College students are the stars of new marketing campaign

The 12 winning students

Staff at Hopwood Hall College recently launched a competition to find the ‘face’ of 2008 – and invited interested students to X Factor style auditions to be in with a chance of featuring in the college’s forthcoming marketing campaigns. The competition was not a beauty contest or a talent show, the aim was to find 12 individuals with great personalities to best express what being a student at the college is about.

College Press & Publicity Officer Laura Sousa said: “We wanted to use students in our advertising rather than hiring models, as not only is can this be very expensive but it can be unrealistic. We only needed to look around us at college to see local young people with lots of personality that could fit the bill. We were overwhelmed when more than 150 students responded to the on-campus adverts and turned up for test shots. Our only disappointment was that the judges couldn’t pick them all as they were all superb.”

The 12 finalists were collected by stretch limo and whisked away to one of the North West’s top photographic studios for a full day’s photo shoot. An ‘Oscars’ style red carpet welcome awaited them on arrival before they were taken into hair and make-up and tended to by their own personal styling team.

The students’ images will soon be a familiar feature across the borough of Rochdale the surrounding area, on billboards, bus sides and press ads as well as many of Hopwood Hall’s own prospectus and course documents. After the success of the competition, it is thought that a similar competition will run next year to find the stars of 2009.

Rosalind Lyon who studies Travel & Tourism at the Middleton campus was one of the lucky finalists. She said of the day: “We had such a good time and it really was like being a celebrity for a day. I can’t wait to see myself on a big billboard in town, I think it will be surreal as I’m only quite little! As well as having our photos taken we were also filmed and interviewed for a DVD that will be posted on the college website where we were able to voice our views on student life.”

College Principal Derek O’Toole said: “Well done to all the students who came forward to take part in the competition. I think the finalists really do give a true representation of the mix of personalities we have studying here at Hopwood Hall who have vibrant, positive attitudes to life and study.”

The 12 winning students are:
Ken Man (Performing Arts), Aston Szlatoszlavek (Performing Arts), David Cookson (Electrical Engineering & Rugby Academy), Ittefaq Hussain (Travel & Tourism), Natalie Loboda (Health Studies), Mafia Begum (Accounting), Rosalind Lyon (Travel & Tourism), Nazima Beghum Mughal (Fashion & Textiles), Claire-May Budd (Media), Stewart Houlker-Collinge (Medical Science), Primrose Mhepo (Health Studies) and Fan Zaijun (A-levels).