The Honest Marketer

Christmas magic

In the run up to Christmas 2014, websites and social media were plastered with the 'usual' university greetings.

Only a few universities stood out from the crowd and created some real Christmas magic...

  • De Montfort University Students’ Union (DSU) adapted the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ song to list improvements made
    to improve student life – including a student mentor programme, more printing credit and a graduation ball. 

  • University of West Scotland's #UWSBrightChristmas campaign from December 1st featured interesting trivia eg. how
    to build the perfect snowman and ‘Positive Thinking’ from Morecombe and Wise. 

  • Department for Education used the ’12 days’ to promote correlating numbered facts, such as the nine-year low in the number of young people who are not in employment, education or training (released on the 9th day) and the up to 10% extra earned by people with an A-Level in Maths (10th day).
  • University of Sunderland showcased entries to its student competition to design an e-card, announcing the winner on Christmas day. ​
  • Robert Gordon University published theFestive Fun’ results of its Christmas survey eg. two-thirds of staff intended wearing a Christmas jumper.
  • Department of UK Trade and Industrypromoted the top five Christmas exports. Who knew that chestnuts were Britain’s top Christmas export?
  • Keele University’s delivered a 'Science of Santa' Christmas seminar, explaining how Santa manages to visit 9.2 billion children in just 24 hours (travelling at a speed of 15,625 kilometres per hour, or 9,708mph – more than 10-times faster than the speed of sound).
  • Warwick Universityprovided Christmas food facts to share: carrots really do help us see in the dark and parsnips get sweeter in the cold.
  • University of Lincolnmade three electronic greetingscards available to download and send to friends and family. 
  • Oxford University's callout for #oxfordchristmas photographs led to dozens of images being tweeted throughout December of Christmas past and present by students, staff and alumni. Its ingenious Christmas through the microscope’ video, posted on Christmas Eve, generated thousands of views. Filmed at the Natural History Museum in Oxford and narrated with a poem about the content of the video, it features images of a variety of Christmas objects under the microscope – including mince pie sugar, wool, reindeer fur and robin feathers.