student marketing

6 facts that will help employers build better relationships with Millenials

Written by Tam Salih, Communications Consultant at Tonic

Last Thursday I attended 2015’s first Breakfast News event. And having been a regular at past BNs, it was great to see such a strong turnout for the year’s first event.

With a new venue, new sponsors and even a new hashtag, it felt different. Three things remained true to the Breakfast News brand, however: the excellent networking; fantastic content; and great speakers – oh, and the food of course!

It was great to have the Rt. Hon David Blunkett with us too, who’s quite frankly nothing short of an inspiration – having done so much for UK education; never letting anything stand in his way.

The theme for this event was a particularly interesting one: “How can employers begin to understand the very different expectations of students today, and begin to create a more personal and more meaningful connection?”

What did we learn? Here are six facts to consider:

Millennials want to know how brands will make a difference to their lives. They crave meaning and purpose and it’s the job of employers to match what they’re able to offer with those needs.

By understanding the differences in behaviours between age groups better, employers can market to them more effectively – ultimately, you’ll hire more of the right people.

Millennials are truly global. These are our future world leaders, they want their opinions to matter and their voices to be heard.

There are fewer young people so it’s even more important for employers to make sure they build better relationships with them. This can only be achieved by providing inspiring leadership and a platform to nurture and empower talented individuals.

Delivering anything less than an amazing candidate experience will damage your reputation.

Social Mobility is hugely important but it’s not an issue for employers to tackle alone; education, government and wider society all have a vested interest.

These really are the expectations of the younger generations today. They have the in-demand skills that you need, and they’re fully aware of this. They’re not afraid to bargain or keep their options open.

The question for me is, how will employers respond in a long-term and meaningful manner? To paraphrase a great man, “Ask not what young people can do for you, rather what you can do for young people.”

http://www.tonic-agency.com

Hide and Tweet!

Last year, Mars created a world-first in student engagement with its magical tweet-activated vending machine. This year it took things to a whole other level with Mars Hide and Tweet.

TweetShop was creative, massively effective and totally ground-breaking (in the recruitment world at least). Over 21 days, it went out to eight campuses and nearly 2,000 people grabbed the chance to tweet for treats.

This year Mars wanted to increase that reach but budget meant we couldn’t transport TweetShop to more locations. So we created an online hide and seek game using Google Maps technology.

#MarsHideAndTweet happened in two distinct phases. First, a week-long online competition that was open to universities across the UK. We hid the TweetShop in five different European cities on our custom map over a period of five days. And every day students raced to hunt it down following a series of cryptic clues that were tweeted over the course of the day.

We went out onto 9 campuses to build excitement face-to-face with students and promote the competition with motion-sensitive plasma TV screens that projected a series of different messages as people walked past them. In the week running up to the competition we began sparking twitter conversations with a series of innovative vines.

Emails, posters and flyers, as well as posts to the Marsgradsuk Facebook and Twitter pages, were used to explain what #MarsHideAndTweet was all about and to promote the competition.

Did it work? Absolutely.

More than 350 people registered to play. And within minutes of the competition going live on Monday 3rd February the guesses began coming in, even before the first clue had been tweeted. The race was on because the first person each day to find and tweet TweetShop’s location to @marsgradsuk won a free weekend break for two people to that day’s city.
A dedicated team responded to those guesses with hundreds of personal tweets back to players. The conversations and the excitement grew and grew.

On top of daily competitions there was the main event, the opportunity for one university to win TweetShop, fully-loaded with Mars freebies, for its campus for a week.

The winner would be the university whose students made the most tweets over the course of the week. The competition was fierce and so close that in the end there was nothing between Coventry and Reading so a decision was made to send TweetShop out to both universities. Win, win – in true Mars make it mean more style.

Snap it, Scan it, Win it! Our latest work for Tesco Graduates!

Snap it, scan it win!

SO WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Tesco is the proverbial supermarket giant and has used many of the more mainstream channels to amass an army of student followers over the years.
When they approached us at the end of 2013, it was with a clear brief to raise their profile on campus and change some of the entrenched perceptions of them that are still held by many people.
We set out to create an experience that would yield high engagement, one that would be innovative and, ultimately, one that would create a talking point, getting people chatting about a different Tesco, in a different way. Working together we explored some relatively new channels before developing a first-of-a-kind game that uses the Snapchat app.

Snapchat is a mobile-only app that has caught fire with teenagers. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s how it works: with the app loaded on your phone you take a photo, set a timer for anything from 1 to 10 seconds, then send it to your friend. Your friend gets the photo on his/her phone and from the moment they open the image they only have the time you set to view it before ‘poof!’ it self-destructs. We exploited that function to give people the opportunity to win prizes in an immersive, quick-fire game.

We built a stand containing 12 Perspex boxes, each with a barcode scanner attached to it. Inside each box were a number of mystery prizes but every box was locked. Students could only unlock a box by scanning it with the correct ‘key’. The keys were, in fact, 12 unique barcodes and to get hold of one students first had to send in a ‘selfie’ to the Tesco Snapchat team. Once they had done this the students were sent their’key’but they had no idea what box it would open. They also knew that they couldn’t open their key until they were ready to play, otherwise it would self-destruct after 10 seconds.
Students queued up to play and once on the stand a series of fast and frenzied 10-second periods passed in the blink of an eye as each student raced to scan as many boxes as possible, hoping to find a match.
Feedback at the events was fantastic with students saying,

“That’s such a cool idea” and “That’s so neat that they’re using Snapchat!”
And more than one student who was about to play the game was heard to say…

“Oh my God! I can’t believe I’m so nervous.”

Do Graduate Recruiters need to re-think where the people they’re looking for might be found?

Do Graduate Recruiters need to re-think where the people they’re looking for might be found?

Welcome back to our 5-part blog about the factors that are leading to a need for change in the way graduate recruiters choose to engage with future talent. Last week we covered why it’s much harder to get the attention of candidates today than in years gone by.

This week, we’ll explore where those candidates are found, and the changes in play that might mean you’re spending more time and money on your efforts, however could still be looking in the wrong places.

Why? Well we know that changes to Higher Education funding mean many students now prioritise factors such as location over reputation. And the sad truth is, some of the best and brightest simply can’t afford to fund themselves through university at all. Which means that, today, the talent employers typically target is increasingly found in less typical places. However, some Graduate Recruiters persist in visiting the same universities over and over again regardless of whether they’re getting results, either because they’re asked to, or simply because that’s where they’ve always had strong relationships.

Without wishing to cause offense, is that really the most intelligent approach? What did Albert Einstein once say….?

So where do you begin?

Tools such as HighFliers and Trendence are great for getting a detailed understanding of where the communities you need to be part of can be found, and provide a good temperature check for the sentiment around your brand on specific campuses.

But is this the right approach to take in today’s social, mobile and connected world? And, what’s the Milkround actually for, if not just a vanity parade?

The whole concept of targeting ‘audience groups’ with your messaging is based largely on an out-dated push marketing model. Research has shown that push marketing is less effective – there’s too much of it going on and we’re just not tuning in any more – even more so with millennials.

So how can we ensure that our messages reach the right people and are delivered in the right way?

Let’s take a moment to think about the modern graduate. How do they choose to consume media today compared to 5 years ago? What do they care about? How much time do they spend on their mobiles each day? Where do they spend time online, and why?

The answers to these questions will differ significantly from one person to the next, and it’s virtually impossible to cater for everyone’s needs on a one-to-one basis. But, it is possible to create a communications strategy that’s informed, human and leaves people wanting more.

In order to do that, you need to be personal and you need to market in the same way that your customers want to buy

Drawing people towards you is far more potent. It’s more challenging to get right, but when you do you’ll most certainly reap the benefits in today’s future talent market. It’s the right approach if you hope to gain the trust of even the most discerning young talent.

We’re not talking about people turning up at your front door of course. And we’re not suggesting you stop turning up on campuses. We’re talking about harnessing the power of communities and how you can position yourselves within these to begin delivering your message in the right way and becoming a source of value. It’s about finding the right blend of ‘pull’ as well as ‘push’. It’s about going where they are, not where you expect them to be.

If you’re successful in pulling people towards you, you’ll need to worry far less (and spend less) about what campuses you visit and what research you use to help you locate audience demographics.

Of course, to do this you’ll need great content and messages and we’ll talk about this in more detail next week.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and click the follow button if you like what you’ve read. Feel free to pop over to http://www.tonic-agency.com in the meantime.