Project

The initial briefings for this year’s Air Ambulance Project held on 7^th November were preceded by a talk given by Amber Harrison, an account manager from Gravity, the London B2B agency that kindly assists us with the project.

Amber talked about her background and her career in advertising including how she obtained her job at Gravity. After completing her degree, Amber initially decided to consider advertising as a career after other family members noticed that she always stayed to watch TV adverts whilst everyone else left the room, and suggested that she should pursue this interest as a career.

The first job that Amber in the advertising industry was not ideal, and she explained how it took her some time and several interviews to find an agency that really suited her and that she felt comfortable with. Her advice to our students was that they should be persistent and keep trying until they found the job that was right for them.

Amber also discussed her day to day work with the agency indicating that it was the variety of work that attracted her to the industry and that it was essential for success in an agency that you could work with a wide variety of people with communication and flexibility being key skills.

Students were given an opportunity to ask questions with several posing challenging questions about her work and the industry.

We look forward to seeing Amber later in the project as she helps students develop their proposals.

The Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance is a charity based in Lincoln that is entirely funded by charitable donations.  Approximately 1,000 lifesaving flights are undertaken each year at a cost of around £2.5 million.

The Air Ambulance project is run as a competition between groups of third year BA (Hons) Advertising and Marketing students at the Lincoln International Business School and is based upon a ‘live’ brief given by the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance with the assistance of Gravity, a leading London based B2B agency, in a realistic client agency briefing scenario.

The aim of the project is to give students an opportunity to put their classroom learning into practice in a realistic manner thereby improving their employability. The project also offers students the opportunity to give something back to the community within which they have lived whilst attending Lincoln University by assisting a worthwhile locally based charity.

Students are tasked to address specific objectives for the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance digital marketing activity and propose realistic solutions for them ensuring that issues such as budgeting, targeting, analytics and measurement of success are covered. In the 2016/2017 competition the objectives given were to propose digital marketing ideas aimed at improving either volunteering, regular contributions or legacy donations.

Students are supported by the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance and Gravity throughout the development of their proposals before presenting their initial ideas in ‘semi-finals’ where three teams are chosen to go through to a final. Judges for the 2016/2017 final were Chris Omotosho, an Account Director at Gravity, Dr Craig Marsh, Director of Lincoln International Business School, and Sally Crawford and Marie Williamson from the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance.

During the course of the project students were also taken to see the aircraft and meet the crew, doctors and paramedics.

The prize for the winning group is a day at Gravity’s office in London where they will meet various members of staff including directors of the agency, and examine and discuss the work of the agency and career opportunities within the agency industry.

From 2017/2018 the winning team will also have the opportunity to work with the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance marketing team to implement their ideas as the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance have kindly agreed to ring fence part of their marketing budget to enable this.

The results of the competition in 2016/2017 have been very encouraging for the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance as implementation of many of the changes to their social media activity that were suggested by the students has resulted in a ‘big boost’ in engagement with their reach being ‘doubled’.

The Lincs & Notts Air Ambulanceare also re-developing their website using many of the ideas that were proposed by students during the 2016/2017 competition and will also shortly start work on the proposal by one of the teams in the final for a game for mobile phones/tablets.

Student feedback on the project has also been very encouraging, with one of the 2016/2017 finalists giving the following feedback:

 “This project in my opinion was arguably the most important throughout my university experience. Not only did it allow me to directly apply the three years’ worth of knowledge I had acquired, but it also gave me the opportunity to help and for a company to really benefit from the marketing activity that had been created. It also allowed me to place this on my CV and arguably the most beneficial factor when I was applying for my first job. The project on the whole was brilliant and allowed me to develop my skill set significantly in a real life situation.”

The 2017/2018 competition starts on November 7^th when students will be briefed by Sally Crawford, Head of Communication and Fundraising at the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance, with the assistance of Amber Harrison, Account Manager from Gravity.