Posted on May 10, 2009 by Luke

In April, Haymarket staged their annual student marketing conference. Here I have given a condensed report of what each speaker said. This post is in two parts. Below concerns the speeches of David Crocker (First TransPeninne), Louise Maher (Rough Guides), Marie Ashton (NUS) and Joanna Bowery (Exeter Students’ Guild). In a separate post I have reported on other speakers.

David Crocker from First TransPennine rail company took a pragmatic view that, although his firm’s network runs through an impressive number of university cities, students were unlikely to get excited about train travel and therefore he focused on quality deals rather than trying to build a sexy brand. They created a half price student ticket and marketed it through a mix of students’ union and online activity. Their key learnings were: freshers fairs are good for short term profile but expensive and a “logistical nightmare to organise”; gimmicky freebies were warmly received and started a conversation, but had dubious long term value; posters in unions were hard to evaluate; a student newspaper ad campaign was too expensive for them; union websites gave them visibility but poor clickthrough; online competitions were well received and allowed them to build a database; Facebook and MSN Hotmail advertising brought good returns; students have short memories – the campaign had an affect, but it quickly wore off.

Louise Maher from Rough Guides simply explained how their student brand manager scheme (‘Student Brand Navigators’) is structured. This included how they recruit student staff, how they manage them and the results they achieve. The overarching message was that to succeed with brand managers you need to take a long term view. By continually testing and improving you can eventually find out how this form of student marketing can work most effectively for you. Key conclusions they have made so far are: set clear objectives for campaign work – keep it targeted and integrated; teach brand managers to respect the brand; think about marketing partners; create innovative and useful marketing materials for the brand managers to use; meet the brand managers as often as you can.

Marie Ashton of NUS and Joanna Bowery of Exeter Students’ Guild teamed up to give a useful reality-check on the subject of on-campus marketing and the business interests of NUS and its member unions. In short summary, the message was that while unions will assist with your marketing campaign and should be the first point of contact for any planned campus activity, their bigger concern is the welfare and representation of their students. Similarly NUS will engage with commercial partners when there is acute relevance to its mission – for example, it is now working with HSBC on a funded research project following the bank’s brush with a student boycott last year – however it exists to serve students’ unions, not provide a gateway for student marketers. Warning was also given of the fact that each union is unique and democratically run by its students, meaning there are many companies that cannot market on certain campuses due to local or national boycotts (Nestle, Coke and the National Blood Service were mentioned).

Finally Catherine Downes of London Metropolitan University and Tony Smith of Endsleigh took part in a panel discussion which gave their experiences and perspectives. Catherine talked about the difficult climate for university marketers and getting value out of relatively small budgets. London Met are investing a lot in digital activity, including You Tube videos and MySpace profiles, but there remains a question on how to measure results. Tony spoke about the challenge Endsleigh has faced maintaining itself as a popular student choice since closing all its campus branches and focusing on the internet. Their online work includes engaging people in forums to address queries about insurance; his advice was to be transparent at all times, embrace critics and encourage dialogue.