Students are often defined in narrow inaccurate terms as an homogeneous group. The reality is that they are varied and changeable – and that includes age. 

Today’s students are students of life and they are way ahead of previous generations. They are more self-conscious than ever – or rather ‘selfie-aware’. No longer the mischief makers of old not giving a damn what people think of them, these days most feel everything they do is being scrutinised and that they are constantly being watched, due to a mix of media pressure and the always-on social media world we all now live in. Whatever mischief you make, even behind closed doors, can find its way online in seconds. This means students are a lot better behaved than they once were and are far more concerned about their ongoing social image. 

This also means that before students will let brands in, they have to win over their trust and natural scepticism. Gone are the happy-go-lucky naive students of the past. What’s more, with many leaving uni with serious debt, they are struggling more than ever to make ends meet and so are also looking for real value.  

Becoming horrifically lucrative for brands, Halloween is now a global marketing phenomenon, with a recent Mintel report forecasting spending by UK consumers alone hitting £320 million this year, with most spenders being Millennials.  

However, the annual fright fest has seen the odd horror show in terms of bad taste, the most infamous of which being Asda and Tesco 'mental health patient' and 'psycho ward' costumes for Halloween 2013 that promised to have 'people running away in fear'. Both supermarket giants were accused of a woeful lack of judgement and for stigmatising mental health issues by charities and the public alike, a sign that attitudes towards the historically taboo subject were changing in the real world, something not reflected by the offending products. 

This year the Marketing Society and Time to Change gave brands a timely reminder not to resort to campaigns and products that stigmatise mental health, and thankfully it seems they all paid attention. So what techniques did some of the best campaigns use to engage their Halloween audiences to make the most of this fun festival without being offensive? 

Personalisation is the latest weapon in the store wars, as the retail industry adapts to cater for the ‘experience economy’. Margin, for retailers and for the brands they sell, is being driven by the ability to excite and delight shoppers through retail theatre and experiential marketing.

According to research from Gartner, 89% of brands now expect to compete primarily on customer experience rather than price and product as the key brand differentiator. Meanwhile, a report from Accenture says 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer – online or offline – that recognises them by name, recommends options based on past purchases, or knows their purchase history.

Consumers shop more with retailers who recognise them as individuals and can provide relevant recommendations. They like personalisation – and today’s technology allows brands to take personalisation onto the shop floor in a way that wasn’t really possible in the past.

Look at brands like Heinz, Nutella, Coca-Cola and Marmite – they have all been able to engage with their loyal fan base through creative use of ‘personalised’ packaging. While most of these brands have made websites the core of their offerings, some, like Nutella, have taken their personalised offer in-store.

In the past month no less than three gender-related stories have hit the national headlines. Jodie Whittaker was announced as the first ever female Dr Who, the BBC revealed its huge gender pay gap and it was refreshing to see the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) announce that it is working on tougher standards for what it called harmful gender stereotypes in advertisements.

The ASA’s stance hasn’t come a moment too soon. The issue has been bubbling under the surface since Procter & Gamble’s #unstereotyping speech at last year’s Cannes Lions festival, where the brand pledged to end gender stereotyping across its brand advertising. While this was welcomed wholeheartedly, it’s a touch ironic since P&G has done so much to promote stereotypes in its Fairy Liquid commercials, which still featured a woman washing up as late as the Noughties! Only in the 2015 version did it first show a man doing the dishes. But let’s give credit where it’s due.

The issue of gender-neutral advertising is a very tricky one for the toy industry. For every seemingly positive story about Hamley’s and other retailers ditching the gender distinction of “girl toy” and “boy toy” aisles another counter-outrage whips up about sexist categorisation in Subway kids’ meal bags (action figures for boys, pretty wristbands for girls) or the Early Learning Centre promoting regressive play stereotypes (boys as rescuing knights, girls the rescued princesses).

In an age of alternative facts and media sensationalism it is difficult to divine actual “outrage” from manufactured versions. For every lobbying group like “Let Toys Be Toys” there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from parents who simply don’t see the issue or feel it is one to get animated about.

As a result, it is not difficult to feel sympathy for toy companies who are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t – particularly with historical intellectual properties. When Hasbro bought out the first wave of Stars Wars toys from “The Force Awakens” movie it was hit by a #WheresRey Twitter campaign (protesting the seeming absence of a leading female character from the movie in the toy line). Given levels of hype and movie secrecy issues, not to mention toy production lead times, it’s reasonable to assume licensee toymakers may not have full access to storylines or cannot predict with absolute certainty which characters will be popular and have a life in the toy market.

Everyone’s obsessed with robots right now – and most of them haven’t got anything good to say about them, except for a small number of researchers (if that’s quite the right word) who seem to be working on robot sex toys.

Leaving sex aside for the moment, what’s really scary about robots, according to lots of experts, is that they’re going to steal our jobs.

What’s wrong with that, you ask? Robots can do all the work, and humans can party.

Great concept, but the execution is the killer – at least, if you’ve watched any movies involving robot helpers recently.

They’re usually rebelling against their human overlords, seeking to become self-aware, and wiping out the human race. Think Terminator, think Westworld, think The Stepford Wives – the list is endless. And (spoilers!) if they’re not doing it on purpose, they’re doing it by accident – like the cute droids in Dr Who the other week…

Lots of experiential practitioners will tell you that winter can be tough – they argue that there’s not a lot of big bucks activity in our industry until the weather warms up and the daffs and snowdrops start to poke out in early Spring.

Ask most agencies, and they’ll say that their busiest times run from May until December, with peaks for school holidays, summer festivals and then the run-up to Christmas. As a result, many agencies seem to spend the cold dark months of January and February huddled around their computer screens for warmth, chasing the big jobs for when every-one comes out of hibernation…

Well, at StreetPR, we obviously never got the memo about not going out until spring arrives, because we’ve been busy busy busy since the start of 2017.

To be blunt, business doesn’t stop because the temperature’s fallen.

More and more big toy industry names are taking their products out to consumers, rather than relying on standard patterns of TV advertising to leverage pester power. In part, this is down to the rise of toy brands as entertainment franchises – companies such as Hasbro, Mattel and Lego are shifting from being ‘just’ toymakers to becoming licensees, film and animation studios, and fashion houses. So today a toy brand often encompasses a whole entertainment world that is better sampled through real-life interaction and play, rather than a two-minute, redubbed American TV ad during a cartoon break on Pop TV.

So what should you bear in mind when planning a ‘real world’ experience for often fantastical brands?