Clearing: a path to your future

Clearing 2014

With colleagues from all over the MARC team working so hard on the Clearing campaign, we’ve witnessed it gaining a lot of momentum over the last couple of weeks. 

Campaign visuals are looking fantastic in situ – they're absolutely everywhere and so very hard to miss! Bus backs, billboards, bus stops, posters, big screens, lamp posts, banners… You name it, we’re there! Even as I prepared to leave the country on holiday at the start of August, the clearing message flashed up on the check-in screen at Luton airport; rest assured, all bases have been covered!

As well as the more traditional marketing activity, Krystle’s organisation of a Clearing flash mob created a real buzz in Luton Mall this week. On Wednesday 40 dancers entertained the public with flash mobs dancing throughout the afternoon. The atmosphere was brilliant and Lutonians young and old had lots of fun, all in the name of Clearing!

Here's just a couple of the mentions we got on Twitter after the event:

RT @chelsgomes: the flash mob done by @uniofbeds was so good haha! so excited to be there in September :-) -> Good work yday! C U in Sept :)
— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) August 14, 2014

Great fun at @TheMallLuton with @uniofbeds! pic.twitter.com/72NSq7ErEY
— Holly Patel (@holly_patel) August 13, 2014

Student Ambassadors outside the show van

I’ve enjoyed getting involved in the Clearing efforts not least because it’s given me a reason to get out of the office. On Thursday I manned the Clearing show van with two of our wonderful Student Ambassadors. It’s great to step away from the computer screen, get out into the local community, and talk to the public face-to-face; who knows, someone I’ve talked to this week may end up studying at Bedfordshire later this year. 

As the Admissions and Recruitment teams continue to work hard over the weekend and beyond, I’m glad I’m able to play a small part in the University of Bedfordshire Clearing operation this year. I have a great feeling that all the positive momentum created so far will carry us through!

PG 2015: Hot off the press!

PG prospectus 2015

While most of our minds are focussed fully on Clearing 2014, it’s hard to believe that the Marketing team has now completed the full suite of 2015 publications! Copies of the brand new postgraduate prospectus for 2015 entry arrived on our desks this week, and we’re delighted with the finished item. If you haven’t already seen a copy, feel free to pop over to the Marketing pod to take a look. 

Clare

Pride of place: Beds Marketing team going for Gold

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Making the final cut: Short-listed
for two CIPR Awards

With Clearing activity now in full swing, I completely forgot that Friday (1 August) was a very special day in our working calendar - it was the short-list announcement for the CIPRide Awards 2014! As it suddenly dawned on me what day it was, I had a sneaky peak online and was very excited to see that we'd been short-listed for not one but TWO awards this year: Best Publication (for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus), and Best Low Budget Campaign (for our work on increasing PGT Sport applications by 60% for 2013 entry).

We're up against, 4 and 5 other organisations respectively in our short-listed categories, and will find out the final result later this year in November, so watch this space (and keep everything crossed for us).

Yay very pleased to see that we're short listed for not one but TWO @CIPR_Awards - Best Publication and Best Low Budget Campaign #CIPRide
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) August 1, 2014

As many of you will know from my previous posts, writing award entries is no easy task. You always know when an awards deadline is approaching, as both Paul (Digital Marketing Manager) and I are scrambling around to get our entries in on time - a fine juggling act when you have your day job to carry on with too! And as always, a big shout out to the Market Research team whose data filtering and analytical skills are always much appreciated :-)

Entering awards has become quite an important focus of my role. Not only is it a great pat on the back, and testament to all of the hard work that the team has completed over the year, but it's a great benchmark against our peers and the wider sector - a glowing example of best practice. For me personally, it's a great way to elevate our teams' profile amongst the wider University, further reiterating that we are specialists in our field, with tried and tested initiatives that yield great results.

Planning ahead for 2016
and beyond...

Ok so back to work, and back in the office. Aside from Clearing, there have been a number of other exciting projects going on recently. The first of which has been preparing the 2016 tender documents. Yes, you read that right: 2016! It's an interesting challenge here in the Marketing team, as in any given day we can find ourselves working on collateral across three consecutive years: We're still working on the 2014 intake (through our Clearing campaign); and we're already engaging with our 2015 enquirers and gearing up for enquirer open days which will take place from September in preparation for the 15 January 2015 UCAS deadline. And now to add to the mix, we're planning ahead for 2016 intake, which involves the production of our core corporate publications.

Over the past few months we've been meeting with a selection of new agencies to discuss the tender process, our suite of publications, and to find out a little more about their structures and ability to deliver on a series of quite demanding and time sensitive projects. The tenders have now gone live, and we're excited to see which of the companies will submit to work with us over the coming year, and help shape the look and feel of our publications - we'll keep you posted on this process, and may even share an exclusive first-look of publication visuals, once an agency has been appointed, so stay tuned!

Hello...I'm New Here

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello Everyone,

I am Sophia, a newly graduated BA (Hons) Business Management student from the University of Bedfordshire itself (Bedford Campus) and newbie member of the MARC department. I graduated a few weeks ago (15th July) with a 2.1 and I couldn’t be happier. To be honest it still feels so surreal to be able to say I am a graduate and I am still in the process of deciding which routes to take after university life, whether going for a master’s degree or finding my dream job. In a nutshell I am your typical girly girl with an entrepreneurial edge. I have an obsession with rose gold and I can’t get enough of red velvet cake (yum)!

I always knew I had a passion for business and here I am today trying to pursue it. I decided to study a Business Management degree because it offered me everything I was interested in learning more about. My Dad has always been in business and has worked his way up to owning his own advertising and marketing company called ‘Big Marketing Ltd’. I guess you could say I am following in my Dad’s footsteps and I would definitely agree with you there. Growing up watching my Dad gave me my own desire to work hard and succeed in everything that I do. Amongst everything else, I also work for my Dad’s company as a ‘Digital Media Assistant’ and have worked on some incredible campaigns recently with Rolls Royce and Lotus Cars. I am such a busy bee these days haha! I bet you are all wondering why I am not working with my Dad’s company full time right?! Well, here’s the thing…as much as I would love to work with my Dad full time I think I would get too comfortable and eventually lose sight of all of the other opportunities that are out there for me. My Dad worked his way up from the bottom and I intend to do so also. 

I tend to ramble a bit so let’s move swiftly on. So, last week I started my new role at the University of Bedfordshire’s MARC department as ‘Marketing Administrator’. Some of you may know that I write the Business Students blog and I found out about the role because of my internship (yay!). Everything happened quite quickly, so here I am today being part of the MARC team until October. My role consists of assisting all areas of the MARC department from the marketing, admissions, recruitment and communications teams. I feel so proud knowing I was given this opportunity so close to graduating university and I think this is a great prospect for someone like me who has an obsession with all things marketing.

As I mentioned above I am currently writing the Business Students blog for the university, if you would like to read my most recent post you can do so my clicking here. Blogging is something that has become a huge part of my life and I couldn’t see myself not doing. I have actually been writing my own personal blog for over 2 years now and I have enjoyed every second of it. I officially started my blog during the first year at university as a creative outlet for myself, so I feel it has been something that has been with me throughout my student life journey. It is your typical girly girl blog which features beauty, fashion and lifestyle posts about everything else I love in life. If you would like to take a peek at that you can do so by clicking here...I am currently going through a blog re-design so please excuse the mess :). Last year I was extremely fortunate and lucky to have been shortlisted in the Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Awards. It I still something I cannot believe actually happened and since being nominated last year I have been working alongside a London based PR agency and have had the opportunity to collaborate with well-known brands and attend some fabulous events that are mainly based in London. Recently I found out some even more amazing news, I was actually driving home from my MARC interview when I started receiving all of these tweets saying congratulations…I was so confused! I had forgotten that the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2014 shortlist was being released that day so I couldn’t think what it could have been. Eventually, after some investigating I found out I was shortlisted again this year! I never thought in my right mind that I would be here a year later talking about being nominated for a second year in a row and let alone for two awards! To be nominated with a magazine I read regularly feels like a complete dream. To be shortlisted and going to the awards is an achievement in itself; however, if I actually won it would just be the cherry on top...I don’t know what I would do! So here is where I lay out the cheesy ‘pretty please vote more me’ line! I am nominated under ‘Best Established Beauty Blog’ and ‘Best Use of Social Media’ so if you have a spare moment I would really appreciate a little vote. Thank you in advance :)

Now more of the personals are out of the way, let’s get back into talking about my new job role. At the moment I have been given the opportunity to work on numerous different tasks. The first being to update subject guides for the ‘Business, Finance and Tourism’, ‘Law’, ‘English Language and Communication’ and ‘Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations’ courses. It has been great to dive in and find all the information to give the guides a pick me up. Alongside this I have also been given the task of collating prospectus requests from potential students and issuing them prospectuses based on their specific requests. Being an alumnus it has been great to see how everything works behind the scenes. I remember when I received my prospectuses! My most recent task has been to update the photo library, this has involved me scrolling through all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This is a great task to jump between everything else…especially if you get a creative mental block. Also, it helps that I am quite an organised person and love to re-organise things!

Amongst all of the above I have also had the opportunity to help out other parts of the department. I attended two graduations last week where I helped distribute leaflets about the Jubilee Scholarship and film students for some video projects. Being in my second week of my new role I think I am slowly but surely settling in more. I attended my first team meeting this week and it was great to hear about all of the projects that are going on at the moment and what is being planned for the future. So far I have really enjoyed working with the team and on the projects I have been assigned. Going straight from a university course into a full time job has been a leap but I feel I have used so many skills that I learnt across my university journey studying my degree. Being on the other side of the table it has really opened my eyes at how much works goes into every little thing…especially the prospectuses and subject guides! I am actually off away on vacation Saturday so I am really looking forward to escaping to some sunshine. Upon my return I will be working on some of the same tasks as above, also volunteering some time at a University of Bedfordshire clearing stand with some of the MARC team and helping with clearing! August is looking pretty good!

Speak to you all soon!

We’re on a roll

A sneak peek at the cover of the PG 2015 prospectus

Last time I blogged I mentioned that the UCMK prospectus had arrived hot off the press and onto the Marketing team’s desks. Well, the good news is, the PG prospectus is almost ready to go to print now too. We’re at the final stage of signing off the Epson proofs, and then it’s going to print next week, and will arrive in office mid-August. Another big project ticked off our to-do-lists. And I’ve got to admit, it’s a relief to have all that work complete. Pulling together such a big publication can be really hard work- it’s worth it when it comes to fruition though.

I also mentioned in my last blog that I was working on two new student guides; the college guide and the nursing guide. I’ve been a busy little bee over the last few weeks and these are also at the last proofing stage and will be ready early August.

My final publication task (for now) is auditing some of our subject guides, ready for September. As part of the auditing process I am looking at five of the guides, making updates and liaising with Heads of Departments to gather further updates. Once these are revised and amends are made, they will be uploaded online. Going forward we will be carrying out focus groups to look at how we can further improve these publications for the audience, and perhaps making some bigger changes for the 2015 subject guides.

What else I’ve been up to

I’ve been out of office quite a lot recently; over at our Bedford and Putteridge Bury campuses filming student graduations and helping to distribute Jubilee Scholarship fliers prior to ceremonies. Seeing graduations always takes me back to my graduation, it’s such a strange time; happy and proud to be finished, but sad to say goodbye to people you have known for three or more years. It’s great seeing all of the graduates and their families around campus looking so happy and proud! Keep an eye out for our graduation photos and videos on our Facebook and Twitter pages!

I’ve also been finishing the undergraduate open day evaluation report (PG one to start next week), putting a content schedule together for the marketing team for our PG Facebook and Twitter pages and working on the July edition of B4Beds; filming and editing videos.

My development

I have recently been looking into my development and have booked myself and my colleague, Clare, onto a print workshop in Northampton in September. A little way away yet, but I’m hoping having more of an understanding of print and paper, and how certain paper stock effects the final look of a printed product will help me going forward in making recommendations to future publications that will not only further enhance the look of our publications, but also be more cost effective to print. 

A new member of the team…

Welcome to Sophia

And finally, welcome to Sophia Meola, our Business student blogger who has recently joined the MARC team for a couple of months in the Marketing Administrator role. She graduated from Bedfordshire last week after studying Business Management (BIG congratulations!) and she has a keen interest in marketing. We’re all excited to have her on board!

Speak to you all soon

K

Campaigns Update

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

Where am I? What day is it and what’s my name again?

I am knee deep in our Clearing Campaign, that’s where.  I have been liaising with all our suppliers and in-house teams to coordinate schedules, specifications, deadlines, market research, production, tracking and delivery of all our Clearing activity (whilst fighting off a barrage of hard selling media contacts).

Our designers have been hard at work transforming the artwork to fit the myriad of specs for buses, bus shelters, posters, billboards, phone boxes, tube car panels, banners, lampposts and print adverts.  So what does it look like?

Can I get a drum roll please… Here is the final product:

The campaign is fully integrated.  All of the digital display adverts and social media activity are in harmony with the print artwork.  The outdoor and print advertising directs you to a bespoke landing page where you can search for courses, find information on accommodation, as well as, scholarships and bursaries and a chance to chat to our CRM team.  There is lots of helpful advice in the form of a video of our Clearing students that feature in the artwork giving their tips on Clearing, tweets and a link to further information on the process.   If you go onto youtube you can also find videos of the students talking about their experiences of Clearing and the course that they are studying.  We are very lucky to have such a talented digital team, it all looks so fresh.  My personal favourite so far is the short animations leading into the youtube videos; very cool.  Check it out!

Whose bright idea was that?

This year we have been exploring forms of advertising that we haven’t done before and have added some additional activity to the Clearing plan.  Some of the bright ideas that we have chosen to take forward are:

• Twitter - #pathtobeds
• Facebook – ‘Jump into Beds’ Forum to facilitate discussion amongst students and aid conversion
• Youtube - Live YouTube broadcast of a campus tour/the Clearing room/interviews with academics/sample lectures etc.
• Flash Mob - workshop for UoB students prior to performance, video to post on social media and website, professional dancers at event (4 performances), workshop at the event for the public, sound equipment hire and technician
• Legal Fly Posting – We have called upon Media Gang to put together a legal fly posing campaign in central London
• NUS Voucher – We will be incentivising clearing offers with £12 NUS vouchers 

      Then comes the tracking

The majority of the artwork has been approved and delivered now so I will be waiting with baited breath to see it all brought to life.   I will be carefully monitoring and tracking all activity to see what, designs, locations and platforms are delivering.

Did someone say ‘Winter’?

Winter Campaign planning is well underway.  I met with our advertising agency SMRS a couple of weeks ago in Manchester to discuss the brief.  It is a very exciting time embarking upon a new campaign and great to have the agency on board. 

We want to build on the concept of the student transformational journey and develop the Clearing artwork using successful UoB graduates.  I have been working with our Alumni Team to source graduates and will be setting up the next photo-shoot in the coming weeks.

I have also been working on other bespoke campaigns for our faculties but that’s a story for another day.

Type to you soon,

Krystle

A thrilling week at work

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Managers Away Day

It seems that time is flying by at the moment. And the days seem to go by all the more rapidly, especially when you're limited to only two days of desk time within the working week. That's right! I've been out and about this week, breaking out from my 'typical week' which usually involves quite a lot of meetings in and around campus. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to get 'out there' and meet the wider University to support their recruitment efforts, but it always makes for a nice change to get off-site and progress your own projects. After taking Wednesday out with the other Marketing Managers for a team building away day, it was off to Manchester with Krystle, our Campaign Officer, on Thursday morning to meet with a Media Agency we've been working with on a rather ad-hoc basis to discuss our 2015 Winter Campaign.

The one that everyone wants
to win!

But I must confess, my trip to Manchester wasn't all work and no play. Straight after the meeting I, alongside other Marketing and Digital Marketing colleagues made our way over to the Palace Hotel in Manchester, in anticipation of this years Heist Awards, aka the Education Oscars. Anyone who works within the HE Sector, and Marketing specifically, will know just how much importance is placed on the coveted Heist awards. If a team was going to win an award that represented a shining example of best practice then this was the one. The entries are notoriously difficult to compile and so to get short-listed, for us, was a massive achievement in itself and one that we are very proud of.

At the @heistawards. Lets see if table 34 is lucky for @uniofbeds this evening pic.twitter.com/2aGoay73cZ
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) July 10, 2014

Getting in the carnival groove

This year's theme was 'carnival', and we were in for a very special treat with an array of singers and samba dancers performing on stage, much to my delight (the singer could be a potential winner for Eurovision in years to come I'm sure of it - which I adored). And, known as a team who likes to get stuck in and get involved, we donned our carnival masks and wore them with pride and we bopped away and boogied in our seats.

Out en masse: left to right:
David, Me, Sioned, Beverley
and Paul 

We were up for Best Undergraduate Prospectus, for our 2014 Publication. This category is one of the 'biggies' and so it was no surprise to see that we were up against a 'short-list' of 13 other UK Universities. Although we had a great evening, we sadly didn't get the gold this year. We were pipped to the post by the University of Leicester who had presented a great looking Undergraduate Prospectus focused on their finding of Richard III. Funnily enough, we lost out on the Best PG Prospectus title last year to the same University for the very same reason - I'm seeing a pattern here! So, if you see me by our new library development armed with a spade, you all know why!

Exclusive: our new PG15
prospectus

For the second week running, I only have two days in the office, but this time it's because I'm taking some much needed annual leave - a whole three days, to celebrate getting our Postgraduate 2015 Prospectus off to print. After a great team effort over the last few months, we've finally signed the publication off. It'll soon be available online, so keep checking back over the next few weeks for a first look at our brand-new prospectus. We'd love to know what you think! We're not entirely finished yet, as we still have the printer proofs to sign off, but the big bulk of the work is now complete, so I'm taking the time while the sun is still shining, as when I come back, everything will be firmly focused on Clearing.

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