Unions face digital dilema

Digital marketing is changing the student marketing arena. For many in the student market it offers new opportunities and solutions. For some it actually poses a threat.

Students’ unions could suffer as a result of digital media growth.

In the past, unions have acted as gatekeepers on campus, controlling to some extent the marketing activity that takes place and profiting from relationships with agencies and brands. They still do.

But now, these agencies and brands have new opportunities to find and talk to students without interference…or payment.

Although there will always be those that want to visit campus and promote – giveaways, freshers fairs, leafleting and sampling – others are likely to become less interested in union marketing now they have the luxury of ‘options’.

There have been some uneasy relationships between unions and marketers in the past. Even those intent on making trusted and fair deals with unions have sometimes found it hard.

Admittedly there have been some utter sharks: unions have been shafted in the past by fly-by-night firms; have been patronised by those who have assumed they aren’t marketing-savvy; and have been infuriated by those who market on their doorstep without permission.

But there are also a number of ‘good guys’ out there whose only crime is that they wish to build profitable businesses promoting students’ union media channels.

These firms are the ones more unions should embrace readily if they wish to continue to profit from student marketing. These are the ones who are going out every day talking to big clients and budget holders about investing in students’ union media at a time when others are selling the alternative.

Many of these firms have new ideas about how they can make students’ union marketing assets more appealing and relevant to marketers in this new era.

Unions, to give some context, do not exist to facilitate conversations between students and advertisers. They exist to support students and they are run ‘not-for-profit’. Which explains why they can sometimes be passive and disinterested when approached with a campaign.

But the fact is – most of them at least – really need revenue. And there is revenue to be made from digital marketing through unions.

I hope unions work more enthusiastically with? decent partners in 2007. Or else I fear their slice of student marketing spend is about to get smaller.

It was clear to me when I discussed digital media with union marketers at AMSU‘s student marketing conference last year that unions would struggle to mobilise independently of agencies and produce anything that makes maximum use of their assets.

This is a personal observation by me, Luke Mitchell, on the impact of digital on students’ union marketing.I talk here in a general manner about unions: I realise not every union is the same in its attitude and approach. I should also point out that I have no affiliation with either the ‘good guys’ or the ‘baddies’ on the agency front, nor anything to gain from encouraging collaboration. It’s an objective piece on a subject that interests me.

I’d love to read some other viewpoints – please use the comment? boxes below.

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