It wouldn't be the first few months of the year without another awards ceremony to go to and last Thursday's was the CIM Marketing Excellence Awards. This one was particularly prestigious, with the absolute cream of the marketing world heading up to the Grosvenor on London's Park Lane for a truly glittering (and expensive!) ceremony. Again, we were up for our Digital Clearing Campaign 2012 but this time in the Education category.
Beverley (Deputy Director of Marketing), Hannah and myself all rendezvoused at Kings Cross before jumping in a taxi with plenty of time to spare. However, due to some horrific traffic around Marble Arch we were forced to watch the pre-arrival drinks via Twitter! Thankfully, we arrived just in time to take our seats for the meal and who should be standing next to our table but the evening's host... Hugh Dennis!
After polishing off the five course meal and someone else's wine (that's another story!) the ceremony began. This was extremely well produced, as you'd expect from a venue of this type and with over eighty tables of guests we knew our chance of treading the boards on stage was pretty slim. We were just happy to be picked as finalists and were only one of three universities at the event.
Scrabbling for the best wigs and hats between
photos became quite competitive...!
Our category was up third and we were also excited to see Hannah's nominees video she produced up there on the big screen. Unforunately, on this occassion we were not winners (breaking our two year silver category streak) and lost out to Kirklees College for their 'Get Real Results' campaign. This was outstanding work by them in sponsoring Huddersfield town football club and building a campaign around it.
Despite not getting a result on the night we really enjoyed ourselves (check out the pictures to the right!) and came away feeling that the work we're doing is definitely being recognised at a higher level than ever before. Maybe we'll be back next year and these aren't the last of the awards we've entered for 2013 either...
So you may remember that in a recent post Paul more or less coerced (!) me into this particular contribution to our blog, and that in a less recent post I mentioned that I had been working pretty hard on selecting a film company to work with, organising shoots and generally trying to coordinate around 40 hours of filming!
Well, after five months, some dreaded spreadsheeting, a few sleepness nights and lots of driving between campuses (plus a lot of fun!) the new University of Bedfordshire film is here!
In the spirit of letting the video do the talking, I should probably leave it here - but I won't, basically because we're really proud of it and (as you can probably tell from our blog) we like to talk about our work!
The newly open PG Centre
On a practical level, the arrival of our new Vice Chancellor, Bill Rammell, in September, necessitated an update to the official film, and the insights Youtube analytics now provides gave us a great business case to make what were some crucial changes, initially in terms of our creative brief and then ultimately in terms of the final product.
The University has come a really long way in the last five years, with application figures increasing dramatically over that period, and a huge capital investment in our facilities (like the PG Centre, left) - which was another factor that pushed me to go to Paul last autumn and ask for some budget for a new film. We have a lot to show off, and I felt like we owed it to the students that have already chosen us to represent their university in a bolder, more confident - dare I say prouder? - way. There is a lot of highly-politicised media criticism of modern universities, but I would challenge anyone who questions the value of the kind of practical, hands-on, industry-relevant education you can see our students experiencing in the video.
At this point I need to give a huge shout out to Spectrecom, who have been the best production company I've worked with, hands-down. From the camera crew and directors, to the creative and production team and the editors, they have been a pleasure to work with from start to...well, no project with Bedfordshire is ever quite finished (more on phase two of our collaboration with Spectrecom from Paul soon!) In all seriousness, they have been brilliant.
So what have I been filling my time with now the excitement of the film is over? Well, as Paul will testify, I have a new found obsession with tracking and analysis and am trialling some pretty exciting stuff in terms of tracking the success and ROI of the video. We're planning a staggered release of the film via our website and social channels over the next few weeks, so once the stats start coming in, I'll give Paul a break from the blog and pitch in with an update on all that.
This is a brilliant opportunity for anyone who is relatively new to working in digital marketing to learn lots of new skills and get stuck into a wide variety of increasingly exciting projects (more on those in a future post!) So, if you're interested in joining us, then we'd love to hear from you (details below):
Marketing, Admissions, Recruitment and Communications (MARC)
Grade 5, £20,764 per annum
37 hours per week
One year fixed term contract
We are looking for a Digital Marketing Assistant, with a passion for producing
content optimised for the users experience and for the effective
marketing of the University of Bedfordshire’s online presence. They
should be experienced in using social media channels, CMS, Photoshop and
HTML email software, and preferably have a strong understanding of
other web technologies.
The successful candidate will be self-motivated and be able to
prioritise work and meet deadlines. This post is based at the Luton
campus and the post holder will occasionally be required to visit the
other university campuses.
Closing date: 19th March 2013
Interview date: W/B 8th April 2013
As before, if you're interested in joining our award winning
team then it would be great to hear from you. To apply and for more
details just following the links above through to our website.
For an informal discussion about the role, please contact me on 01582 743987 or email: paul.fryer@beds.ac.uk
Choose your tab!
Those of you who have visited our website will have noticed that there is quite a big emphasis on search. Not only do we have the normal site search but also a filterable course finder which allows users to really zone in on what they are looking for.
Our search is run by Funnelback, a really powerful tool which allows us control over pretty much any aspect we want. Therefore, we felt it was time to use this to the maximum completely revamp our main search. Previously it returned results in a logical order, prioritised courses and also suggested any related search results. However, we've now taken it to the next level!
After some pretty lengthy development work we have now introduced a filterable search option whereby all results are cartegorised in different tabs with the amount of results displayed. The user can then hone in on exactly the type of results they were looking for (e.g. courses). This should mean no more of that scrolling through reams of text to find the specific query you want. That's it for the content of our site but we've also gone one step further...
Searching our YouTube video collection
definitely highlights the importance of
correctly tagging up our content
If you run a search now, you'll also notice that one of the tabs relates to video and this is the really exciting part... We host all of our video content on our YouTube channel and now these can also be searched directly from our site! As we are constantly updating with new videos this is a great way of feeding our rich media content into the site, and the presentation is such that it looks seamless. it also gives all of the vital information (thumbnail, duration, description and date added) so you're not just left with a title and a URL.
We're really happy with the work the team at Funnelback have done to get this up and running (thanks Sonia and Daniel) and the icing on the cake is how brilliantly it also works as part of our responsive design.
This project has definitely got us thinking about the other rich media solutions we can plug into our site search... Instagram anyone?!
Awards season begins! After a busy week finally locking the edit of our new corporate film, Hannah and I headed up to Bristol for the CIPR Local Public Services Awards. Joining us were Sarah, Lauren and Caroline representing the Postgraduate Marketing team. We were short listed in the 'Digital Excellence' category whilst they were hoping to bag the 'PR on a shoestring' trophy.
We set off from Luton at lunchtime for our trek out west, making sure that we stuck to the timings dictated by our pre-booked train tickets. It soon became apparent that wheelie suitcases were not a good idea through London (handle down, steps, handle up, steps...) but we arrived in good time nonetheless and headed to our rooms to get ready. The walk to the venue was only about 200 yards and I was very glad to be wearing comfortable shoes (unlike the girls) as again, the steps (and cobbled streets) were their worst enemy!
The venue was the absolutely brilliant 'At-Bristol'. A Science Museum definitely worth checking out, and we particularly enjoyed the interactive exhibits. My personal fave was one which measured the height of your jump from standing and played it back in slow motion. For some reason no-one else wanted a go...?!
We then headed upstairs for a lovely three course meal, some great conversation and, of course, plenty of wine. At around 9.30pm it was time for the awards to begin with our categories up fourth and sixth...
There were around six short listed entries for each category, with the runners up getting 'Highly Commended' and an overall winner. Our category came around before we knew it and being the only university there we felt the pressure on us immediately. Our entry had focussed on all of the work which we had done during Clearing in 2012 to help recruit to target, which was no mean feat in the current climate. After reading out all six nominees then came the announcement: "The University of Bedfordshire: Highly Commended!" - which to me is the same as silver... ;) Both Hannah and I were really pleased as between us this is the third silver award we've won in as many years (and still leaves us hungry to get that elusive gold award...)
Of our campaign they said:
"The university needed to recruit students and online is cost effective. The strategy was heavily focussed on search and social channels. The light-footedness of this campaign made it stand out. Day by day evaluation of metrics enabling modification was a clear indication of the benefits of new media. Clear and measurable objectives were set, assessed and achieved. The campaign added real value to student experiences as well as meeting the university’s objectives".
The big success story of the night though was our very own Postgraduate Marketing Team, who swept the board to beat their four competitors and WIN for 'PR on a shoestring!' A truly amazing effort ladies! This was totally deserved and was for their Postgraduate Life E-Zine of which the judges said: 'the objectives were strong and the evaluation showed they were more than met'.
(Left to right) Caroline Jacobi, Sarah Hampton, Paul Fryer,
Hannah Park, Lauren Hague
So there you have it, all in all a great night and we all came away from Bristol with something to show for it - two certificates and a trophy for the University of Bedfordshire! It's really great for all five of us to be formally recognised for the work we do and just getting short listed was an achievement. We were also happy that the three hour train journey was worth it, as it was a bit more heavy going on the way home :-& Now bring on the CIM Awards at the Grosvenor on 6th March...
It's upgrade time here at the University of Bedfordshire! This week we'll be upgrading both Matrix and Funnelback to the latest versions on our servers. This will give us lots of new features to experiment with and also should make all of our sites run a bit faster.
While this takes place we'll need to have a short content freeze which we've been communicating to staff for the last few weeks. We're also using this opportunity to make one particularly significant upgrade to our system - Edit+!
Currently, we have an excellent editing platform for staff to amend their own pages (Easy Edit Suite) but we're going to be one of the first of Squiz's clients to upgrade to the latest version and make web editing even easier for our staff! Some of these new features will include:
A much simpler way to add images and link to pages
No need to run an HTML clean up when copying text from Microsoft Word
editing can now be done on tablet devices (e.g. ipad)
Much more sophisticated table creating and editing tools
In the Digital Marketing Team we are constantly striving to offer as good a service as possible. So, for the past week, we've been running demo sessions to staff and the feedback has been great! Hopefully, all this will mean a much more efficient product for us to support as well as greatly improved webpages.
We'll also be making use of the brilliant Accessibility Auditor which detects any issues on the page (relevant to WCAG 2.0 A, AA, or AAA standards), the exact location of each detected issue, advice for how to correct it
and even automatic correction of the content. This will give our editors the
ability to help us achieve a compliant and accessible website.
So, exciting times and another example of us trying our best to keep up with the latest developments and engage our users. According to our account manager at Squiz they have our work order for this framed as the first client to roll this out on a large scale!
This week has been a bit of a learning experience for me, so I thought I'd share my findings with you. As mentioned in a previous post by Hannah she's been working flat out on a new University film with our chosen agency Spectrecom. We received the first edit of this last week and are both very excited by how it's all looking. Early on, we decided that using a music track would really improve the overall quality and production values and here's where my input came in. I had some suggestions on the use of music and thought we easily secure usage rights through one of my connections. How naive I was...
I won't mention here the track we're hoping to get clearance to use (in case we don't get it!) but thought I'd go through our process of securing a music synchronization licence.
To licence a commercial track, you have to licence two separate parts:
1. a copyright in the actual sound recording (to use that exact rendition of it)
2. a separate copyright in the musical and lyrical composition (if you
were wanting to do a cover version this would be all you need)
It seems the process is completely unregulated, so the record company can set the price for these at whatever they choose (anything from free, to tens of thousands of pounds) depending on usage.
So firstly, I got in contact with the band, who put me in contact with their management. They said we could have the rights to use the actual sound recording and were happy to match whatever price we agreed with the record label. So far so good...
None shall pass!
However, the record label was a lot more complicated. After being passed around about twenty different contacts we eventually got in touch with the relevant person and are in the process of some lengthy negotiations on price and usage.
The good thing is we're clear on our budget and the usage we want (the length of the licence, screenings at open days, embedding on our website and Facebook page and hosting on our YouTube channel). The latter of these is the sticking point as YouTube is a notoriously difficult thing to regulate and publishers know this.
What this also shows is that artists have very little or no control over where their music is used. They also have no control over how much they would like to charge for it! I guess this is something you sign away once the record label signs you and pays to produce your album.
At the moment we're waiting to hear if they're happy with our latest offer - we really hope they are as we'd love to use the track. Watch this space for a future post from Hannah with the full video (if we get the rights to embed it on blogs!)
This blog will be updated fortnightly (every other Monday) with my views on the latest trends in web, social media and video. I'll also be giving details of projects I have been working on within Higer Education marketing.
