Creative Marketing Agency in London that cultivates community on campus
Our Approach
We are a new generation agency, built around the audience we create for.
Whether it's creating a secret music festival or a touring experience, designing a hype-building campaign with TikTok creators or increasing sign-ups through ambassador activations and paid social, Seed can help you connect on campus, in culture and beyond.
With over 10+ years of expertise, Seed can help brands understand, influence and connect with students and Gen Z on campus, in culture and beyond. Whether it's creating a secret music festival or a touring experience, designing a hype-building campaign with TikTok creators or increasing sign-ups through ambassador activations and paid social, Seed’s knowledge can help brands to build lasting relationships with the next generation.
WMTU: Cultivating Community on Campus
We created a unique roundtable conversation around how communities cultivated on campus can enable better brand connection within the youth space.
With an annual intake of 600k fresh faces per year and an annual spending power of 12.7 billion, there’s an endless opportunity to keep reaching and engaging a new audience. But there’s been immense shifts in the last few years and value changes have meant that the community on campus has progressed into a new iteration.
At a stage of life where young people are exploring their identity and seeking belonging, their communities are pivotal to how they discover and portray their values and passions. This directly impacts how they establish the (brand) associations that last far beyond the 25 year age mark.
We heard from experts in the student space (and students themselves!) on how brands can cultivate communities on campus and better enable connection with this audience.
The Importance of Community
One of the most important elements of the student mindset is that they’re seeking belonging and identity.
Starting university opens a whole new world. It’s not only an opportunity to redefine self but worlds broaden at uni exposing people to new perspectives. So much of university is about self discovery and finding the people and passions that reflect identity.
Most students agree that academia and socialising are of equal importance at university. This time is typically the first taste of independence for young people and not only do they have the opportunity to leave their childhood identity behind, but a new world has opened up to them with new people, perspectives and passions.
It’s very much a time of self discovery and discovering/solidifying what’s important to them. Community acts as an extension of themselves so is incredibly influential as to how they start to shape attitudes, outlooks and interests.
- 76% of students say meeting new people is the part of uni they enjoy most.
- 75% of freshers are keen to expand their social circles.
- 60% of students join a university endorsed club or society during study.
Our 5 Top Tips
- Define your brand:
Co-create with your audience by understanding their wants, needs and values and having two way communication lines, even if that’s as simple as taking advantage of the comment section and talking to students in their TOV.
- Go to where students already are and give them something back:
Whether that’s partnering with established events and giving students ownership on what it looks like or understanding their challenges at a particular time of year and giving students a discount or freebie on goods that support them.
- Always on approach to help to maintain retention of your audience.
Conducting one off activations will inevitably see drop off, but if you can find tactical routes to remind students and re-engage in your brand, this then helps to drive habits and in turn, create strong brand love.
- Building relationships takes time:
Testing periods help long term ROI and also allows for a reactive strategy that turns direct on-the-ground insight into impactful activations.
- Create peer to peer recommendation by rethinking talent partnerships:
Leading with creators and experts to drive desire and attendance and then using nano talent to create word of mouth to spread awareness of your brand.
