This week, we officially launched our third Student Brand Ambassador campaign with the chocolate industry ethical trailblazer, Tony’s Chocolonely! Following the success of our previous 2 campaigns, we’ve doubled the size of our student team and invited them all down for an in-person training day at Tony’s HQ in London. 

Ambassadors travelled from as far as Dublin and Edinburgh to meet their teammates, Campus Group and the fabulous team at Tony’s, and to gain knowledge & skills to see them through the 2024-5 campaign. Over the course of the academic year, they’ll be tasked with conducting sampling activities at their Student Unions and creating engaging social media content, all with the aim of raising the profile of Tony’s on campus and educating their fellow students about the Tony’s mission to make all chocolate 100% exploitation free. 

You might ask, why go to the effort of bringing students all the way to London in the age of Zoom? Well, we believe there’s a myriad of additional benefits to in person training that you can’t quite achieve with an online alternative. One of the main reasons for getting the Tony’s Brand Ambassadors together for the training day is that the campaign will be a collaborative effort. The SBAs will be working in pairs in their cities for the sampling activities, and while they can create social media content alone, they can also shoot content together. The first day of sampling activities will be that much easier if they’ve had the opportunity to bond with their teammate. One of our favourite parts of the day was the social activity afterwards, which gave everyone the chance to relax, chat and get to know each other better! It was important for us to build time into the day for SBAs to get to know our team at Campus better too, so they feel comfortable raising questions, ideas and issues throughout the campaign. 

Student Brand Ambassadors also feel more connected to the campaign if they’re given the opportunity to visit the client’s HQ and meet representatives from their team. It’s a great way to make them feel valued and demonstrate how important they are to your brand, which pays dividends when they begin work on the campaign. Our Tony’s SBAs left the training day laden with goodie bags stuffed with chocolate, branded apparel and of course, key takeaways from the presentation.  As they’ll be entering the workplace in a couple of years, SBAs also always appreciate the opportunity to chat to representatives from a brand and learn a little more about their day to day work and gain any tips they can about how to break into the industry. Using your HQ for a training day offers other benefits too. SBAs can use the opportunity to begin shooting content, using branded props and backdrops, giving them a sense of legitimacy and helping build trust with their audiences.