United in Manchester

The big awards event for anyone working in higher education marketing are the Heist awards. This year the Renaissance hotel in Manchester was to play host to these on 11th July. We were extremely chuffed to be shortlisted in two categories: 'Best Website' and 'Best use of Digital/Social Media'. Whilst our colleagues in the Marketing team were shortlisted for 'Best Postgraduate Prospectus' and Learning Resources for 'Best Internal Communications Campaign'.

After a busy morning finalising the visuals for our clearing campaign (more on that in another post) off we trekked to Manchester in search of fortune and glory... We arrived in plenty of time and were in great spirits thanks in part to the wonderful weather. After checking into our hotel and enjoying a pre-awards drink, off we walked past the Arndale Centre (reminding us of Luton!) to the venue.

The theme of this year's ceremony was 'A Night at the Movies' meaning that there were lots of clapperboards and cardboard cutouts of film stars everywhere - Darth Vadar being a particular favourite of the group! We took our seats, in an admittedly very crowded room, to enjoy a great three course meal (the dessert was sickly to the extreme - even the spoon was chocolate!) Then it was time for the awards to begin and to welcome our celebrity host Meera Syal...

Team 'University of Bedfordshire'
proudly displaying our awards
The Marketing team were up fifth for 'Best Postgraduate Prospectus' in a particularly competitive category of nine nominees. Unfortunately for them they weren't selected for a prize on this occasion but this did not dampen their spirits. It also gave them that added impetus to come back bigger and better next year.

The next category we were up for was 'Best use of Digital/Social Media' where we had entered our already award winning Digital Clearing Campaign from 2012. This was a massive category of fourteen nominees and again we came away empty handed - it was all down the the final two categories...

The tenth category was the big one for us: 'Best Website' this being a particularly big accolade as there isn't a university in the land/world without one! There was to be no bronze in this category, instead just two highly commended. As these were announced I was getting more and more nervous, and then it happened:

Needless to say I was over the moon punching the air as we skipped up to the stage! This is a truly remarkable achievement at such an event as this and will definitely help give us the collateral we need internally to reassure people we are definitely delivering cutting edge work. That was me smiling for the rest of the evening!

Winners! I didn't let our award out of
my sight for the next 48 hours...!
Up twelfth were Learning Resources who received a very impressive bronze award in the 'Best Internal Communications Campaign' category for their promotion of Discover. This was again, much deserved and topped off what was already a very enjoyable night.

The next morning we surfaced for breakfast in a continuation of our chirpy mood (despite the lack of sleep). We were really pleased to find that The Complete University guide had written an article on our successes from the night before. They summed up our website as 'An intelligent use of analytics contributed to a well presented and engaging site with good functionality giving a good sense of the university'.  A long journey home after very little sleep has never felt such plain sailing. Check out the short video of our great night out below:

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