Driving student engagement through inspiring social content and video

University College Birmingham (UCB) supports students to build their futures through a wide range of courses and career pathways. Since 2020, Leopard Co has worked with the university on a content-led communications programme designed to reach prospective and current students at key moments in their journey.

Across recruitment campaigns, graduation-day social content and video for Hospitality & Tourism, the work has focused on bringing UCB’s student experience, courses and opportunities to life through creative, authentic content.

Challenge

UCB needed to stand out in a competitive higher education landscape and build connections with students at different stages of the decision-making process. The brief evolved across several projects, from encouraging applications during the uncertainty following the COVID-19 pandemic to maintaining engaging social channels and showcasing the global career opportunities connected to its Hospitality & Tourism courses.

Leopard Co needed to understand each audience and translate UCB’s offer into communications that captured attention, built consideration and helped turn interest into applications.

Solution

A distinctive recruitment campaign: “Level Up with UCB”

To help UCB connect with teenagers navigating an uncertain future during the pandemic, Leopard Co recommended a bolder, more modern creative approach. The “Level Up with UCB” proposition used a phrase familiar to young people and reframed it as a positive message about their future, giving the university a distinctive way to cut through competing higher education advertising.

Bold photography and CGI brought the idea to life, supported by a multi-channel paid media approach across social media, TikTok, Spotify audio, user-generated content and Facebook advertising. Activity targeted both students and parents, with the aim of driving awareness, website traffic and applications.

Consistent social content, including graduation day

Alongside campaign activity, Leopard Co developed tailored approaches for UCB’s day-to-day social content and graduation day, helping maintain quality and engagement across its channels.

For graduation, the team planned a full day of content for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, anticipating key moments and building a varied schedule. Reactive content featuring students and families was captured and edited in real time, supported by a fast-paced 12-hour workflow that included participant coordination and on-the-go editing.

Showcasing global careers through alumni stories

For UCB’s Hospitality & Tourism department, Leopard Co created a cinematic video campaign to position the university as a starting point for global careers in the sector. Anchored by the tagline “UCB – The World Starts Here”, the campaign used authentic, unscripted alumni stories to connect their experiences in Birmingham with careers around the world.

Filming was in Birmingham, Prague, Brussels and Valencia. The team produced a hero film for each alumni, alongside a bank of social-ready edits featuring memorable moments and key soundbites, giving UCB a flexible set of assets for digital channels.