In thinking of students here I am considering students in universities and colleges of higher education - students who attend lectures and seminars, work in the library, drink coffee and beer (although not at the same time) and spend time listening to music in rooms, clubs, pubs and the like.

The attitudes and styles, interests and dislikes of these people are hugely varied.  They may be very taken with their subject of study, or may find it boring.  They may love university or hate it.  They may have a million friends or none.  They may spend Saturday training on the athletics track or in the pub.

How the student perceives his/her role

For most students their role as "student" is the first role they have ever adopted.  While we might say that they had a role as a "school student" or "child" these were roles that were forced on them.  Being a student is something they have chosen to do.

They might enter university with trepidation, and indeed might not like it too much at first, but after a while most students drop into their role, changing their lifestyle and habits to fit with one of the many approaches to life as a student that can be adopted.

For many, being a student involves having clear views and ideas, be they political, environmental or community, and can involve attempts to put these views into practice.  Students are not empowered within the state - they take the handouts they can get and the jobs they can get - and often have a feeling of powerlessness, although combined with that teenage certainty of knowing what should happen.

How the student perceives advertisers

I have not met too many students who have much of a perception of advertising beyond accepting it for what it is.   Adverts that are directed to them are usually just accepted as part of the framework, something that is there for them to accept or reject.

How the student at university can be contacted

Students at university can be reached through the local student union (although this may not always be reliable), through an eccentric mailing system run by the National Union of Students, through their Fresher's Weeks, through displays in the library or its ante-room or coffee shop, and through their departments.

Obviously mail through the department has to be related to the subject being studied - and this process is not well established so some considerable explanation to the department is going to be helpful.  Promotion via the library or its ante-rooms is well established for magazines - wherein a rack of adverts for magazines at discount prices is maintained by a student who is paid for undertaking this task.  There is no reason why other adverts should not be put in such a rack, but I have rarely seen it done.

Student Unions vary greatly in their ability to organise and effectively carry out anything.  Some seem to find it difficult to hand out keys and welcome packs on the set day, while others run highly effective enterprises ranging from entertaining magazines, to radio stations.   Thus, although there is no reason why one should not attempt to get a student union to undertake a leaflet distribution to everyone in halls of residence in a university (for example), whether or not it will happen is another matter.   It may well be better to focus on individual departments and seek to pay graduate students a small retainer for putting up notices and displays. 

The resultant voice

Despite what they believe themselves to be, I find students can be quite naive at times and can be susceptible to advertising which suggests that everyone else is doing x why aren't you, or which says that there is a way of doing y which a chosen few know about.   This "doing" can be anything from buying CDs at very low prices because they come in from China, to getting a first in your degree by using a particular technique.

Thus a style which does say, "I know, and I am going to tell you" can work.  However you have to make sure you do not slip into areas where the student actually knows more than you - and trying to show you are "at one" with the student by using what you believe to be the common parlance of students today can result in your advert getting no replies at all.

Underneath the suggestions that either "everyone is doing it" or "there is a secret that some of us know" it is still worth returning to the benefit - that you will get high quality CDs at a fraction of the price, or that you will go up from a 2-1 degree to a first.   This works well because even the most outward going student recognises underneath it all that he/she really doesn't quite know how the world works, and there must be secrets out there that:

a) they have not come across yet

b) their parents don't know because they are so old fashioned

c) lots of the other people at this university know about but are not going to tell me.

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