Marketing Team wins two FE First Awards 2009

The Marketing Department at Bridgend College has been awarded two prestigious national FE First Awards 2009, taking Silver awards for:

• Best Use of Integrated Media for a Summer Campaign, sponsored by txttools.co.uk for the College's innovative ‘One small step.....one GIANT adventure' shoe campaign, which played homage to the 40^th anniversary of landing on the moon and utilised printed, radio and on-line media as well as SMS messaging and social networking sites.
• Higher Education Prospectus for Bridgend College's 2009/10 Higher Education Prospectus designed to promote the widest range of HNC, HND and degree programmes offered in addition to professional qualifications such as CIPD, CIM and AAT.

The UK-wide College Marketing Network's FE First Awards are now well established in the Further Educations sector, and are an annual opportunity to celebrate marketing best practice. They showcase the excellent and imaginative work that is being achieved in further education colleges across the UK.

Each of the 15 categories has specialist, independent judges, who not only look for best practice in the category area, but also how the entry fits into the college's marketing and organisational strategies. This requires that each College provides detailed evaluation of success and return on investment, against the goals and objectives set.

Overall, judges agreed that there is a huge amount of innovative and creative thinking going on in colleges, and a very high standard was set.

The 2009 Awards were presented at the Network's 22^nd Annual Gala Dinner on 23^rd November 2009, at the Hilton Hotel, Coventry.

"We are delighted to have been recognised for our efforts in integrating new media into the marketing mix.  It's great to be part of such an innovative, customer focused team", said Elin Griffiths, Marketing Manager at the College.  "From our initial idea of creating a ‘shoe' to represent individual subject areas offered at the College, we worked closely with the creative team at Savage & Gray Design to deliver what ultimately became a ‘shoe shop' full of funky shoes.  The bonus for us was great visual creatives, that we were able to use across two Summer student recruitment marketing campaigns (2008 & 2009)".

"The success of any campaign stands on its ability to compete in a busy market place whilst engaging the audience in an original and meaningful way. I believe this has been achieved with Bridgend College's winning entries" said David Gray, Director of Savage and Gray design. "We are proud to have worked with the College on the campaign and would like to congratulate the College Marketing Team on their double award success."