Natalia Williams
Work examples
Mascot launch
When I first started JMSU, I had the idea of creating a mascot to foster the JMSU xLJMU community and to personify the organisation for students to relate to. I created a project plan for the mascot, did some research on why companies invest in mascots (Percy Pig, Duolingo Owl, football mascots such as Arsenal's Gunnersaurus and how it creates belonging and community) and pitched it to senior members of the team.
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The masot idea was welcomed, I then went onto sourcing the costume and bringing the idea to the students so they could really be involved in the development of the mascot and really feel that they have contributed to the creation or something that represents them. We went out with timely content of the mascot, filmed it around campus and interviewed students about what it should be called. Thus, 'John Paws' the bear was born.
John Paws became a big part of JMSU life quickly; he raced at an. athletics race became the face of the Elections campaign and encouraged participation at our varsity tournament. I'm really proud of this achievement. Not only do mascots represent a sense of belonging and community, but research shows that brands who utilise mascots are actually positioned 37% better within their industry, and 41% of consumers feel as though they have an emotional connection towards the brand when they utilise a mascot.
Varsity
Varsity is one of the biggest sports competitions we have - John Moores vs the University of Liverpool. This year, I led the marketing promotion for both John Moores and Uni of Liverpool. This content was fronted on our 'Team LJMU' account - a secondary social media account led by myself for the university's sports teams.
This involved a lot of storyboarding for the professional promotional video, I then reached out and quoted 3 videographers to deliver the video. We chose our videographers and set to work planning and organising times for shooting content based on both our teams' and uni of Liverpool's training times. Once filming, the script and voiceovers were complete, after almost three weeks of shooting, I then scheduled the teaser video and full video content into the social media content calendar with enough time for students to buy their player tickets or spectator packs, as well as drum up excitement and anticipation.
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Once the games were underway, I organised a professional photographer to come to 3 days' worth of sporting events and created a schedule and brief for my team of student content creators. Together, we covered 3 days of live content for over 35 sports games.
We reached 30k views on the full video on Instagram, with a reach of almost 10K non-followers. The web article reached 1600 views. Over the 3 days of content covered, we reached almost 7,000 on our smaller Instagram channel Team LJMU and reached almost 4,000 content interactions.
Student Officer Elections
Student Officer Elections are probably the most important part of Student Union life. I have worked on Student Officer Elections for 3 years, the most recent is by far my favourite. We launched digitally and with printed assets in November 2023 and promoted nominations up until February 2024. Consistent, timely content was factored into the content calendar to ensure all students had an opportunity to get involved. Due to this, we had our largest elections week to date - 28 candidates, 96 hours of campaigning, 3556 voters, 11408 votes cast, 18% student voter turnout.
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I organised a professional photoshoot for the candidate launch, gave a talk on the benefits of using social media for a political campaign and helped give tips and tricks to them. I also interviewed each candidate, ensuring their manifesto points were at the heart of content production.
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During voting week, I decided to launch both our email and social media campaigns with harmonious messages - I used the company mascot John Paws (which resulted in me stepping into the costume myself) to harness the student 'Point of View' voting content, as well as using relevant trends to push the campaign further - especially on TikTok.
The email campaign reached over 20,000 students and the social media campaign reached almost 30,000 views on Instagram grid content.
Volunteering Week
I created a Volunteering Week campaign on socials to promote our volunteer opportunities for students to get involved and contribute positively to the community. We shined a spotlight on student volunteers and some partner organisations to talk about the benefits of volunteering. I created a unique and engaging series of interviews that showcased first-hand stories of both current volunteers and external charity partner organisations. Instead of telling the students to go and volunteer, I considered it would be more creative to produce thought-provoking content through on-trend storytelling techniques. User-generated content is a creative and effective way to inspire our audience to get involved. They can relate to people just like them, so are more likely to engage. It was also beneficial to work with external partners, as this encouraged collaborative content creation and furthered our reach to potential stakeholders.
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I also attended the volunteers fair, highlighting our partners and encouraging students to get involved through live coverage on social media.
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The 'Lead by Example' campaign video was launched at the end of the week to give students an insight into the lives of JMSU staff, as well as positively recognise staff as volunteers themselves, and the amazing work they do for what matters to them.
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We gained 30 new followers during this week on LinkedIn and made 3,000 impressions. We also reached 10,000 accounts during this week, with almost 90,000 impressions on Instagram.
Freshers fortnight
Planned the digital launch for our Freshers' weeks. From creating the site map of our Freshers mini site with our web developer, providing content, writing all copy for events pages, editing copy for printed assets, launching timely content via web, social media channels, printed assets and email marketing on A-Level results day to capture a large audience of over 7000 new students, as well as our current body of students.
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Continuous promotion aided the fast selling out of all 16 events including our much anticipated Freshers fair, which saw almost 8000 students.
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during the months of August and September, the JMSU website reached almost 200,000 views, over 90,500 views on TikTok, gained 1500 new followers on Instagram, 1200 on TikTok and 250 on LinkedIn.
More than a Month campaign
I helped launch the More Than a Month campaign to highlight the importance of showcasing our work to reach equality, diversity and inclusion all year round, not just during a national month.
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Our campaigns include Black History Month, Movember and LGBT+ History Month. I was able to create plans for promotional assets, web page development, physical assets such as More Than a Month bookmarks, leaflets and activation assets (a giant moustache to encourage donations for Movember was a fun one!) and live coverage of all events.
I also foster a lot of student feedback when it comes to our campaigns, to make them more relevant and representative of our students. For example, back in 2022, we purchased pronoun badges for students or staff to de-stigmatise getting pronouns right. During LGBT+ History Month we decided to reevaluate the badges and I went out to students to ask what they wanted to see from us. We have now got more inclusive, representative badges. You can read more about this, as well as other parts to our campaign, on the blog I wrote for Transgender Day of Visibility.
Web articles
A big part of my job is writing news articles, blogs and statements for the web. I have developed a blanket tone of voice for the website, which was once a mixture of many different authors with no clear voice.
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Now, with the ability to write fun pieces, announcements and sometimes quite serious topics, I confidently write for the web at least five times a month.
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Here are just a few examples...
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UCU Strikes - Activity and Support
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Things to do in Liverpool during Bank Holiday Weekend
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International Day of Friendship
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