RHUL Advertising students showcase

This blog pertains mainly to postgraduate marketing students, but for variety I’d like to highlight some achievements of the RH marketing undergraduates. As part of the assessment for the third year Advertising course on the Marketing pathway of the BSc Management programme, I ask students to pitch for an advertising campaign. We don’t teach creative skills so we can’t assess them, but students do come up with campaign ideas. They can illustrate these any way they choose, using stick men cartoons, storyboards, scripts, role play, whatever, but quite a few make movies. I'm often astounded at my students' creativity and technical ability with the most rudimentary kit, like iPhone cameras and basic editing software. Some post their work on Youtube. Some are designed to be TV spots, others virals or promo films.

For example, there have been a few gifted animators, as with this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CBQdV3B2mI&feature=related

This one for smoothies is cutesy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoaayDOw9JQ&feature=related and this one is sentimental http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3xjuAxPFHw&feature=related

Others are pretty good at editing, scripting, acting and arranging short movies, like this one for Yop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvYjIi3Nxs&feature=fvsr and this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WaqPstc_Fc

This one is kinda beautiful, compiled mainly from other clips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-c-tmK4Ha0&feature=related nicely put together. So is this one, for skin care cream, and both show talented film making: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC4Zq2fm5mw&feature=related

This one is a cute collage of still photography http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwQ1NXcmOSA&NR=1 while this one features an exciting chase through Egham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJNDBtOLEa4&feature=related This one also has some really nice images http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RBaVg5YhVg&feature=related

I'm happy for them to do something around a commercial brand or non-profit and 'social' marketing. If you've ever wondered what Chlamydia Man looked like, wonder no more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2VPnN_X0o&feature=related

Some seem to have a costume budget http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v6v54PNYf0&feature=related others are talented lip-syncers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvHriJ1nFgg&feature=related and still others go for laughs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxo0wkmZGTM&NR=1

I enjoy these so I ask students who want to put them up to tag them as MN3455, the course code, so I can find them again. But there are lots up there under different tags, so they're hard to find. There are many more examples if you look around.

I have to finish with one of my all time favourites, in which Prince Charles appeared, and he demanded no fee because he is a family friend of the film maker:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oci4IXV5yFA

Quite a guy, eh? 

These do beg the question of what it takes to make a good, short video ad. The answer to that is, it depends on the purpose. Advertising sometimes tries to sell something, but more often it's intended to build the brand, connect with a specified target group, activate the consumer, and perhaps stimulate an audience to engage with the brand in other media. Hard sell, soft sell. Some ads are made to get banned, others to go viral, still others to win creative awards. Sometimes, a campaign is created simply to match the adspend of a market rival.       

Of course, everyone’s a critic as someone once said, so if you fancy yourself as a marketing pro, make a better ad, go viral and get a million hits. If it’s so easy.  

Careers in Finance

For the first time, the Careers Service has organised a whole week of events about career opportunities in the financial services sector.  Throughout the week there will be speakers from Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital, PWC, E&Y, KMPG and many more. Speakers are a mixture of alumni and recruiters.

 

The key areas covered by the week are:

 

·         Investment Banking (Monday)

·         Corporate Law (Tuesday)

·         Insurance & Risk (Tuesday)

·         Professional Services (Wednesday)

·         Accountancy (Thursday)

·         Financial Journalism (Thursday)

·         Regulation (Friday)

 

Full details can be found at www.rhul.ac.uk/careers/financeweek 

 

Andrew Falconer

MBA Careers Consultant

Deputy Head, Careers Service

 

www.rhul.ac.uk/careers

twitter.com/rhulcareers

 

Books and Magic

Socially Useless Finance?

What we already know is that we have a structurally rotten system of interconnected power elites, which does little to serve the national interest. So what does finance have to do before it’s brought down from its elevated status? We’ve followed the investigations into banking and

nothing changed. Now there’s the Libor fixing scandal but that’s turned into a story of corrupt individuals. We’re living the finance induced Great Recession but for the banks it’s business as usual.

 

Unless we break these links and free our politics from its dependence on the largesse of finance, reform will remain a distant dream.

 

Most of all, the financial crisis is a crisis of politics which allows finance to work against the common good. The debate will consider what we need to do to break finance’s stranglehold.

 

Speakers include:

 

Aditya Chakrabortty: the Guardian’s economics lead writer and writes a regular Tuesday column in G2.

 

Alan Bradshaw: a RHUL-UCU Committee member and management lecturer.

 

Sukhdev Johal: a RHUL-UCU Committee member and management lecturer.

 

Monday 15th October, ALT 2, 7pm

Psychology & Marketing Lecture

Professor Charles Spence, University of Oxford, will highlight some of the intriguing marketing applications that are now emerging from basic research on crossmodal correspondences in the design of everything from the labels of water and beer bottles through to the music you listen to while drinking your Starbucks coffee.
Windsor Auditorium 2-3pm, 16/10/2012.

Join the Royal Marketing Society, by Margaux Nourrissat

Fancy joining an exciting, brand new on-campus society with tons of ideas and projects? If yes, then the Royal Marketing Society at Royal Holloway is for you! Created a few months ago by third year students, the society aims at promoting Marketing in many different ways. We are planning events including conferences with marketing leaders and alumni, confidence workshops and getting first hand experience managing local businesses and societies promotions, twitter contests, and many, many, more surprises! Please check out our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/RoyalMarketingRHUL) and our twitter account (www.twitter.com/RHULRoyalMkting) for news. Look out for us at Welcome Week. See you soon.