University of Surrey – One to watch

Students and graduates can be brilliant adverts for university courses! We went one step further and developed a creative campaign that promoted courses through great student stories, and also provided the students with an innovative way they could catch the eye of potential employers on LinkedIn and social media.

Brief

Bring to life the stories of different talented students with great futures ahead of them to promote the University of Surrey’s courses and help the students stand out in the job market.

Solution

One To Watch showcases the stories of students who have bags of talent and the potential to really go places. We started by telling the story of student Conor Manning through a 60-second video and shorter social edits.

We worked with him to hone his amazing story down to just 60-seconds. This covered why he chose to join the Music & Sound Recording course at Surrey. His work placement with an Emmy-winning composer. And his proudest achievement – co-writing a multi-platinum song! All of the video was shot in the University’s own green screen studio. And we commissioned Conor to create the music for the video too. After all, it was his video!

The filming of further student videos was temporarily cut short because of the COVID-19 crisis. But again, we thought creatively and came up with an alternative plan.

We helped more students to tell their stories through Instagram Stories, 90-second videos and 15-second videos for social that used a mix of still images and short video clips of them talking during lockdown. We provided the students with guidance and support and edited everything together in the One To Watch style with Conor’s music to create a suite of very authentic, student-focused stories to promote different courses and improve the students’ employability.