March 14, 2013, by offcampus

Be a Sweet Neighbour – Project Update

This year, our PR Project Management Advantage Award students are working on a project to promote neighbourliness among students living in the local community. The campaign is called ‘Be a Sweet Neighbour’ and will be officially launched on 20^th March in the Atrium. Today, one of our students, Catherine, talks about what they’ve been working on so far.

When we started thinking about how to launch a PR project promoting neighbourliness, I must admit we felt a little daunted. There seemed to be so much to do before our campaign launch on the 20^th March.

We needed a strawberry themed concept in order to tie in with the Nottingham in Bloom scheme which will have a stall giving away strawberry plants next to us on the day of our campaign launch. When brainstorming ideas the slogan ‘Be a Sweet Neighbour’ was instantly popular and has remained as our tag-line for the project ever since. We decided that students may find it less daunting to integrate with their neighbours if they had something to post through their door to invite them to pop in for a chat – a postcard with a strawberry teabag attached, which students can write on to invite their neighbours round for a cup of tea seemed like the perfect solution!

Luckily from the start we worked well as a team and were on the same page with our ideas. We assigned roles that played to everyone’s strengths but continued to collaborate as a team, always helping one another.

The ideas kept coming, and the next step was to turn them into a reality. We needed to consider our budget and how it could be best used to make the project a success, which meant hunting down the best value suppliers and allocating our budget in the most effective way possible.

Another key area was the design aspect of the campaign, including our posters, leaflets and flyers. We were lucky to have talented illustrator Victoria in our team who created a unique logo which we have used in all aspects of our campaign. Our brand ties every aspect of ‘Be a Sweet Neighbour’ together.

I’ve been concentrating on publicity; all of this excellent work would be pointless unless we could encourage you students to come along to get involved in our campaign. I’ve written a press release to generate local media attention for our project, and we’ve produced posters advertising the campaign which you should be able to spot around campus.

We’re looking forward to appearing on URN and our twitter activity will also be increasing in the run up to the project, so follow us @UoN_Off_Campus to keep up to date with what we’ve been getting up to!

Make sure you pop in to the Portland building on Wednesday 20^th March between 11am and 2pm to get yourself a postcard and teabag, along with an array of other strawberry treats including cupcakes, lollipops and even your very own strawberry plant from the Nottingham in Bloom stand.

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