Newsletter #49: Newcastle University dedicates a blog to belonging; Facebook thinks playdates are a marketing opportunity; Uni of Michigan knows a good speech
✏️ From the Education Marketer desk
Most Clicked #2: I discuss with Nathan, Matt and special guest Lydia Horstman, Middlesex University’s approach to student-to-student marketing and why Twitter needs to up its promotional game. Watch
[Webinar] The student is now the marketer: The seven steps to creating a student-to-student marketing strategy that sticks. Register
📰 HE news
Pandemic grade inflation and higher than usual deferrals is expected to drive fierce competition for high tariff places this year. If you’re a medium tariff uni, expect late apps and to save a lot of student futures in Clearing 2022. It’s not a great year to be starting out in medicine either - last cycle some medical schools were offering students £10,000 (and free accommodation!) to defer their entry, so expect some broken hearts and increased demand for courses allied to health professions. Dr Rohan Agarwal, founder of UniAdmissions says: “When there is a pandemic, everyone wants to be a doctor,” but I’m not so sure. By that logic, having just experienced the longest period of isolation and introspection in living memory, Humanities should be booming too. Read
💻 Digital marketing news
“Is there a way to leverage playdates to drive word of hand / growth amongst kids?” That’s just one “gem” to have crawled from Facebook’s bottomless lair. Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, has shared accounts of the company withholding research that Instagram is “harmful for teenage girls” and that it removed various safeties against hateful content, causing people to spend more time on the platform. Add in multiple infringements with personal data, a declining youth audience, soaring ad prices (up 33% on Dec 2019!) and a seemingly mute moral compass - and you find yourself at a crossroads. Now may be a good time to review your relationship with Facebook before your audience does it for you. NY Times Breakdown | Haugen’s 60 Minutes Interview
If you’re looking to diversify ad spend post Facebook’s blackout - TikTok could be a good shout. New research shows that the app has the most engaged ads of any social platform. 32% of users said that “after watching a brand video they researched what they saw”, plus 52% said that ads on the platform were “fun and engaging”. Unbelievable, really. When’s the last time someone said your display ad was fun? The app’s just shared a bunch of new “sound partners” too, so more licensed tracks and chances to ride the wave of the world’s most powerful algorithm. Read
Atari’s founder has launched an NFT collection, featuring playable virtual arcade cabinets. Out on the fringes, but interesting to see brands playing with the building blocks of web3 and the word “metaverse” starting to make it into conference keynotes. There seems to be a winning pattern emerging too - the most successful NFT projects are launching off the back of emotional attachment or strong communities. Prediction: We’ll see a lot of long-undervalued social media managers entering this space (they have the community management skills!) but the big winners of the NFT boom will be those in the games industry. Pokémon-like Axie Infinity uses NFTs to power its “play to earn” mechanics and has just won $150 million in funding, as well as support from Samsung and Ubisoft. If your uni has gaming in its portfolio, there’s a content marketing opportunity on web3 games development. The topic is hot and it’s yet to be fully tapped. Atari | Axie Infinity
🏫 What unis are doing
Slippery Rock University (really?) has launched a campaign where its president will get inked if 75% of its students prove COVID-19 vaccination. The tattoo’s final design will be decided “by competition” (yikes!) and is not the only incentive on offer. Free campus parking and a year’s paid tuition are also on the cards. The promo video is a hidden treat - it looks like it was shot on an iPhone 6, but has a charm that would be impossible to replicate at a UK uni. Look
Newcastle University has a blog dedicated to belonging on campus. How cool is that? It leads with a piece on COVID-19 (obviously) but beneath is an extensive library of staff and student posts covering topics from applying to fitting in on campus. It even has a category for parents. Bread and butter stuff, but you’ll be hard pushed to find a uni that goes further. Look
University of Michigan has written the new playbook on what to do with all your archived graduation speeches and b-roll footage. Its video “The Leaders the World Needs Now” takes its best footage of its campus community and overlays it with 2021 convocation (welcome) speeches. The result is surprisingly effective and automatically feels more authentic than paying a voiceover artist. Look
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“A lot of my friends in Cyprus do not want to come to university here [the UK] because of tuition fees being so high because of Brexit and now there is no support from the EU.” Students on how they perceive the UK post-Brexit (and the country’s 50% drop in EU numbers.) Read
👾 Culture shock
“The most boring video ever made” (an MS Word tutorial from 1989) takes a dark turn at 54:12. Look
An NFT startup was recently selling “fantasy equity” in other startups without their permission. It closed just a day into trading. Read
