This episode we hear from Alfie Laurence, creator and founder of Student Travel Tips, a resource and community that empowers students to embrace the world of travel. Young people are set to be the UK’s most prolific travellers in 2024 and we explore why this generation of British students are so driven to explore and why traditional content has fallen short. Alfie’s own experiences highlighted the gaps that existed, leading to the creation of Student Travel Tips.

https://www.studenttraveltips.co.uk/

https://www.instagram.com/studenttraveltipsuk/

Things Alfie talks about

Amica App, former app that focused on creating safe space for solo female travellers

Earthrise Studio, environmental storytelling media company https://www.earthrise.studio/

Your Juno, Fintech platform, gamifying financial education focusing on women and non-binary people. https://www.yourjuno.co/

Damon Dominique, travel community and newsletter https://damondominique.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/damondominique

We’re talking Gen Z talent and employer branding with Dereck Maruma, Commercial Manager at Tapin Media, a youth-focused media and marketing agency specialising in bridging the gap between students and employers. We explore what organisations need to be doing to better attract and retain Gen Z talent and what Tapin’s ‘This is Black Gen Z’ report can tell us about diversifying youth talent to ensure success for young employees, through the recruitment process and once they are in role.

Connect with Dereck on LinkedIn

Find out more about Tapin Media

Read the This is Black Gen Z Report

Things we talk about

Salary transparency: a recent study found around half of jobs on LinkedIn don’t give salary details while Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay was published ahead of the election and sets outs reforms which includes salary transparency.  

Campaigners call for Afro hair to become protected characteristic in the Equality Act – linked to discussion on being yourself in job interviews.

Insight from The Access Platform which references university EDI policies as being a factor international students consider as part of their decision-making process.

#QuitTok the rise of publicly quitting on TikTok

Top 3 Tips for Gen Z Employer Branding

• Embrace social channels

Examples of brands doing it well

Gymshark on LinkedIn, Diageo on Instagram, Currys on TikTok and Go Daddy Life example on their website.

Other things to check out

The Employer Brand Space on LinkedIn, BYP Network and Hung Lee

We’re speaking with Oli Hills, CEO of Nonsensical, the agency that helps clients  win on TikTok. Having taken over Updates Media Ltd in 2017 after a career in investment management, he evolved it into Nonsensical just as the pandemic hit and TikTok rocketed. In this episode we talk about how to get the right strategic approach for the platform to better engage youth audiences, how to avoid doing it badly and who’s doing it really well. It’s packed full of tips and advice!

You can find out about Nonsensical here and connect with Oli on LinkedIn here and Twitter (X) here plus the Nonsensical blog which is worth a read. 

Things we talk about

Approach to organic strategy and having multiple accounts for different audiences

• Gymshark men and women accounts on TikTok

Paid ads approach and finding the right kind of content your audience might be engaging with

• Mukbangs

Other accounts we mention

• Urban Tandoor Bristol – the restaurant who have amassed over 10m likes through their parody songs

Attribution and it’s challenges with TikTok

• Attribution tools like Fospha

Three top tips for winning on TikTok

• Organic: define your biggest audience that has something in common and focus on creating content on just that audience.

Recommendations

• TikTok for Business on LinkedIn

We’re talking about connecting your brand to Gen Z with Alex Haider and Izzy Hall, Senior Content Executives from Pion, an agency that helps brand specialise in student and Gen Z audiences.

Pion is formerly known as Student Beans, Beans ID and Voxburner, before launching as Pion earlier this year. They also run the successful global event, Youth Marketing Strategy (YMS).

We talk about some of the insights from Pion’s recent Youth Trend Report, in particular unhelpful assumptions, tone of voice, aesthetics and pop culture and subcultures and whether cancel culture is done. Along with top tips from Alex and Izzy on how to better connect your marketing efforts with Gen Z we talk trends, insights and a ton of examples. 

Follow Izzy and Alex on LinkedIn

Things we talk about;

• Brat Summer and aesthetics (a blog from Alex)

We’re starting Season 5 off with a conversation on the future of news media, with Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at Reuters Institute, University of Oxford.

A journalist and digital strategist, Nic played a key role in shaping the BBC’s internet services for over a decade and was a founding member of the BBC News Website. He led international coverage as World Editor and as Head of Product Development for BBC News helped introduce innovations such as blogs, podcasting and on-demand video. More recently he’s led digital teams, developing websites, mobile and interactive TV applications for news, sport, weather and local. Nic played an important part in the development of social media strategies and guidelines for the wider BBC.

At Reuters, he shares a breadth of research that unpacks the trends in news media consumption, evolving technology including AI, the impact of social-first and what this means for a younger news audience as we look ahead.

Follow Nic:

@nicnewman on X and on LinkedIn

Reuters Institute research we mention:

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024

The kaleidoscope: tracking young people’s relationships with new

AI and the future of news

How publishers are learning to create and distribute news on TikTok

7 ways to create a newsroom Gen Z will want to stay in

Other things we mention;

What does news media mean to Gen Z?: An investigation into the media habits of Gen Z in the UK (Feb 2024)

FT Strategies. Unlocking the potential of younger audiences: securing tomorrow’s readers

People vs Algorithms Podcast

Season 4 finale with host Rebecca Roberts joined by Ruth Dale and Nathan Monk to discuss behaviour change, tech and higher education. 

Ruth Dale is founder of the Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp, having worked across major national campaigns in the health and public sector. She shares her specialist understanding of behavioural science and how using it within behaviour change marketing campaigns can really help to influence action among a youth audience. 

Nathan Monk is cofounder of Smile and one of the brains behind Prospectus Plus, the innovative and personalised prospectus solution that is transforming the conversation around digitally tailoring recruitment journeys. We talk about how those shifts in recent years align to wider behaviours when it comes to tech, and why understanding human nature can help advance your campaign strategies. 

If you work in further or higher education, there's an early bird offer available to listeners for a special Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp hosted by Ruth and Rebecca on the 29th February https://www.behaviourchange.marketing/FEHE 

Find out about Prospectus Plus

Connect with Nathan

FInd out about Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp

Connect with Ruth

You can sign up for Rebecca's Engaging Youth update which comes out every Friday and brings you the latest insight and updates on youth audiences here https://www.threadandfable.com/ 

If you are interested in supporting the podcast or have an idea for an episode for next season contact [email protected] 

We hear from Rodney Hinds, Sports Editor at the Voice Media Group. Author, broadcaster and lecturer, Rodney co-founded the Football Black List alongside another recent Hear It guest Leon Mann, and among numerous accolades, featured on the Diversity Powerlist this year. We talk about the British Black Voices research, in particular findings around young adults as well as sport and why what we see on the pitch and how it's dealt with, can play a significant role in society.

Rodney Hinds on LinkedIn

The Voice online

Black British Voices Research

Articles from Rodney

• Arsenal's Bukayo Saka on his visit to youngsters from where he grew up to dream big

Book recommendation: Why We Kneel How We Rise by Michael Holding

We talk with Sarah Brown-Fraser, External Affairs Manager at the Activity Alliance, the national charity and leading voice for disabled people in sport and activity. Sarah is passionate about influencing change through inclusive, representative and accessible external affairs, and as one of the few disabled leaders in sport, continues to push for progress in her role at Activity Alliance and as a board member of Greater Manchester Moving. We talk about how young disabled people are accessing sport and activity, how we can improve our marketing and communications with them, representing different voices and lots of guides and tools to help us.

You can find Sarah on LinkedIn and Twitter (X)

https://www.activityalliance.org.uk/ 

Some of the fantastic resources we mention that Sarah and her team have created can be found here;

Inclusive Communications Guide

Inclusive Communications Factsheets

CIPR Inclusive Communications

Business Disability Forum

We welcome John Gilbert, Managing Director of Eski Media to this episode. We're talking about campaigns that tackle social issues and how we can co-create and work with youth audiences to create ones that make a difference. Eski Media is a creative media and marketing agency that's ambitious about creating social change through its work.

They've led numerous campaigns where engaging youth audiences and complex range of stakeholders has been part of the process.

Connect with John on X and LinkedIn

Eski Media

Campaigns from Eski we talk about:

Step Up

Influenced

Got your back

Thrown Away

And the new drama series being packaged for a range of public services, Circle North (well worth checking out).

Book John mentions: Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Ben Verinder, MD of Chalkstream, a specialist reputation research and management agency, talks to us about the challenging market Further Education sits within, it's complex audience groups and what marketing and communications teams can do to tackle it. 

Chalkstream: a specialist reputation research and management agency, which has worked with over 100 colleges, universities and schools, as well as a host of other clients and recently spoke at the All Parliamentary Project Group for Skills, Careers and Employment.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn

Things Ben mentions

• Adult Participation & Learning Survey, 2022