Do Influencers #AD's actually work?

Personally, I find it really difficult to write about things I don't have an opinion on. This week I think people expected me to talk about the clearing campaign photography we've had done, but honestly... I don't have anything groundbreaking to say about it. Yes it was busy and slightly chaotic, but the experience was great and the photos are looking amazing, and exactly what we'll need to pull off our new idea. So what more is there to say? Job done. I will treat you to a couple of BTS shots though, just so you feel included in the mayhem...

What I wanted to talk about instead is something that us 'marketeers' hear about a lot... and that's digital influencers. Basically, asking people who have a lot of followers in the digital space to promote your products/services to their audiences. While we've been choosing the inventory for our clearing campaign, social influencers has been a topic of conversation, and today I wanted to look into it in a bit more detail. 

1) Is it actually effective?

If you look at the stats, yes it works. A lot of media agencies will tell you it's the only truly effective way to market to students or Gen Z nowadays. In fact, Activate by Bloglovin's research has found that 67% of marketers think influencer marketing campaigns helped them reach a more targeted audience, which leads to better overall results. And why wouldn't it? To the younger audience it's essentially like being recommended a product or service from a friend, and what could be more convincing than that? 

2) When DOES it work?

Let me preface this with... I watch a lot of YouTube. And I've seen my fair share of influencer ads. From personal experience (and I imagine it to be the same amongst some), sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The best brand work I've seen through digital creators has definitely always been the longer campaigns. If I see a creator post one #ad for a brand and then never speak about them again, I'm not believing a word they're saying. But when influencers and brands have lasting relationships it has more value to the audience. Plus it's got to be a partnership that makes sense. (I cannot emphasise this enough). 

For example: Liza Koshy works out everyday, and posts Instagram stories/Snapchats about it regularly. Liza Koshy also happens to have 15 million subscribers and 15.6 million Instagram followers. So Nike approached her. Makes sense, right? A match made in heaven. And then this happened. 20 MILLION VIEWS?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I actually enjoyed sitting through what was essentially 8 minutes of advertising! As well as that, she created her own pair of shoes with Nike, plus they got her to host a whole bunch of panel events with athletes - both of which built value and trust with her audience. But credit where credit due, the advert only worked because it was still 100% Liza. Full of puns, double entendre, physical comedy, and most importantly... complete transparency. 

3) When does it NOT work?

When influencers promote something that you wouldn't associate them with. Or when it's forced, sounds rehearsed, or when the creator hasn't been organic. Just today I saw a vlogger promoting the DVD release of Maze Runner: The Death Cure on his channel and on Instagram. But I never saw him go and see the film in the first place, plus I've been watching him for a year and I've never even seen him set foot in a movie theatre, so why am I going to trust him to recommend me this? So fake! Yeah I watch YouTube, but I'm not dumb. (Wait, was that an oxymoron?). 

Wrong partnerships are the curse of the digital space. It would be like us asking a creator who attends another university to make a sponsored video about us. Who on earth is going to believe that? Getting your target audience to listen doesn't work if you don't have the right thing to say. 

So there you have it. A little insight into how I think marketing with digital influencers works and how it doesn't. Something for us definitely to think about, as it seems that's where a lot of marketing is headed in the future. If you have any thoughts then let me know, YouTube is easily one of my favourite topics of conversation! 

Until next time. Over and out. 

A little insight into my week

I can’t quite believe that it’s Friday already – this week has flown by, and what a week it’s been.

Earlier this week some of our media providers came in to present some of the new media platforms that are available. These are always really interesting and informative days as the media providers share some of their market insight with us, as well as their predictions of where the market may be heading. They then present to us some of the new ways available to connect with our audience, to help strengthen the University of Bedfordshire brand awareness and engagement.

The way in which consumers connect with brands continues to change dramatically, and consumers expect more from brands than they once did. Because of this we have been focusing on how we can make our messages more personalised, and some of the options that we were shown will allow us to do exactly that. I don’t think I can say too much more right now, but keep your eyes peeled over Clearing to see what we’ve been up to.

We also had a meeting with our media agency to discuss how our campaign has performed over the last year, and to see what’s in store over Clearing. These meetings provide a good opportunity for us to take the time to reflect on what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what we can do to improve our messaging in the future.

We have a really exciting Clearing campaign planned this year, and we’re excited for you all to see it. One aspect at the heart of all of our campaigns is that we use our own students, rather than models or actors. We believe that this presents a more accurate representation of Bedfordshire, and we try to capture video content as well so that prospective students can hear about our current students experiences. We’ve got our photo-shoots coming up over the next couple of weeks so I’ve been busy contacting our students this week to see if they would like to take part in our campaign, trying to ensure that all subject areas are represented. Although the next couple of weeks will be busy, I always enjoy meeting our students and learning about their Bedfordshire experiences.

I’m not sure I can finish without making a celebratory comment about the sun finally making an appearance this week can I? It’s been a little hot in the office the last few days, but we seem to have found the perfect solution*.

Sara

*Other ice lollies are available from retailers

Tips for using a professional Twitter account

Like many people I have a Twitter account that I use for work purposes. I generally tweet about what I’m up to at work, what stories and projects I’m working on and just general gubbins about my working life in the press office at the University of Bedfordshire.

I’m not a Twitter by any means – most of what I know I've learnt on the job and through trial and error. But if you’re thinking about setting up your own Twitter account for work and are not sure where to start, here are a few tips to get you going:

Think before you post

Let’s start at the beginning. Before you post anything, ask yourself this question – would I want my mum to see this? Or, more importantly, my boss? If the answer is no, it might be better not to post it

Ask yourself what you want out of Twitter

I post the occasional photo of my dog, because who wouldn’t want to see this gorgeous face(by the way that’s Bowen, he’s a six-year-old GSD cross and the love of my life).

After a mental Monday, a cuddle with this beautiful boy is just what I need ❤️ pic.twitter.com/F0IgtlqBrA

— Caroline Jacobi (@CJacobi16) January 8, 2018

Saying that, I rarely mention anything outside my working life. It’s worth thinking about what you want to get out of using Twitter in a professional capacity.

Do you want to link up with journalists? Or connect with fellow PR professionals. Most of these people will be interested in news about your organisation, but not so interested in photos of your boozy night outs. It might be an idea to have two accounts, one for work, one for outside work, just so there’s no cross-over.

Use it or lose it

I see so many accounts that are never used. My heart sinks when I see an account for a department in the University, and then I see that nothing has gone out from it since 2015. They just sit in cyberspace looking empty and sad. Get into the habit of tweeting at least once a day.

Don’t be afraid of images and tag, tag away!

Not only do photos increase engagement by up to 300%, they have a nifty function where you can tag other accounts into your tweet, rather than using up your precious word count with Twitter handles. Tagging also increases engagement and will help you get noticed. Hashtags have the same effect, though too many can be a bit much - two of three is a good number.

Ignore the trolls

Tempting as it is to get into a Twitter row with an idiot with too much time on their hands – don’t do it. Trolls thrive on attention and you just end up stoking the fire if you engage with them.

A wise person once said (probably on a social media platform somewhere): “Arguing with a Twitter troll is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it’s won.”

Just ignore it, and if it gets really nasty, block them and report them to Twitter and let them deal with it.

If you’re interested, my Twitter handle is @CJacobi16 – feel free to pop over and have a look.

Spinning straw into gold at Youth Marketing Strategy LDN 2018

Insta selfies, bunny ear filters and stalls manned by twenty somethings with a skin fade wearing Augmented Reality headsets. Yes that is what I walked into last week when I headed down to Brick Lane in London’s East End to present at Voxburners Youth Marketing Strategy (YMS) LDN 2018

Two days of discussions from organisations on how to engage young people with brands and products. From Snap Chat to Love Island, Google, to well Bedfordshire, there was a range of insight shared from brands across the event.

So, I was asked to speak on day one alongside four other universities as part of the higher education strand. It was great for Bedfordshire to be asked to share or story of how we engaged young people into converting their offer with us during clearing into an accept. To be honest the story is a pretty good one and one worth sharing. So here is a quick synopsis.

As part of our clearing operation we needed to up our game with conversion. Each year we generate thousands of calls to clearing hotline and make thousands of offers, but we often fall down when it comes to converting those offer holders into actually accepting. During Clearing 2017 we pioneered something new. Now it’s not often we get to say we pioneered something, especially one with such impact, so stay with me, it gets good.

We bought the licence for an app called Bonjoro, it’s a tool that lets you film short personalised videos to an individual and send them via email. We asked our academics to record some to offer holders and send as a follow up to the call they had received where the offer had been made. It sounds simple right?


The most labour intensive part was actually uploading all the email addresses, which isn’t too bad as I initially thought the worst bit would be getting buy in from the academic to take part. You see quite often academics and marketing don’t mix, unless it is a poster created using clip art and Publisher. With this proposition though they seem to love it, possibly something to do with the personal nature of it and they got to talk, and academics love to talk.

But here is the good bit, over clearing we sent 672 Bonjoro videos via email to offer holders. Of those 534 recipients opened their emails; that is a 74% open rate! Pretty good conversion right there.

Of those who opened the videos 316 were watched; that is a 47% watch rate. Of those who watched 288 accepted their offer with us.

The cost for a 12 month license was under 5k however, the 288 undergraduate offers that we accepted after receiving a Bonjoro would, after completing a three-year undergraduate degree, have generated £2.5m revenue for the University. No other conversion tool has spun straw into gold the same way as this during clearing. The moral, it is a tool we will be using again.


It wasn’t just Bedfordshire talking personalisation though, it seemed to be a major theme in many of the brands presenting, and was certainly coming through in all the research presented as something young people want more and more of.


The rest of my day at the event consisted of learning more about how young people want to be engaged and a big part of this was around authenticity. One of the challenges I have brought back from the event is asking how do we tell the student story without endless amounts of case studies that risk being seen as edited and manipulated? How do we strip back our messaging to begin telling our student success in a raw authentic unedited form, while still being part of a brand? I’ll leave that one there to perhaps pick up on a future blog. 


While we ponder the above, the one thing we can definitely continue doing is personalising beyond sending an email and inserting name here. Let’s hope we have a new, exciting, creative tool to present at next years conference, and in the meantime, here are some of the Bonjoro's sent during Clearing 2017.

What to ask for when you ask for market research

Right, so I didn’t read the leave calendar properly and have had to take a load of leave time for the end of the year, rather than lose it. My fault. Or “my bad” as the kids probably don’t say anymore. I had something prepared, but it’ll have to wait until next time. Here’s a filler; a rather rushed but hopefully useful guide to what’s useful for me when you ask for market research from MARC.

Precise needs – Aims and objectives. Right? Stuff we teach on a huge proportion of our courses, but which curiously goes AWOL when initiatives are half baked then chucked around with a clear need for action, but a panicky feeling of not really knowing what the action should be. Crystallising precise needs can be useful to you as well as to me. Many requests I have are pleasingly specific to which I respond, usually with a stunningly presented answer.  Here are some clues about what makes a nice, specific request.

If you don’t know what you’re after, say so. GO ON; SAY IT. “I’m not sure what I’m after”. As long as you’re not expecting the moon on a stick, or a silver bullet, we can work round this. It might be time to ask for a meeting……

A meeting – yes, I can be “meeting resistant”. Many sensible, sane people are. Meetings can, after all, be talking shops better covered by an email. If you have a very specific course title you want to test, or need recruitment details from competitors, again, with a set list of courses, let’s not meet. If there’s any room for misinterpretation, however, then let’s meet. Or call me. I’m on x 3379. I don’t mind woolly requests. Really. The work can often be more interesting than number crunching cohorts. 

Me and fashion parted in the mid 1970s

Background – always helpful. Often covered in meetings, though not always at other times.

Remember, I’m a man with limitations. I know nothing about Fashion, Criminology, Computing, HRM, Forensics, Sport Therapy, Civil Engineering or Marketing. You know far more about your subject area than me. You may have come from a different institution which may do things better or differently to us. The latter far more likely than the former, obviously. Sharing background is, however, a two way street. Look at all this stuff on the intranet, for example……

A deadline. I have other work. I do not sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for stuff to come in.  I do not have a team; I have spreadsheets.

When giving a deadline, try and think of a date. You know; DD/MM/YYYY. That kind of thing. It might be fun and edgy to say it, but “as soon as possible” is not a deadline. “As soon as possible” =

• “put my request at the top of your list;
• I don’t want to hear/care what else you’re working on;
• my work is more important than anything else you’re doing right now;
• I am more important than the rest of those people you’re working with”.

Right, ok. I know “as soon as possible” isn’t this really, and that it's more ‘light touch’ bribery. I’m only human and, therefore susceptible to bribes and other forms of flattery and bullying. But please, tell me when you need your work done. If it’s for a meeting, let me know it’s for a meeting and let me know how long you’d like to digest whatever I can produce before this meeting.

Put a crap deadline into the system; expect crap back

And again, “yesterday” is not a deadline. “Yesterday” is an admission of failure, on your part. “Yesterday” means the boat has sailed and you’ve been caught out. It may not be your fault, but I cannot meet a deadline that’s in the past. Please recalculate and bear in mind exactly what I’ve said about “as soon as possible”.

So that’s what would be nice to have when you ask for market research. I accept and will work to lesser briefs. I often do. Here’s The Beach Boys to wrap things up. Let’s try and forget they might be Republicans.

I don't want you to photoshop yourself. Your landscapes, however...

This blog post is kind of a two for the price of one situation. Essentially, I went to New York last week and want to talk about it (a thousand apologies to my colleagues who have heard about it non-stop for the whole week, I swear this will be the last thing). But I also want to make it work-related, so I’m going to tie it in with my role as a member of our newly formed Social Media Team. Therefore, drum roll please…

Tips and tricks for editing Instagram pictures

For the first time in my life I actually have a decent camera (the Canon G7X mark ii for those who care), so have been making extra effort to improve my photography and editing skills. I'm by no means an expert - I only started teaching myself four days ago - but this is what I’ve learnt so far.

Photoshop tricks

1) TIMES SQUARE, NY. As I've said in the title, I really don't encourage 'photoshopping' yourself in any way. However, I do think that sometimes it's allowed. For example, in the picture below I actually had chocolate on my face *rolls eyes*, but it was a really nice picture other than that, so I figured it was excusable. If you have a similar situation, I suggest the Spot Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp tools on Photoshop - which are really useful for getting pieces of fluff off your clothing or just smartening up chocolately faces. Be warned though - they are both 'blurring' tools, so if you use them over a large surface area, people will be able to tell. 

ORIGINAL

EDITED

2) FINANCIAL DISTRICT, LOWER MANHATTAN, NY. If by accident, like me, you've taken a picture at a really nice time of day - dawn or dusk or during a sunset, for example - it can be nice to enhance that. In the image below a couple of useful techniques have been used. First, to straighten out buildings or other subjects, copy a new layer of your image. Then Ctrl T (Transform) and right click and choose Distort. Then you're free to drag the corners/sides of your image to make them straighter. Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights helps to make any buildings or structures stand out, and Ctrl L will bring up a levels menu that can also brighten or darken any shapes (clouds included!). And lastly, to brighten up skies, you can go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter, which gives you loads of options to bring out different saturations of colours, to make them really stand out! 

ORIGINAL

EDITED

Image editing apps

If you don't have access to Photoshop or just can't be bothered to spend that much time on your pictures, there are some pretty good editing apps available nowadays that can improve your images just as easily. Here are some I've found. 

1) BROOKLYN BRIDGE, LOOKING BACK ON MANHATTAN, NY. I used an app called Photofox to edit this picture, which I've found is great if you want to give the illusion that your pictures have been taken on old-fashioned camera reel (like the Olympus Penn or OM-1). If colour distortion and fade is your thing, then this is the app for you! It's free and has a wide range of light overlays that can give your images that vintage feel. See below!

ORIGINAL

EDITED

2) CENTRAL PARK, NY. This is probably my favourite photo editing app to use at the minute, and it's called VSCO (although ColorStory comes in at a close second, check both out). It's no different to the filters that Instagram supply you with, other than it has a whole lot more editing options beyond that, and more colour gradients. The app is free and so are a selection of filters, but for more advanced options you do have to pay unfortunately! I like to use it to brighten my pictures and for landscapes, to give them a rustic feel.

ORIGINAL

EDITED

So I hope that helps (and simultaneously lets you know what an amazing time I had in the 'big apple'). I use these techniques on my personal Instagram account, but I don't see why I, and the rest of the team, can't start using them on the University Instagram to make our pictures stand out. So get downloading, social team! 

Hope this is useful, and I'd love to see if anyone tries any of these photo editing options in their own work, so please let me know! 

Until next time. Over and out. 

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