Reaching Students – At University & College (On Campus)…
After discussing off-campus activity in the last edition of the Reaching Students Guide, we now turn our attention to on campus. We will guide you through the differences between on and off campus, the type of activity your brand should be looking to run, how to increase engagement and a snapshot of the best ways to utilise the paid for promotional space…
Where to go…
How Do We Get On Campus?
It may seem quite easy to get onto campus, but this is definitely not the case. universities are private spaces and entering onto campus without permission will likely cause issues for you or your brand. Locations planning is key and goes hand in hand with working with the specific university locations to organise promotional space on campus. It is always good at this starting point to investigate if your campaign really does need to be on campus, permissions can cost £500 – £1000 per day, so if your campaign can save costs by being off campus, the budget could easily be used on more activity.
Where On Campus Should We Be?
Generally, all activity will be centred around the universities student union, with either activity inside the building or placed outside in the larger open spaces on campus. Whether inside or outside, it does really depend on the style, size of your promotion and event stand you are looking to use. If a small counter stand and a pop-up will suffice, you can easily fit inside the student union and escape the temperamental British weather. That said if you are planning a larger scale roadshow or tour which is utilising a larger product sampling trailer or experiential vehicle, then it will be more likely that your promotion will be placed into a high footfall location outside (but usually still close to) the university union building.
What to do…
If you are paying for permissions to be on campus, you need to ensure that they are getting fully utilised! This is the time we start to look at experiential roadshows and campaigns, where your brand really takes time and engages the student audiences. Use a fully branded event stand or experiential vehicle that stands out and truly makes use of the space on campus that you have paid for. Then, however your stand has been styled ensure you engage the students and give them the opportunity to get involved. Some ideas include giving away cooked samples, demonstrating your product live on campus, creating fun interactive games, collecting data, but most importantly giving students a brand experience that they can share with their peers.
When to do it…
Traditionally brands try to jump in front of students during Fresher’s week and have activity on campus during the annual Fresher’s Fair event. This can be an incredibly busy time on campus with brands all clutching for the student’s attention. Our advice would be to avoid these times, wait until it dies down and your brand can then stand alone on campus – importantly being the centre of attention! It is a full academic year and a long three years at university, so there will definitely be time and opportunities to get your brand in front of students in a much more focused way rather than during a very chaotic period.
Handy hint…
“Remember we can target the university to make sure that you are reaching the right type of students and have chosen the right campus to be on. So for example if your product specifically targets a male or a female audience, we can research the universities that have the highest population of the selected gender.”
