And, just like that, it’s student season again. If you’ve got a student customer base, you’ll know there’s no better time to reach them than now - whilst they’re actively seeking new businesses and brands to lay their loyalties with for the next nine months.

We’ve been helping local businesses and promoters to reach students during Freshers and Welcome Week since Gen Z were in nappies, so it’s fair to say we’ve noticed some changes over the years. Right up until the mid noughties, flyering outside the nightclubs at closing time was the industry standard for promoting your event and one of the best ways to reach students. These days, websites like Headfirst, Resident Advisor and Skiddle have largely replaced the traditional ticket seller or printed event guide, while Instagram, TikTok and Facebook have become a central tool for promoters and businesses alike.

Yet, despite Silicon Valley's best efforts, paper has not disappeared. This is particularly noticeable among students, many of whom still print their further reading and handwrite lecture notes. There’s just something about having something that’s physical and tactile - something that we can scrawl over and annotate - that can make it easier to engage with and absorb information. 

The same principle applies to marketing. The 3-7-27 rule is built around the idea that repeated exposure, across different formats and at different levels of engagement, can help a message stick. Rather than relying on a single channel, a campaign might combine a digital advert with a billboard, bringing someone back online to search for more information, followed by a flyer at a relevant event or an advert in a magazine they already read. Relevance is key, though. A poorly targeted advert that stalks us around the internet, or an inappropriate placement - such as a fast-fashion advert during a podcast about climate change - can feel desperate or, worse, tone deaf. But if we’re having the time of our lives in a mosh pit and then someone hands us a flyer for another metal band on our way out, chances are, we’ll probably take it. That’s why the oldest form of marketing is still the most effective: word of mouth. 

In some ways, social media algorithms are a sort of strange, automated version of word of mouth. They learn what you are interested in, where you are and who you follow and then use that information to decide what appears in your feed. Instead of a friend telling you about a gig, the algorithm increasingly plays the role of the friend making the recommendation.

This is why effective marketing is less about choosing between digital and print, and more about understanding how different channels work together. Digital platforms are excellent at targeting, sharing and driving people towards information. Physical media can provide tangable confirmation for what they have seen online, visibility, context and something people can actually hold onto.

It is also why we have adapted our own approach to student marketing. In a sea of flyers and disposable magazines, we’ve developed a free Student Discount Guide and Wall Planner with the aim of producing tailored print that’s actually useful to a digital generation, whilst still giving businesses and organisations a way to reach a highly relevant student audience. The discount guide helps students find deals and save money, whilst the wall planner features key academic dates throughout the year, alongside tasteful adverts for local businesses they may wish to use. We distribute these at the University of Bristol, UWE, dBs and BIMM, and we know it works, because every year we meet students who have come back to replace their old copies.