Visit Lincoln | Meet Lincoln

Current students from BA (Hons) Creative Advertising course are playing a central role in the creation of a new marketing and advertising campaign to promote the city of Lincoln as a quality business and tourism destination.

'Meet Lincoln' was launched by a group of businesses within the Visit Lincoln Partnership (VLP). Whilst the main focus of the current Visit Lincoln is to increase the volume of leisure and short break visitors to Lincoln, Meet Lincoln will focus on raising awareness of the city as a place to meet, host conferences and bring events into the area. 

Visit Lincoln Partnership manager, Emma Tatlow, worked with the University of Lincoln’s School of Art & Design and asked third year Creative Advertising students to come up with a 'big idea' to promote Lincoln as a place for meetings and events.

Emma said: "Working in collaboration with the university on this project is really exciting.  Whilst 'Visit Lincoln' has developed a brand for the city, the students were asked to take this to the next level and come up with a creative concept for business tourism that could be applied to a range of media - such as print advertising, exhibition stands and online ads.

"The students have thrown themselves into the project and I'm impressed with the depth of their homework researching the target audiences and thinking carefully about Lincoln's unique selling points, and how the city can best be promoted to a business audience.

Creative Advertising Programme Leader, Gyles Lingwood said "The first round of creative concepts that the students presented were really strong. We shortlisted six that would have all worked well as different marketing campaigns. But the winning idea really captured our imagination by using inspiring individuals from the county's past right through to the present day.

"Now we have the ‘big idea’ this winning concept will now be passed to a local design agency to develop into a workable design. Once this has been done we will reveal whole Meet Lincoln marketing and communications campaign".

Gyles continued, "It is really important for our students to work to a real, ‘live’ brief. The 'Meet Lincoln'project gave our students the opportunity of working with a client and using creative thinking and communication skills to solve a real commercial problem.

"We have such a pool of talented young people at the university, and the work that the students have done on this project will bring a tangible benefit to businesses in Lincoln and Lincolnshire."

The above images show the rich cultural heritage of Lincoln such as the historic Cathedral and Castle and the modern vibrant part of the city down on the Brayford Pool, the beautiful marina in the heart of the city.

YCN Awards Night - a great night for Lincoln students

The Young Creative Network recently held their annual awards ceremony in Londonto honour the winners of this year’s YCN Student Competition. Amongst the successful entrants were University of Lincoln Creative Advertisingstudents Liam Nicholson and Vicki Thompson. Liam and Vicki collected a ‘gong’ for the work they submitted for the Triumph Bra's student brief.

They were second year students when they entered this national competition and it is very satisfying for the staff team to see them compete and win against students more experienced than them. Here’s Vicki to explain how the night went:

“On 4 September Liam and I ventured down to London to Shoreditch Town Hall for the YCN awards 2012. We were both thrilled that our work for the Industry Trust brief was commended, and even found ourselves sitting with their representatives for the ceremony. Going into the entrance area we were greeted with strange cocktails and steel drummers, and on moving into the main hall found plenty more decoration along a tropical theme. The ceremony itself was exciting and entertaining with guest speakers and clever animation shorts about their work, each of the speakers presenting a few different briefs' awards.

“After dinner our group was next up. We were presented on stage with our 'A's, our group being congratulated by guest speaker Toby Triumph. Following on from the ceremony we were directed downstairs for something 'special', which was in fact being showered with bits of jelly as it was blown up in the centre of the room... (yes, really).

“Exploding Jelly and something to hang on the wall, what more could you want.

“Overall an amazing evening to celebrate everyone's success and a reminder that hard work, taking risks and enjoying your work can pay off. Thank you to everyone that congratulated us and thanks to YCN for putting on such a great evening".

D&AD success for Creative Advertising

Congratulations to Claire Stokes and Christina Smith from BA (Hons) Creative Advertising on winning a highly coveted D&AD Yellow Pencil. D&AD is one of the most prestigious international awards in advertising and to be recognised in this way is testament to the effort that the girls put into their work.

Hundreds of students from around the world enter into the competition and the standard of work is extremely high so to win amongst such company shows just how well they have done. The girls won the Digital Advertising category and the client for this year’s competition was Spotify. Claire and Christina came up with an idea that neatly tied together the strengths of Spotify and Facebook to create a campaign that rewarded music fans for their dedication.