PME - Guildhall School - Media Buying

Guildhall School of Music & Drama is one of the world’s leading conservatoires, based in the City of London. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in music, drama, production and design, alongside a significant portfolio of short courses and youth and adult learning programmes.

Guildhall School is seeking to appoint a digital paid media agency to support its student recruitment and awareness activity across all programme areas. This Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) exercise is being conducted in advance of a formal procurement to help the City of London Corporation and Guildhall School understand the shape of the market, the capabilities available, and the most effective way to structure the forthcoming tender.

Guildhall School currently operates approximately 20 campaigns per year across a wide range of programme areas and budgets. These span undergraduate and postgraduate music, drama, production and design, short courses for young people, adults and professionals, and youth training delivered through Guildhall Young Artists.

The School’s paid media activity primarily supports awareness building, in highly targeted markets, with audiences that differ significantly. For undergraduate applicants, paid media plays a particularly key role as applicants apply directly to Guildhall rather than via UCAS/UCAS Conservatoires. Without the visibility these platforms bring, paid media is a crucial way of accessing audiences.

In some cases, particularly for youth programmes, advertising cannot legally target the end user (under-18s), and must instead reach parents, carers, teachers and other adult influencers. An agency appointed to work with Guildhall School must understand and be able to navigate this audience complexity from the outset.

International student recruitment is a strategic priority for Guildhall School, and digital paid media is a key route through which it can build profile and attract students from overseas markets. Respondents should be aware that international capability is a significant consideration in this procurement.

Guildhall School of Music and Drama does not currently have a CRM system in place. Attribution of campaign performance relies on a combination of platform data, postcode matching and manual data collection. The School wishes to work with an agency that can help establish meaningful performance benchmarks, and can work collaboratively towards defining success in terms of real-world recruitment outcomes.

Guildhall School of Music and Drama is seeking a strategic partner, not simply a tactical executor. The ideal agency will bring genuine sector knowledge, proactive insight and creative challenge, as well as deep familiarity with the higher education paid media landscape, including competitor intelligence. Equally important is the ability to produce copy that demonstrates real understanding of the School’s audiences and brand positioning – it is a prestigious, specialist institution and the standard of communication matters significantly. Guildhall School welcomes agencies that are willing to immerse themselves in the product, including visiting centres and attending events where relevant.

The PME questionnaire below invites responses across six areas. These have been structured to help Guildhall School and the City of London Corporation understand how the market would approach this opportunity, including thoughts on service model design, pricing structures, and how agencies would propose to measure and evidence their impact within the School’s specific context.