Human Geography (Barcelona)

End client: University of Hull
Commissioning agency: Net Natives Ltd
Campaign: Human Geography (Barcelona)

Authenticity is an important part of any student recruitment marketing strategy, and getting peer to peer endorsements from existing students (or alumni) is a vital part of building trust with potential applicants.

We’re now seeing more and more Higher Education marketing content coming from official institute channels that reflects this, with user generated content (UGC), campus tours and virtual open days all being filmed in a more ‘reactive’ approach and within a more mobile-accessible format.

However, quite often the UGC creator may not have a strong understanding of the communication techniques needed to maintain sustained engagement, or, how to build a cohesive narrative; which unfortunately means that viewer engagement can often drop off quite quickly.

On the flip-side – a more traditional approach to a student recruitment strategy (normally one created via a Higher Education marketing agency) would be to produce a video with much higher production values, and crafted around a strong creative concept. It is true to say that this would offer a better chance of retaining engagement, however, it would face an uphill battle to build the trust from its audience of potential students, as this age range tends to naturally be a little wary of anything with too much of a corporate sheen to it.

So, is there a way to combine the best of both? Authenticity with strong aesthetic values? Cohesive narration that builds trust and sustains engagement?

Well, we think that yes, there is a way.

In this student recruitment video that we created for University of Hull, we combined UGC footage shot by undergraduates, with complementary broadcast-quality footage shot by our video production crew. By keeping our film crew small and mobile it meant that the team were able to accompany and build good relationships with the undergraduates, allowing for a very natural ‘fly-on the wall’ style to develop. This film was part of a suite of student recruitment videos completed for University of Hull’s, Geology department.