UNIVERSITY OF BATH
Paid social creative for A Place For Possible campaign
The University of Bath worked with us to create this social media video campaign to recruit international students to study in Bath. The videos needed to show off Bath, its location in the UK, and what University life is like.
The Problem
Many overseas students apply to UK universities without a clear sense of the different cities. So the University of Bath wanted to show prospective international students where it is and what the city is like. Without that connection, international students are unlikely to choose it.
UoB needed social content that would place Bath on the map, literally and emotionally, for students who might never have heard of it. Moreover, it needed to work across multiple platforms and formats, without relying on heavy narration and limited student footage.
Our approach to social media video production for university recruitment
The creative answer was a scrapbook-style visual diary. Rather than a polished promotional film, Skylark built something that felt like a friendly peer showing you around. The film style was engaging but not chaotic, and accessible for audiences whose first language is not English.
Skylark introduced two real students – Anny (undergraduate) and Akshat (postgraduate). Their voiceover became the spine of the edit. We then matched landmarks, campus life and city scenes to their narration, making the geography tangible and the experience personal.
Designed for the platform, not just for the brief
Skylark built each format to the specific demands of its platform. For Instagram and TikTok, edits ran 9:16 portrait with burned-in subtitles, kept clear of caption areas. LinkedIn and Facebook ran 16:9 with separate .srt subtitle files. Additionally, Threads received a 1:1 square cut.
Skylark also produced two content lengths: a 15-second cut built around the moment a student admits they’d never heard of Bath, and a 30-second cut taking viewers from South-West geography through to the campaign’s closing line. Together, they gave the university flexible assets across the full funnel.
Furthermore, the visual style drew on tape effects, polaroid textures and light leak transitions – reinforcing the scrapbook aesthetic. University of Bath brand colours (turquoise, yellow, blue) and boxed branded frames also kept everything on-brand. Every layout accounted for platform safe zones, so menus never cut into key content.
The A Place For Possible campaign gave the University of Bath a suite of platform-native social assets for international student recruitment. Consequently, the content is used on key campaign pages on bath.ac.uk alongside the social rollout.
