What do young people actually think about work, education, and the future? Drawing on in-depth research with hundreds of 16–18-year-olds across the UK, this session cuts through the headlines to explore how a new generation is navigating pressure, uncertainty, and opportunity. From shifting attitudes to careers and success, to the role of social media and identity, this is a grounded look at the realities shaping young people today and what institutions need to understand if they want to connect with them.

How can we better prepare students for moving into halls? By creating a Discord server for incoming residents, UoM improved engagement ahead of arrival, reduced emails, and helped build student communities. This session shares key insights, lessons learned, and reflections on using two-way communication to support student transition and experience

Communities are built by meeting students where they are, using platforms like WhatsApp, blogs or Instagram to spark early connection and cut through the noise, transforming Residential Life communications into a driver of belonging, clarity and trust. A student-led brand and gamified feedback keep students actively engaged. You will learn how a cross-platform strategy, grounded in goals and co-created with students, turns everyday messages into a genuine community.

Visual Authenticity in the Age of AI explores how trust is built through real, human-centered storytelling. At University of Limerick, the Stay Curious campaign used authentic student narratives and environments to create credible connections. As AI evolves, the talk highlights why authenticity must remain central to protecting brand integrity and audience trust

Students face a constant barrage of messages throughout their academic journey. During exams and assessments, this noise only grows louder, in what may be for some, the very moment their stress is highest. The challenge isn’t what we communicate; it’s making sure the right messages cut through and reach them when they need them most. This session explores how we transformed our approach to exam and assessment communications by flipping the traditional model on its head. Instead of adding more information to an already cluttered environment, we focused on cutting through the noise with clarity, simplicity, and meaningful human connection. This talk will offer practical insights, share our data-backed outcomes, and explore how institutions can rethink their communications to better support students during exams and assessments and beyond.

Photography as colour, life and storytelling in a black and white brand: What happens when your brand takes away colour but still expects you to create communications that feel warm, human and full of student life? In this session, we’ll show how our team turned a black and white visual identity into a creative advantage, using photography as our main source of energy, emotion and authenticity. We’ll share the tactics that work for us: from twice yearly campus shoots to capturing those blink-and-you-miss-them student moments at events. You’ll see how we balance polished campaign photography with more relaxed, social first content, and how student feedback has reshaped our approach (including the “no sad students” rule!). We’ll also share the framework that keeps our photography consistent and impactful within a limited colour brand: choosing high contrast images that pop, building an evergreen library, briefing photographers effectively and keeping editing tight and unified. Expect real examples from UoB campaigns plus honest insights into time, cost and workflow. If you’re working with a restrictive brand or just want your photography to do more heavy lifting, this session will give you practical ideas, pitfalls to avoid and a fresh way of thinking about imagery in student communications.

Students are experiencing information overload – hundreds of university messages landing in their inboxes, feeds and notifications every day. And yet, despite all that output, much of our content is ignored, skimmed, or forgotten. Students often tell us our comms aren’t landing – through survey feedback or simply by scrolling past. Sometimes the problem is volume, sometimes it’s relevance, but we believe the answer is storytelling. At The University of Manchester, we’re on a mission to cut through the noise by finding and telling real stories from across the student community – reducing our business-as-usual content and increasing our focus on more impactful work that sparks curiosity, emotion and conversation. In this session, Joe and Josh breakdown: + Why storytelling isn’t a buzzword, but an essential skill for Higher Ed comms teams + Examples of what’s working outside of the sector and what we can learn from it (from Lego to Premier League Football teams) + How we’re changing the culture of content creation at our university (and you can too) + Practical tips on applying the psychology of storytelling to your own comms (e.g attention, hooks, curiosity gaps etc)