1. Linking national and local discounts and media sales
Paul Parkes, Avis Johns and David Jewell
Wednesday 2nd July 2014

2. NUS Media – What? Why? and How?
To deliver an extended portfolio of advertising and promotional opportunities for brands and partners, opening up the media options offered by Students’ Unions.
To maximise the investment from brands into the student movement, to provide fairer commission structures, to support other NUS Media platforms like UnionCloud, to provide more choice for unions and to elevate our position as an agency of choice for promoting to students.

3. On Campus Activity Freshers 2014 – How it looks Moving Forward
Where we are, right now
Feb 2013 –
Register interest
May 2013
Students’ Union visits to build portfolio
Building Relationships
Help and Support
On Campus Activity
Working Groups
Freshers 2014 – How it looks
Moving Forward

4. Extra income?
That’ll do nicely….
Avis Johns
Wednesday 2nd July 2014

5. Cash for questions

6. A new approach to media sales within London Students’ Unions

7. What’s the aim? Increase impact of NUS Extra in local areas
Opportunities to cooperate across SUs
New ways with data
Review and valuation of marketable assets
Ensure control and income remains within movement.
Develop scalable methodology
We’re looking for new ways of working.

8. What’s different about London?
Density
Competition
Opportunity
Profile of students
Historic challenges
Transferrable insight

9. How’s it working? Four initial unions:
UWL, Middlesex, Southbank, Kings
The questions:
Commercial partnerships to date
Local context
Ambitions and resources
What are the best assets?

10. WIFM?
Student
Business
Union

11. Outcomes
Money
Method
Valued proposition
Partnerships

12. Timings Evaluation and roll out… to be continued Project began June
Market analysis end July
Methodology development end July
Pilot from August
Evaluation and roll out… to be continued

13. David Jewell – Northumbria Students’ Union
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
David Jewell – Northumbria Students’ Union

14. Introduction
The MyTown scheme is an initiative launched by NUS as an add-on to the NUS Extra scheme.
The idea is to set up deals with local, independent businesses which adds value to the NUS Extra card.
Joint venture between Northumbria Students’ Union and Newcastle Students’ Union.
What are the cost implications?
What is involved in setting up MyTown?

15. What is the MyTown Scheme?
It is a joint venture between Northumbria Students’ Union and Newcastle Students’ Union who have joined forces in a bid to bring more local offers to the students of Newcastle under the NUS Extra card scheme.
Currently, the number of students who have bought an NUS Extra card for the year 2013/2014 between the 2 Students’ Unions is approx
The idea behind the scheme is to increase the value of the NUS Extra card by offering more discounts that focus specifically on businesses/offers in and around Newcastle.
Increase sales of the NUS Extra card by offering more value for money.

16. Partnership between Newcastle Students’ Union & Northumbria Students’ Union
NUS representative visited Northumbria & Newcastle to put forward the idea.
Northumbria & Newcastle got in touch with each other and met to discuss how the venture would work.
Decided that each Union would go out into the city and surrounding student populated areas to meet with local businesses.
Once the initial meetings had occurred Northumbria & Newcastle then met up again to discuss what deals they had managed to set up.
These deals apply to students from both Universities who have a bought an NUS Extra card.

17. Cost Implications for the scheme?
If NUS come out to the city and set up all the deals on behalf of the Students Union then the individual cost of an NUS Extra card goes up by £5 – NUS take this extra charge as an admin fee.
If the Students’ Unions in the city choose to set up and run the scheme themselves, making contact with the local businesses then there is no additional charge to the NUS Extra cards.
What is involved in setting up the MyTown scheme?

18. Process of setting the scheme up
First step was to decide what types of shops and businesses to approach about being involved in the MyTown scheme.
To do this we created an online survey which was sent out to student staff in the Students’ Unions to find out where they would like to see discounts and offers for the scheme.
- Advantage of doing this was to hopefully gauge from a sample of students what they wanted as opposed to what we thought they would want from offers.
-Had to be careful with conflicts of interest, i.e. we didn’t want to set up lots of deals with bars and nightclubs as this would be in direct competition with what the Union’s Commercial departments do.

19. Contacting Local Businesses
We used the results from the surveys, filtering out some of the businesses that would be in direct competition with ourselves with regards to bars and clubs and came up with a list of about 50.
We got in touch with each company/business firstly through phoning them up, we explained briefly what the scheme involved and if we could pop down to their business to discuss it further.
Visits to the business were booked in and we took along an NUS Extra card to show them what they looked like so they knew what to accept for the deals.
We also took along some of our own flyers and publicity that we had used from past events to demonstrate the type of thing we would be doing to promote the scheme and ultimately for the business interest how we would be promoting them and the offer that they had available for any NUS Extra card holder.

20. Contacting the businesses continued…….
We explained the types of deals other businesses had offered in the past using some of the national deals NUS had set up as examples to see what types of deals each separate business was prepared to offer.
We also showed the businesses our social media pages including Facebook and Twitter to demonstrate the amount of exposure their business could get by joining up to the scheme.
Once we had a deal/offer agreed with the business we recorded it and moved onto the next one – this took about a week in between other work commitments to complete.
Currently no written contracts in place with the businesses, we just have verbal contracts at this time.

21. Types of businesses Northumbria Students’ Union and Newcastle Students’ Union contacted:
Hair Dressers
Beauty Salons
Take Aways
Cafes
Cinemas
Clothes Stores
Comedy Clubs
Restaurants
Travel Companies
Book Shops

22. Design and Marketing the scheme
We are using our Student designers at Northumbria to design the flyers that we are sending out in our Fresher’s packs advertising the NUS Extra card and the MyTown add on scheme.
The design idea is focusing around displaying products/services and what they cost before any discount is applied, then what they cost after the discount and finally showing the amount of cash saved.
The hope is to show students just how much cash they can save by buying an NUS Extra card for just £12.
The scheme will also be pushed out on our social media sites over the Summer and then increased postings will be made as Fresher’s week approaches.
We will also be adding the scheme to the Union’s websites.

23. Example flyer for MyTown Newcastle

24. Students! TOTAL SAVINGS £62.00
Get your NUS Extra Card NOW and save £100s!
Cards start at £12 for a year, £22 for 2 years, or get a 3-year card for just £32!
Local discounts exclusive to Northumbria &
Newcastle students
Product
Without NUS Card
With NUS Card
Saving
Magic Box costume
£20
£18
£2.00
Boiler House— Hair dressers
£60
£34
£26
Thyme Square Cafe
£40
£32 £8
The Stand Comedy club
£48
£12
Tyneside
Cinema £9 £5
£4.00
Sports
Massage North East
£35 p.h
£25 p.h
£10.00
TOTAL
SAVINGS
£62.00

25. Any Questions? Contact: Paul Parkes 07966014344 paul.parkes@nus.org.uk
Avis Johns
David Jewell