Marketing students were challenged to come up with creative ways of boosting business at the historic Birmingham coffin works.聽
Representatives from the Birmingham Conservation Trust and Newman Brothers Coffin Works attended the event at McIntyre House to run the rule over the postgraduates鈥� innovative ideas.聽
Newman Brothers, in Fleet Street, is the Jewellery Quarter鈥檚 newest heritage attraction and is looking for new initiatives to increase visitor numbers. Visitors get the opportunity to take a step back in time and experience the factory as it would have been during its heyday.
The students, from UCB鈥檚 Marketing Management with Events, Hospitality and Tourism MA, came up with a diverse range of ideas, such as marketing the factory as a 鈥渘ight museum鈥� and hosting murder mysteries; promoting a more immersive and nostalgic experience of the history of the site; and looking at targeting new demographics and offering new services.聽
鈥淥ur group implemented a marketing strategy that had an educational focus,鈥� said Melissa Payne, part of a student marketing team whose concept was to make the Coffin Works a fun and educational place for schoolchildren and families. 鈥淲e developed new marketing tools and a range of activities that could be executed with little or no budget.聽
鈥淐offin Works surveys show that they have very few children of primary school age visiting, so marketing specifically for parents and schoolteachers and offering child-friendly services means that they can reach an entirely new population demographic.鈥澛�
