Advertising on celebrity gossip sites. Good luck postcards to potential students. The savvy marketing teams at universities across the country are in overdrive in the lead up to the painful Clearing admissions process. And it seems, the more gimmicky the better.
Take Goldsmiths College, University of London. The arty institute, which boasts alumni such as Vivienne Westwood and Damien Hirst, knew how to reach the masses when it was deciding where to advertise. Forget the traditional avenue likes national newspapers.
No, Goldsmiths went straight to the gossip bible, Popbitch. The college has been advertising its Clearing services on the highly entertaining e-newsletter, which is better known for its salacious content and relentless teasing of the Beckhams than it is for education. Goldsmiths obviously knew where to find its target audience.
Then there's the University of Plymouth, who obviously thought that surfers hitting the waves at Cornwall were the ones to target. The university has deployed a little dune buggy to hit the sand to sell the institution to potential students who are spending their summer holiday by the sea.
And students who have applied to the University of Bradford can look forward to friendly good luck postcards arriving in their letterbox. The postcards are designed to bring a smile to students as they anxiously await their A-level results.
But as a new era dawns on higher education, when top-up fees are introduced this autumn, will gimmicks be enough to sell the benefits of university study to debt-shy youngsters?
