about how they protected and communicated with their students through a storm and flood situation
• Glasgow School of Art about the fire in the Mackintosh Building



Journalism students don't let a flood
get in the way of a good story

• Newcastle University about a student who had being making bombs in his room in a hall of residence.

And the key points we took away were:

• ·     What we say will go to the outside world in seconds through social media
• ·     Be the source of information, so that people come to us first and we can control it
• ·     Any member of staff could identify the source of an incident, which may not be in office hours – it was a cleaner who alerted the University to the bomb making equipment in the hall of residence at Newcastle University – we all need to be alert

After a calming cup of tea Ulrika and I were left questioning the preparedness of our University to respond in similar crises - we do have a crisis communications strategy, but this will only be tested at the point it is needed.

So, next step – role play some disaster movies of our own….