Digital first clearing

How many blogs in the HE bloggershere will, over the next few weeks be about clearing? Answer – Probably a lot.

So why move away from what everyone is talking about, let’s add to that with this week’s blog, by me, on clearing.

In the digital team we are definitely getting clearing ready.

The website has been live for two months, and is constantly evolving as we climb further up the rankings in various league tables and awards. The site this this year also boasts a wonderfully enhanced section on our success stories. Here we highlight those alumni who used clearing as an option to choose a university, who perhaps without the clearing process may have taken a different path.

They all break down that stigma that going through clearing means you weren’t good enough to get the place you wanted. We know that this wasn’t really ever the case though, and now more than ever, as behaviours change applicants are shopping around and leaving it later to apply to university. Some of the brightest are looking for the best deal on a degree course. Clearing worked for the students we feature here though, and who’s laughing now hey? The system... no, the students, because most of them are earning more than me!

Another new addition to the clearing site this year is the way we capture data. Introducing Wistia, the video players with inbuilt data capture. Or as they refer to themselves, 'your friendly neighbourhood video platform', whatever that means. We still have our traditional call back form and click to call options to capture leads, but this year the full-length version of our epic clearing video can only be viewed once you have entered your email address. Clever huh?

A beautiful, jam packed site is wonderful, but we need to get users to the site to view all these wonderful messages.

Well the latest figures from Google show that clicks on ads for education grew by 37% last year.

There was a steady 7% growth on users searching for ‘clearing’ on mobile during the first few hours of A-level results day. With this in mind we will be running some very bespoke mobile adwords campaigns, geo-targeted and optimised minute by minute on the morning of the big day.

Now I can’t reveal my hand on this too much, but it has got us in the office all hot and bothered at the thought. So over all there is a lot going on to enhance our clearing messaging and experience for 2017.

I’m more excited about it all than Donald Trump is when ever he hears Kim Jong-un mentioned at a dinner party.

Check out www.beds.ac.uk/clearing more all the latest on our 2017 campaign.

One year on and I’m still here!

So this week it’s my turn to write the blog. It conveniently coincides with my one year work anniversary. That’s right, I’ve been back at the University for one whole year! I can’t believe it either – where has the time gone?

How did I celebrate my work anniversary? Covering graduations of course! Last year I had been on the job for just over a week and I quickly had to get to grips with live tweeting and getting the message out to our local press contacts that the ceremonies were happening. I’ve now become a bit of a pro at the old live tweeting, which has saved me time and a whole lot of stress!

Last year may have been a baptism of fire, but it meant that this year, I knew what to expect and I was able to plan media activities and tweeting in advance. As a result, the engagement from @uobnews went through the roof. I think James Bay might have had something to do with that – check out what he had to say about receiving an honorary award.

And our hard work on promoting Graduations has paid off. Our efforts on 2016’s campaign have earned us a spot on the shortlist of this year’s CIPR PRide Awards. For those of you who don’t know, these awards celebrate the achievements of Public Relations professionals from across the country, working in a huge range of sectors.

We made it onto the shortlist of the Best Low Budget Campaign, which is extremely pleasing, seeing as our only expense for Graduations is photography, although we do pay for it with lack of sleep and frayed nerves sometimes.

So proud to been shortlisted for Outstanding In-House PR Team #PRideAwards @CJacobi16 @claudia_mayr1 https://t.co/E9UkcVFnl4

— UoB Press Office (@uobnews) July 21, 2017

I am over the moon with this nomination on a personal level as I worked hard on this campaign, having only been in the job for a matter of days, with the support of my fabulous colleagues of course. Their guidance was essential in helping me pull it off and at least give the illusion that I knew what I was doing!

We also made the shortlist for the Best In-House PR Team award, which is amazing news. Last year we were a team of two and a half people. This year, we were only two. We may be small, but my God we are mighty. To have our efforts acknowledged by our PR peers is an amazing feeling, even if we don’t win.

The awards ceremony takes place at the end of September – hopefully I will have a positive update for you then!

#PRideATC Outstanding In-House PR Team shortlist is @EastNorfolk @uobnews #PRideAwards pic.twitter.com/8wBYrPSnRC

— CIPR Awards (@CIPR_Awards) July 21, 2017

There's always more than one reason to celebrate

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Trying to wrap everything up
is no small task!

It feels like an age since my last blog post, and now it's finally come around to 'my turn', it's already somehow become my last one - at least for a while anyway. That's right, because, in a matter of weeks (4 to be precise) I'll be taking some time away from Marketing HQ to have a baby. So, for my first, and last post in a while, I've got quite a bit of ground to cover - so please excuse the slightly self indulgent theme this week, but I wanted to take the time to reflect on the many great initiatives going live, and there's also been quite a few causes for us to celebrate recently which I wanted to share with you...

Video content strategy
For any regular readers of this blog, I'm sure you'll have come across me talking at lengths about the need for good quality video content. And that's exactly what we've been investing in this cycle. Following on from the launch of our Milton Keynes and Bedford location videos earlier in the year, we've been working really hard over the last nine months (yes it really does take that long to produce great content!) to implement my video content strategy - which is basically, a more focused and strategic way to generate, and seed out meaningful content to support recruitment (or at least I hope!).

Take a look at our big brand 'Hero' content

After enlisting the help of Clearhead Media, our School of Performing Arts, and two current dance and acting students - Harry and Donatella, we were all set to bring the strategy and our unique marketing proposition to life!

I'm really proud of the videos - if you haven't yet seen them, be sure to give them a watch - and keep a look out in August at a cinema near you, as we go live with our national campaign - and a particularly rare but exciting opportunity to get our brand 'out there'.

10 year work anniversary

That's a whole 1/3 of my life!

Not only have we been celebrating seeing nine months of hard work finally come to fruition, with the launch of the video strategy and the clearing campaign, but I've been celebrating my very own personal landmark moment this month - after reaching my 10 year work anniversary. As I start to slowly but surely 'wind down' and begin the most epic of hand overs to the team, it's been great to reflect on just how much I've accomplished during my time at Beds, and just how far we've come as a team since I started way back in 2007.

Heist Awards
And if that wasn't enough of a reason to celebrate, I was more than delighted to see that we'd been short-listed for not one but two Heist Awards this year! Now I have definitely mentioned these awards countless times over the years within this blog; after all, it's the 'Oscars of the HE Marketing world' where the creme de la creme are nationally recognised - and so it's always something we aspire to achieve. Beverley and I worked really hard on two entries this year: Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative, and Marketing Team of the Year - very much focused on my marketing mantra and narrative of being small but mighty. And all the hard work definitely paid off!

The Silver for The Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment goes to BOTH @lborouniversity and @uniofbeds!! Well done all!! #Heist2017

— Heist Awards (@heistawards) July 13, 2017

Celebrating our big win on stage

To be short-listed was flattering enough, but to actually scoop a Silver in one of the most competitive categories of the night for our 2016 Clearing campaign was a completely out of this world experience; beating off some seriously stiff competition from the sector.

The comments from the judges: ''The University of Bedfordshire team should be praised for their hardworking approach to a challenging situation in an increasingly competitive market. They should be immensely proud of the significant successes that have been achieved by this campaign.''

We made the nom's list - woo!

CIPRide Awards
To really top off our week, we've just found out today that we have been short-listed for another two awards - this time it's the CIPRide Awards within the Anglia, Thames and Chiltern region. We've made the short-list for Best Integrated Campaign, and Best Education Communications Campaign for our sterling work on Clearing last year - and not wanting to be greedy, but I do secretly hope that we win - we've been the current Gold title holders for Best Integrated Campaign for the last two years - so the hat trick really would be the icing in the cake. And our Communications team are also bouncing around the office after scooping two short-lists themselves - Best Low Budget Campaign, and Outstanding In-house PR Team. We have taken the Pride awards by storm in our bid to showcase our work as sector leading - so keep everything crossed for us as we await the big awards dinner in September.

A big pat on the back for the @uniofbeds Marketing team who've been short-listed for two @CIPR_Awards - time to celebrate 🤩🎉 #PRideAwards

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) July 21, 2017

It's not goodbye, it's see you soon!

If in doubt, email
marketinginfo@beds.ac.uk

I'll be spending the last few weeks beavering away; trying to implement as much of the campaign work as possible, to alleviate the pressure of the team once I've gone - after all, it's no easy task to drive the clearing campaign forward, and to keep all the other plates spinning. So please bear with the team over the coming weeks and months! We are indeed small. We are indeed mighty, but we also only have a finite number of hours in the day :-)

There's lots of exciting initiatives still to come as the team launches into the 2018 annual campaign, and they start work on the 2019 suite of prospectuses - so stay tuned for more details on this in the not too distant future. I'll be keeping a look out for all this exciting work going live myself and can't wait to see the next phase of creative ideas coming to the fore.

Really guys - check the folder!

And for my team members reading this - if in doubt, if in despair, just refer to the nice big black folder I've put together - it really is all in there! Promise!

It’s the red carpet lifestyle for the press team

Glamorous lifestyles aren’t usually words you’d associate with the University of Bedfordshire press team but following a couple of months of hard slog we were allowed out of the office to do a bit of socialising.

Caroline our Communications Officer and I went along to the cast and crew screening of Winterlong in London at the beautiful Regent Street Cinema. We’ve been talking about it for so long it was amazing to finally get a chance to see the film in its entirety.

Winterlong was written and directed by Senior Lecturer in Media Production David Jackson. It gave the opportunity for students and staff from the School of Media and Performance to get first-hand experience of what it is really like to make a feature film.

We all loved it; it was hard to believe this full length feature film starring Game of Thrones actor Francis Magee, Smack the Pony actress Doon Mackichan and Coronation Street actor Ian Puleston-Davies had started life as a Student Experience Project.

‘Steps’ projects were a way for students make changes to and enhance their experience at Bedfordshire. Students provided the ideas, knowledge and leadership while the University provided the financial backing and guidance to turn ideas into reality.

It was great to see the film all badged up as a University of Bedfordshire production with a long list of thanks to all the staff who had helped it get this far. There were more than a few tears shed when credits rolled and the auditorium erupted with a standing ovation.

We wish all the cast and crew of Winterlong the best of luck in getting into a major international film festival and look forward to seeing it in a cinema very soon.

Unveiling our new strategic plan

Last week began with our buzzing annual staff conference. The first keynote of the day was from our own Vice Chancellor who was there to launch the University’s new strategic plan for the next three years.

This was a particularly satisfying moment for the Internal Communications team who have been busy over the last few weeks finalising all of the launch communications, including coordinating the design and production of the final strategic plan document and all of the supporting content for our staff intranet.

However, the pièce de résistance of the campaign was a video involving a variety of staff to help explain the essence of our plan and encourage them to get on board.

Our new video stars, who kindly agreed to be filmed on two of the hottest days of the year so far no less, can be seen here: https://youtu.be/ToQWUIEjlvU. I was overwhelmed by how many people were willing to be involved (especially considering the humidity!). Personally being in front of the camera is my own worst nightmare, so I expected a lot more resistance (and the need to employ serious persuasion tactics), but everyone seemed such naturals in front of the camera and took it in their stride.

Why a video?

No matter how good the plan is though, it’s never going to be a success unless our staff buy into it and support it. That’s why we wanted to create a video that aimed to bring to life the mission and vision of the University over the next three years in an inspiring and engaging way.  The video wasn’t supposed to explain the plan in its entirety (we might have had a feature-length film on our hands if that was the case) but be a vehicle for generating excitement for what we want to achieve in the next three years.  Plus by getting so many staff involved, we hoped to create that sense of staff being part of a team, or being part of a family (cue emotional music).

 

Staff will be the judge of whether we achieved that, but hopefully they recognised a few familiar faces, that it provided a few chuckles and that perhaps it got them intrigued to read more about the plan.

Why a Z card?

We all know that Strategic Plans are probably not everyone’s idea of a good read, and we are all extremely time poor, however we were keen to ensure that staff were clear on our direction of travel, even if they hadn’t read the entire plan. That’s why we also created a nifty pocket-size z card version of the strategic plan providing a bite-size summary of the key goals and measures. Everyone will get their personal copy, plus staff can read the strategic plan in full here.

We’re not complacent though, and always looking for feedback to ensure that we continue to improve communications to staff. If you have any feedback that you would like to share then please email internalcommunications@beds.ac.uk.