Launching the 106 Communications Inclusive Brand Audit for Student Marketing.

In a recent webinar, 106 Communications met with a range of employers and Careers Services to talk about how to make your student marketing more inclusive.

Some key things that we identified were:

#1 – Building your brand around cultural capital, i.e. your brand understands and communicates well with a wide range of talent from diverse backgrounds. If your starting point is deep understanding, your brand stands a better chance of building a stronger connection with your audiences.

#2 – Does your brand and your communications speak TO or THROUGH your audiences? If an advert is co- created and or tested with representative groups again, it is more likely to appeal to the right groups.

# 3 – Brands that embrace cultural voices, add value to communities and show they are a part of that community are more likely to attract diverse talent than those that merely talk about it.

#4 – Showcasing your values (in action) gives audiences an insight into what is important to your brand. But showing evidence of your values in action is even more powerful.

#5 – Being transparent about who you are and your approach to inclusion and diversity as well as the progress that you are making will build trust with your audiences.

The Inclusive Brand Audit for Student Marketing

We have developed an Inclusive Brand Audit methodology with the help of a diverse student panel. They have used the methodology to analyse a number of student recruitment ads in sectors such as Legal, Technology, Financial and Professional Services and the Public Sector, against our key criteria to assess how inclusive the ads were.

Here are the highlights so far:

If you are interested in finding out more about our Inclusive Brand Audit and how we can support then do get in touch for a friendly chat.

We can help in two ways:

1. Sense checking your ads that are about to go-live using our brand audit tool;
2. Building out a longer-term strategy to ensure your recruitment communications are written in as inclusive a way as possible.

Contact Jayne@106comms.com to find out more.