Academic Masterclass Day 1

Saturday 11th January 2025

Welcome to Session 1! Below you will find information and activities about studying at university that follow on from our in person session. You'll also find a series of video interviews from some of our current and past students who have studied a range of business degrees.

Introduction

As you work through the content below make a note of your thoughts and any key information or tips. We will ask you to reflect on these throughout the programme.

Session One Recap

If you were able to join us for your first Brookes Engage Academic Masterclass, we hope you enjoyed it! If you weren't able to join us, our academic Mohamad gave an introduction to Events. You can have a look through their presentation's below at your own pace.

Following on from this, we've put together some resources and information about studying at Oxford Brookes.

To view the presentation, click on the 'Pop out' arrow at the upper right hand corner visible when you hover over the presentation image.

Brookes Engage_Introduction to Events.pptx

Session Two Recap

Our academic Mohamad followed the first session with a fun team building activity, and customer profiling (make sure to try out the game at home with family and friends!).

As above, you can have a look through their presentation's below at your own pace.

To view the presentation, click on the 'Pop out' arrow at the upper right hand corner visible when you hover over the presentation image.

Session 2 Power of Teams and your perfect customer (1).pptx

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

The STP marketing model (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) is a familiar strategic approach in modern marketing. It is one of the most commonly applied marketing models in practice, with marketing leaders crediting it for efficient, streamlined communications practice.

STP marketing focuses on commercial effectiveness, selecting the most valuable segments for a business and then developing a marketing mix and product positioning strategy for each customer group.

Segmentation

Segmentation - is a marketing term that refers to organising prospective buyers in different groups based on common characteristics and needs with the hopes that they will respond similarly to a marketing action

Targeting

Targeting - A target market is a group of people that have been identified as the most likely potential customers for a product from the identified segmented groups

Positioning

Positioning - Figuring out how to situate products favorably in potential customers minds compared to its competitors.

STP affects how products will be advertised and sold.

Activity: Brand personality activity

In the session, we looked at the power of team work; we looked at individual persona's and how the characteristics and interests of potential customers is important when considering marketing techniques. However, this activity will give you the opportunity to develop your own individual persona for a brand / event. This activity will encourage you to reflect on your own strengths and how you can use them to create a vision for your own brand. This is also a good opportunity to consider the strengths you can bring to the table in future group work.

Brand Personality

A brand's personality is the set of human characteristics you attribute to that brand. Or, put another way — it's how you'd describe a brand if it were a person.

To start defining a personality for your brand, you can ask yourself the following questions:

If the brand were a person, what would it be like?
How would it think, feel, and behave?
What would be its main personality traits? Choose 3-5 adjectives from the following list to help define your brand’s personality traits.

Accessible, Activist, Agitated, Analytical, Atypical, Benevolent, Bold, Brave, Calm, Challenging, Charismatic, Cautious, Classic, Cold, Compassionate, Compliant, Constant, Creative, Decisive, Detached, Driver, Elegant, Energetic, Enthusiastic, Extrovert, Fair, Firm, Flexible, Free-thinking, Friendly, Generous, Genuine, Hard-working, Helpful, Humble, Imaginative, Improviser, Impulsive, Inoffensive, Insightful, Introvert, Inventive, Laid-back, Logical, Loyal, Mature, Methodical, Modest, Neutral, Observant, Open-minded, Passionate, Patient, Peaceful, Persuasive, Planner, Playful, Positive, Practical, Protective, Prudent, Rational, Rebellious, Reserved, Resourceful, Respectful, Responsible, Romantic, Sage, Self-critical, Sensitive, Sentimental, Serious, Sexy, Social, Solitary, Sophisticated, Spontaneous, Strong, Studious, Subtle, Sweet, Supporter, Teacherly, Trusting, Understanding, Warm, Wise, Youthful.

Under which brand personality dimension would the brand fall?

If you choose to use Jennifer Aaker’s five dimensions of brand personality model (see above), you should select the dimensions that you trust would appeal to your target customer the most. It is possible to use only one dimension or a combination of two or three dimensions.

What type of relationship/interactions would it have with its different audiences?

For example, if a customer would start a relationship with the brand, what sort of person would the brand be (e.g. a good friend, a role model, an expert advisor, a teacher, a sibling/parent).

Is university the right next step?

In the videos above our previous and current students talk about their journeys to and during university. You can select to watch a few or all of the videos - as you watch the videos it may be helpful to make a note how you feel about the questions below and reflect on these later on - not just at the end of the programme, but even over the coming weeks and months to see how your expectations or concerns have changed and how you've grown.

The decision to go to university is a big one. It can feel scary, or maybe you feel very ready to dive in! Whatever you're feeling at this moment, it's valuable to write it down. Visualising what you are concerned about can help you to take a look into and find steps to put things in place to help, or maybe you'll find that these concerns aren't as big as they feel when you see it written down.

There are some things that are very similar across universities and courses, so it helps to write a list of things that you definitely want during your university experience. This could be to play on a specific sport team, or the opportunity to do work experience with a particular company or field. It's also okay if these things change over time.

When thinking about degree courses, it's helpful to look at the different modules (or classes) that you will study on that particular course.

On the Oxford Brookes University Business School undergraduate degree pages you can take a look at the modules available for each subject. Which seem the most interesting? You can always ask your mentor in Brightside if they took that module, or the academics at the next session to know more about it.

The benefits of university

Benefits of University

There are many benefits of studying at university. From professional training and development, to learning new social skills. There are many routes you can take to start a career, and you may be firmly set on attending university or still deciding if it's the right choice for you. Wherever you are on that journey, the presentation below will help you with how to begin looking at universities and specific courses.

A few things to think about...

Finally we would like you to pull it all together and think about how this all applies to you. You've thought about what you would like from a university, and what concerns you have about taking the next step to study at university. Now we want you to think about how you need to prepare yourself over the next two years to begin your journey. An easy way to do this is to conduct a SWOT analysis. You've probably completed one of these before, but if not, no worries - it's quite simple.

You can either download the template below or make your own by drawing 4 squares that will be where you will write your Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats, and Opportunities. Be sure to be honest with yourself. Once you have completed this, keep your analysis, and answers to the 3 questions above to reflect on later in the programme!

Today's achievements are the product of yesterday's dream.

Copy of SWOT Analysis Template

To download the template to edit, click on the arrow at the upper right corner of the presentation to open. Once the presentation opens, hover over the image until you see the navigation bar at the bottom, click the 3 menu dots on the lower left corner of the navigation bar, hover over More, select Download as PPTX to edit the file in Powerpoint.

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