BlueSky Education worked with the Saїd Business School at the University of Oxford to increase the Saїd Business School’s international visibility in its own right, as the University of Oxford is already an established name throughout the world, and drive student recruitment in key international markets such as Western Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
BlueSky leveraged faculty expertise, research, new programme information and the student experience to achieve this. We were also given responsibility to line up media for the dean and senior faculty to meet in locations such as India, Korea, China, South Africa, Switzerland and Germany.
Supporting these campaign briefs, we proactively identified pieces of research and faculty expertise that could tie into topical news stories. An example of this is the significant coverage we acquired regarding an influx of overseas investments in the UK property market contributing to rising house prices at a time when there were moves seeking to block foreign investors from buying new homes in the UK. This received international online coverage with 5 publications, achieving over 247,000 page views and 118 social shares.
Similarly when the South African government was proposing to build the somewhat controversial Grand Inga dam, with the potential to power half of Africa and what would be the world’s largest hydropower project, we pitched coverage of one of Saїd Business School’s professors, Atif Ansar, as this was his area of expertise. This received 3 major pieces of online international coverage with 106,000 page views and coverage in one off-line international publication with a circulation of circa 30,000.
These additional proactive pieces of coverage aided the overall campaign strategy by tapping into subjects with a wilder cultural interest within markets that Saїd Business School were looking to increase both brand awareness and student recruitment.