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Award winning Heroes campaign helps boost student enrolments by 30%

Dunstable College’s Heroes recruitment campaign has won the Silver award for the “14-19 campaign”, at the National College Marketing Network FE First Marketing Excellence awards on Monday 23^rd November at the Hilton in Coventry.  This national award is strong recognition for the campaign that has largely contributed to the 30% increase in full-time age 16-19 student numbers at the College.

A 30% increase in full-time 16-19 students is an enormous achievement for the College, and shows how the College is growing and improving each year.  With success rates also increasing and matching those of local rivals, the College is going from strength to strength as we enter a new era with the College becoming Central Bedfordshire College.

The concept for the campaign was devised in-house by the College’s Marketing Team consisting of Liz Leeson, Marketing and Communications Manager; Sarah Babb, Marketing Officer – Schools and Employers, and Frances Murphy, Marketing Officer.  Using existing Dunstable College students as the models, the campaign was also brought to life by ex-students through the photography of Martin Bou Mansoor, Mankind Photography; Sam Cranwell, Provide Design; and West End make-up artist Jade Patterson.  All of the previous students have gone on to establish their own successful businesses within the region, highlighting the College’s strong progression and success of its students, adding a new dimension to the campaign.

In order to select the students for the campaign, three casting sessions were held across the two main campuses. The number of students wanting to be involved exceeded expectations and selecting the final nine was a difficult choice. In order to give the campaign more impact the concept was kept to a strictly need-to-know basis, even the students selected had no idea how their images would be used. Each student was photographed on a rota to ensure that none of the students actually met, or saw the outfits / poses of other students until the campaign was launched.

Martin Bou Mansour, of Mankind Photography, comments, “We cast real students with no modeling experience. I was so impressed with their performances, especially when you consider that they did not know anything about the theme we were using.”

Dunstable College’s Marketing Team comments, “With this campaign we are aiming to redefine how public sector organisations can reposition themselves in the consumer’s mind. The concept behind the Heroes campaign is to reach out to our main target market of young people aged 16+ in a language that is familiar, challenging, fun and ambitious, with a message that is relevant to their aspirations”.

The multi-channel campaign includes a website, enabling visitors to click on their favourite hero and learn all about them, radio, bus, press, poster and lamp-post advertising and liveried vehicles. The campaign has been utilised to launch a new heroes brand for the college, which is being used across the board on all internal and external communications.

Marketing and Communications Manager, Liz Leeson, commented “we are very proud to win a national award for this campaign.  When we first came up with the idea we couldn’t have predicted how popular it would become.  Whilst we received many compliments for the campaign the true test was student enrolments, and obviously with the 30% increase in full-time students the campaign has proven to be very successful”.