BMET – inspiring adults back to college

So how do you take a run-of-the-mill student prospectus and make it inspire potential adult learners so that they believe they too can achieve academic qualifications that would help improve their lives.

Birmingham Metropolitan College’s stock in trade is students from 16 to 18, as the largest Further Education college in the Midlands.  As a result its literature has tended to sport bright colours and happy students getting A levels in its pitch for the younger student.

But BMET also caters for a large adult learner audience so it took the enlightened decision of changing its part-time prospectus to suit a more ‘grown-up’ market.

ORB was brought in to really connect BMET with the target audience – and to de-clutter the prospectus design of bright graphics and happy smiley people photography.

At pitch, ORB sold BMET on the inspirational stories it wanted to tell through reflective portrait photography and evocative copy of adult students of The College who had achieved great things.  ORB created ‘Mum’, who had left school, become a housewife, then a mum and as the children grew up, got a job – but had always wanted to make more of her life.

Going to college however sounded scary.  Was she up to it?  Would she fit in?  How would she juggle academic work and her family commitments? ORB wanted to inspire ‘Mum’ to take the leap by telling her a story of someone she could relate to.

Sure enough, we found an adult student who exactly fitted the bill. We commissioned grown-up, inspirational portrait images alongside biographies about the individual learners, not their course or reflections on BMET.

The case studies revelled in the chance to inspire the next wave of adult learners and the stories they told were often touching and always inspiring. Some even had to choke back tears in the final read through.  It confirmed our belief that readers would connect with the people and not a manufactured model of adult learning.