STUDYUK

Helping Study UK turn 150+ creative assets into 1.5 billion impressions and 64m video views

CLIENT: British Council
SECTOR: Education
SERVICES: Integrated Campaigns

British Council x Skylark Media

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural and educational opportunities. Its global reach directly shapes how the UK is perceived abroad, so every piece of content carries reputational weight.

The problem

Study UK is the British Council’s flagship international student recruitment campaign. Every year, students worldwide decide where to take their education. The campaign exists to make the UK their answer.

But competition for international students is intensifying. The campaign needed creative assets that could cut through across seven very different markets, and shift perceptions at real scale.

Our approach to international student recruitment

International students make life-changing decisions by seeing people like them. They respond to stories that feel real, not institutional messaging.

So Skylark worked with the British Council to shift Study UK’s creative approach. The focus moved away from formal communications toward authentic student storytelling. And the result? A campaign built to meet prospective students at every stage of their decision-making journey.

To unify the campaign visually, we developed a bespoke animated motif. It gave the campaign a coherent identity across all outputs, whether a student encountered it in China, India, Nigeria, or any of the seven target markets.

From that foundation, we produced over 150 assets: 6, 15 and 30-second video formats, static ads, and GIFs. Also student testimonials were used strategically to address specific barriers in each market.

The result

The 2024–25 Study UK campaign reached 1.5 billion impressions across seven markets. It also generated 491 million total engagements and 64 million social video views.

The new formats exceeded expectations. The 6-second YouTube bumpers achieved a 91% completion rate. Total followers across all channels passed one million.