Meet Mikki Collins, our new Content and Experience Designer
We are super excited to announce that this December, we welcomed Mikki Collins into the Pickle team as our new Content and Experience Designer!
We asked Mikki to answer a few questions for you to get to know her a bit better.
Can you tell us a little bit about your career?
I’m very fortunate to have been working in HE for 6 years, with the majority of my career being at the University of Chichester. I started out as the SU Vice-President (Education) in 2016 and moved on to be a Digital Content Assistant, and later a Digital Content Producer, for the marketing department at the University.
My favourite part of working at the University of Chichester was the challenge of capturing the community-feel on campus and the students' passion in the content we produced. Using this as the underlying basis of our digital content strategy led to Chichester being ranked the number 1 UK University on TikTok in 2022 and 2023 by Nonsensical TikTok Agency.
This led to multiple opportunities to host webinars and present at various HE conferences (including at the Shard - ahhh!) over 2022 on my TikTok framework and how to use digital student ambassadors as influencers.
What has been the most interesting project you have worked on?
The most interesting project I’ve worked on is the University of Chichester’s Be You podcast, more specifically, working on series 3 all about minority groups. The series had 8 episodes about different minority groups and featured multiple students/alumni from those minority groups.
The aim of the series was for each student to openly talk about their experiences within university and society, and help educate others to create a more inclusive environment for every student to be able to be themselves. Each student was encouraged to be honest about their experiences if they felt comfortable to do so, even if their experience was negative.
The reaction of the series was far greater than we anticipated with this series outperforming the first two series by double, and the bite-size snippets reaching nearly 50,000 people on social media. To give context, Chichester only has 5,500 students - that’s huge!
The main target audience was applicants and prospective students but episodes were widely shared with current students and staff. This led to the series having a big impact offline with the university community implementing lots of small changes that made a big impact for inclusivity e.g. including pronouns in their email signatures.
This project won the ‘Champion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in content’ at the ContentEd Awards 2022 (wooo!). The LGBTQ+ episodes, along with incredible efforts from the University and SU, helped Chichester achieve ‘inclusive university of the year’ at the National Student Pride Awards 2023.
What is the biggest goal you want to achieve at Pickle Jar?
My biggest goal I want to achieve is proving how powerful digital content can be. I’m very fortunate to have worked on successful campaigns and projects, and I’m looking forward to tackling projects for other institutions!
What sort of content inspires you?
Any digital content that evokes you to feel a certain way, I think it makes the message more powerful and I fall for it. Every. Single. Time.
What is something new you have learnt over the last year?
I’m lucky to have gone travelling for 7 months in 2023, so here’s a few things I learnt (sometimes the hard way!):
It is possible to fit a family of 5 on a moped.
Cassowary's are the scariest bird to meet in person.
There’s a little town in Switzerland where they vote by hand. You can also bring a sword as your ID.
Don’t take a banana to a beach with monkey’s present, it will be stolen.
If there’s a sign that says ‘do not enter’, don’t enter. It’s there for a reason.
Don’t fly a drone off a mountain, it will lose connection and crash.
Make sure to have an onward flight when you arrive in China otherwise you might be detained.
Say yes to everything! (Unless it’s super dangerous, obviously.)
Now for some quick single-word answers:
Cats or dogs? Dogs!
Mornings or evenings? Evenings (especially with a sunset involved 😍)
Favourite season? Summer
Favourite app? TikTok
Favourite food? Anything involving a Yorkshire pudding
Biggest pet peeve? When people believe my snacks are for ‘sharing’
Job you wanted as a child? Footballer
Favourite font? Comic Sans
Most used emoji? 🤣
Mikki, welcome to Pickle Jar!
If you read this and you are eager to work with Mikki, let us know!