Freshers’ is traditionally the time of year when brands put their energies into targeting the youth market, however studentbeans.com have created a new online media platform to give brands the opportunity to add a new event to their student marketing calendar – Refreshers Wall.
Refreshers Wall, the national student year planner, is an online media platform where brands can host offers, competitions, editorial content and videos specifically targeted at a student audience. Over 60 leading brands across entertainment, travel, food and drink, recruitment and fashion sectors have got involved.
The idea for Refreshers Wall comes from leading student website, studentbeans.com and is based on the success of freshersfields.com, the world’s first national online freshers’ fair that ran from August to October 2012 and attracted over 215,000 visits.
Refreshers Wall will be promoted to over one million young people via display advertising, social media, email and editorial content. Domino’s, Comic Relief, Giraffe, The Body Shop, Contiki, Milkround, The Guardian, Bloomberg, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, Trek America and Merlin are just some of the brands that will feature.
James Eder, founder of The Beans Group, says, “Spring term at university is a time when students start to take action. The focus is on work, exams, planning for the summer, looking for jobs and finding somewhere to live for next year. Refreshers Wall will help them set themselves up to make the most of the year ahead. We saw from the high levels of traffic to freshersfields.com that an effectivly targeted online platform allows brands to really engage with a student audience and give them what they really need at this time of year.”
Matt Fletcher, Marketing Director at Contiki, says, “We are very happy to be part of Refreshers Wall as part of our student engagement strategy. As a travel company we don’t feel that our messages are best heard during freshers’ as our key consideration period for travel is typically January to April. We are committed to offering students the most inclusive and value for money travel options but also communicating with them in a positive and open way, this has helped us become the world’s largest travel company for 18-35 year olds. Refreshers Wall is perfect for us as studentbeans.com is a long trusted source of information for students and offers a great combination of touch points across web, e-comms, social and editorial. We are offering a prize for two on our popular 9 day Thai Island hopper tour on any departure during this summer, we hope that the campaign will raise awareness of how fun and affordable a holiday with Contiki in summer 2013 will be.”
Ole Fjelberg, President & Partner at OnePiece, who are featuring on Refreshers Wall, says, “Refreshers has become an important point in the student marketing calendar – the feeling of coming back to university after a longer Christmas break has some of the effect of a ‘mini’ freshers. freshersfields.com was an interesting campaign for us, and Refreshers Wall therefore has the same potential. Students are the future, they are the cool kids of today and the large customers of the future. University students are the trendsetters of both elder and younger groups and this works perfectly for OnePiece.”
Laura Smith, Candidate Marketing Executive at Milkround, says, “Now students are well into their academic year and ready to start thinking about career choices this is the perfect time for Milkround to get involved with such an initiative and engage with our audience on a fantastic platform. Students play a pivotal role and are part of our make-up, we want to be able to provide career confidence to students across the UK and Refreshers is another avenue for us to explore how we can reach-out to our audience.”
Refreshers Wall will be launching 30th January 2013 and over 5,000 students have signed up to a guest list to get 48 hours Early Bird access to the offers, discounts and competition.