Peabody: how audience mapping helped sell 95% of a Bow regeneration project before completion
6th November, 2026
At a glance: Fresh Student Living (FSL), a student accommodation provider, needed to rent 18,000 student beds at 61 sites across 30 cities. The Media People ran an integrated UK and Chinese advertising campaign across city media, student unions, social media, UCAS emailers and student property portals. Adding dynamic creative, with retargeting banners matched to the FSL pages people had viewed, cut cost per booking by 18% year on year.
Key results
| Result | Figure |
|---|---|
| Year-on-year reduction in cost per booking when dynamic creative was introduced | 18% |
| Years of successful, consistent letting across all sites and cities | 8 |
| Student beds the campaign was briefed to rent | 18,000 |
| Sites | 61 |
| Cities | 30 |
What was the brief?
FSL asked us to deliver a fully integrated UK and Chinese advertising campaign to rent 18,000 student beds at 61 sites across 30 cities.
The scale shaped the whole plan. Each city and each accommodation site was different, so one national message would not do the job. The campaign needed to work locally for every site while being managed as a single programme.
Who was the audience?
The audience was students looking for somewhere to live, reached in the UK and through the Chinese campaign. Students are a nomadic audience. They move often, they are spread across many cities and their plans change from year to year, which makes them hard to reach consistently.
That meant two things mattered most:
- Tone. Messages had to speak to students in a way that felt relevant to them.
- Environment. We had to find the places, offline and online, where students would pay attention.
What did The Media People do?
We built a multi-channel campaign tailored to each city and site, then changed the online strategy by adding dynamic creative.
Offline: in the cities and in student unions
Offline media ran around the cities where FSL has sites and indoors in student unions. Student unions put the message in front of students in a place they use every day, and city-level media let us vary activity by location.
Online: social, UCAS emailers and student property portals
Online activity ran across social media, UCAS emailers and student property portals. Each channel meets students at a different stage. Social builds familiarity, UCAS emailers reach people preparing for university, and property portals reach students who are actively comparing accommodation.
Dynamic creative through a programmatic feed
The biggest change came from introducing a dynamic programmatic feed. Dynamic creative means the content of an ad changes automatically based on data about the person seeing it.
For FSL, we ran UK-wide targeting and served the relevant retargeting banner depending on which page of the FSL website someone had visited. A student who had looked at a particular page saw a banner relevant to that page, rather than a generic message about the whole portfolio.
This was a complete change of strategy for the online campaign. One UK-wide programme could now show the right message to each person, which suits a portfolio of 61 sites across 30 cities.
What were the results?
When dynamic creative was introduced, cost per booking fell by 18% year on year. The messages were reaching a highly targeted student audience who were much more likely to rent from FSL.
The longer-term result is consistency. Our original case study records eight years of successful, consistent letting across all sites and cities.
Why did it work?
- Relevance at scale. Dynamic creative let one programme show site-specific messages across a large portfolio.
- Retargeting shows intent. People who have viewed a specific page on a booking website have already shown interest. Matching the ad to that page builds on it.
- Channels matched to the student journey. Student unions, UCAS emailers, social and property portals each reach students at a different point in their search.
- Local tailoring. Treating each city and site on its own terms kept offline activity relevant.
What can other student accommodation providers learn from this campaign?
- Map where students spend time, on campus and online, before choosing media.
- Plan by city and by site. Demand and competition can differ a lot across a portfolio.
- Use your own website behaviour as a targeting signal. The pages people view tell you which site or room type interests them.
- Consider dynamic creative when you have many locations or products. It keeps messages relevant without a separate campaign for each one.
- Track cost per booking year on year, so you can see whether a change in strategy is paying back.
FAQs
What channels did the Fresh Student Living campaign use?The campaign used offline media around the cities, indoor media in student unions, social media, UCAS emailers, student property portals and a dynamic programmatic feed for retargeting.
What is dynamic creative?Dynamic creative is advertising whose content changes automatically based on data about the viewer. For Fresh Student Living, the retargeting banner each person saw depended on which page of the FSL website they had visited.
How much did dynamic creative reduce cost per booking for Fresh Student Living?When dynamic creative was introduced, cost per booking fell by 18% year on year.
How do you market student accommodation across many cities?Tailor activity to each city and site, use channels students already use, such as student unions, UCAS emailers and property portals, and use programmatic retargeting so each person sees an ad matched to the pages they viewed.
Why are students hard to reach with advertising?Students move often and are spread across many cities, so the tone of the message and the choice of media environment matter more than usual.
Related services
Need to fill rooms across more than one city? Talk to The Media People.
