Spotlight on: Mobile Campaigns

With less large student events for brands to engage with in terms 2 & 3 how do you use mobile campaigns to attract students?

I think mobile campaigns are a great way of taking your brand to students. They work really well directly on campus, on the street or in other high footfall locations such as shopping centres or train stations.

As an agency, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past year creating gamified mobile ad walker  boards which takes some of our most popular freshers concepts and makes them mobile! We've designed and created moveable spinning wheels and shoot to win boards, to lucky dip trikes and oversized dice. Our production team love thinking of new ways to take our campaigns on tour!

What are the key benefits to running a mobile campaign?

Firstly, mobile campaigns need to be fun and engaging in order to stop students in their tracks, so you have a real opportunity to surprise and delight- what a great way for a student to be introduced to a brand. I’ve found that these types of activations allow brands to be a bit more playful whilst still getting the key message's across. 

Following footfall and opening up the opportunity in terms of who you can target in one day is a major benefit. These campaigns are often a cost effective way of targeting multiple locations, that being city wise across the country but also multiple universities and campuses within one city. 

For a lot of our clients, students are the key focus but utilising a mobile approach allows you to widen the demographic and get in front of students and young people (if that’s part of your objective) so an an additional bonus! 

What additional factors need to be considered when devising the student journey for a mobile campaign?

With mobile campaigns, you’re often stopping people as they are passing, perhaps on their way to a lecture or to meet a friend, so the journey has to be quick and impactful.

These sorts of campaigns lend themselves to a data acquisition approach, where a simple scan to sign up (via our offline platform), play and win journey takes less than 4 minutes. Within that timeframe, it’s easy to have a meaningful conversation because you’re giving them something in return for their time, as well as an engaging interaction that hopefully leaves them with a smile on their face! 

Of course the activation itself, from the ad walker board to the uniform needs to be as eye catching and intriguing as possible. Even if they don’t have time to stop, they’ve still seen the brand. 

It’s also easy to also elevate a simple flyering campaign by adding a non gamified foldable ad walker board into the mix. This ensures your brand is seen from further away. 

Which mobile campaigns stand out for you over 2023?

It’s hard to pick one! I have a real soft spot for mobile campaigns, for all the reasons above and because clients can achieve pretty impressive results outside of a freshers fair setting, which is great if you’re trying to keep momentum throughout the academic year. We’ve seen campaigns achieve over 300 sign ups a day utilising our spin to win ad walker board. 

One of my favourite mobile street team activations though was for LOVESPACE, where we took their iconic cardboard box and made it into a moveable lucky dip box offering students the chance to win prizes upon signing up. We’d previously scaled it up by producing the LOVESPACE Big box and toured that around university campuses, so it was fun scaling it back down! 

As a wider team, we love taking these ideas to clients and seeing them through to fruition and getting results.