Sexy brand or quality deals?
Sometimes a sexy brand simply doesn’t matter as much as pushing great deals. The Reach Students blog reports on a presentation from rail company First TransPennine:
“David Crocker from First TransPennine rail company took a pragmatic view that, although his firm’s network runs through an impressive number of university cities, students were unlikely to get excited about train travel and therefore he focused on quality deals rather than trying to build a sexy brand. They created a half price student ticket and marketed it through a mix of students’ union and online activity. Their key learnings were: freshers fairs are good for short term profile but expensive and a “logistical nightmare to organise”; gimmicky freebies were warmly received and started a conversation, but had dubious long term value; posters in unions were hard to evaluate; a student newspaper ad campaign was too expensive for them; union websites gave them visibility but poor clickthrough; online competitions were well received and allowed them to build a database; Facebook and MSN Hotmail advertising brought good returns; students have short memories – the campaign had an affect, but it quickly wore off.” - From Marketing to Students 2009 (Reach Students)
