Marketing English in Ireland represents schools who bring in 90% of the country’s English language students. CEO David O’Grady spoke with The PIE about marketing beyond the EU, a good 2012 and coping with Ireland’s own economic downturn.
The PIE: What will the next year look like for MEI (Marketing English in Ireland)?
DO: Part of our brief is marketing but we also do a lot of lobbying and we are now embarking on a more pronounced focus on teacher training and ongoing professional training. Our plans include plenty more of that.
The PIE: Where will you focus your marketing plans?
DO: Our main markets currently and historically are the EU – Spain, Italy, France and Germany. But to be honest there’s very little that we can tell agents in Italy and Spain that they don’t know about Ireland. It doesn’t mean that we’re neglecting them, it just means that we encourage all the schools to go visit their agents and find new ones.
But to stay within the EU is defeatist because there are no long-term prospects there. All the future is in developing markets so there has to be joined up enlightened thinking about the whole area of international education and visas and that’s how we’re lobbying. For the limited resources we have we’re going to continue our efforts from last year in Turkey, China and Russia.
“To stay within the EU is defeatist because there are no long-term prospects there”
We had an MEI workshop in Moscow last year with 17 schools and on the day, 44 agents turned up. That was really encouraging so we’re doing the same again. And our Turkey scheme aimed at university students brought in 119 students last year. This year it has been expanded to include anyone with a student profile and a visa for 24 weeks, not 12 like last year. And on the strength of that we are going to have an MEI event in Istanbul in April.
The PIE: The China pre-approved agent scheme you launched in 2012 had problems getting off the ground. Will you reassess it for 2013?
DO: It was a very shaky start. We had a small number of students come out of it and the quota was 400. It was a source of great annoyance and frustration. We’ve reviewed everything and they’re going to re-launch it. It’s going to be the same as it was but copper-fastened. If that goes ahead we will revisit China sometime in the second half of March.
The PIE: As a relatively small English speaking country, how do developing nations react to Irish recruitment efforts?
DO: Most of them don’t know that we exist, where we are or that we speak English. It’s a long-term project to move into emerging markets. Two years ago we went to Turkey and at the time Ireland had a very bad reputation there for rejecting visas; agents didn’t want to touch Ireland so we started with training days. There are no historical or cultural links between Turkey and Ireland either but there are daily flights from Istanbul to Dublin. That was a good start because there’s access if you can convince the students that Ireland’s just a plane flight away.
“Most of them [emerging markets] don’t know that we exist, where we are or that we speak English”
The PIE: How much does MEI benefit from the work Enterprise Ireland does?
DO: Education Ireland, which is owned by Enterprise Ireland, focuses on promoting Ireland as an education destination. But the majority of students who study in Ireland are American or Canadian and speak English anyway so a huge amount of Enterprise Ireland resources and time are spent, successfully, in North America. We don’t feature in a lot of it. Government administration regards our business as part of the department of tourism so we work closely with tourism offices.
The PIE: What are your predictions for the Irish market in 2013?
DO: It’s difficult because the predictions we had for 2012 were quite grim and 2012 ended up to be a great year. Our two main markets, Spain and Italy are in an economic meltdown so we thought we wouldn’t get any business from there. But numbers rose from both in terms of students and student weeks.
The PIE: Why is that? [more>]
DO: We think that from Italy the numbers have held up because of the Olympic bounce, access was more difficult to London and there was less capacity. But it’s hard to quantify – we’ll know this year if they don’t come back. And I think that when a country is in a serious financial problem, people rely on education as a way to get out of it. They say “let’s make sure the kids get a language because the future is abroad.”
The PIE: Ireland has also had its fair share of economic issues. How has that affected the industry?
DO: We had a moment when international students were seen as economic migrants. But because of our own economic downturn there aren’t jobs to be had so the profile of students who want to come here is more educational. There was the boom from 1997-2007 and during that time, reports proliferated of many student visa holders who were really restaurant workers. Now that whole dimension is gone.
The PIE: So is it an advantage that there’s no work?
“When a country is in a serious financial problem, people rely on education as a way to get out of it”
DO: I suppose someone who’s very can-do can be inspired to come and study and then knock on doors and get work. The student visa allows them to work 20 hours a week and then full-time during their holidays. But we would never sell Ireland as an employment destination. Being able to work is just one of the factors that contribute to students being happy to come here.
The PIE: Will Irish schools benefit from the tighter visa policies in the UK?
DO: The amount of students will be negligible. Obviously someone else’s difficulties are an advantage but that’s negative promotion from our point of view. We would just be happy to get people to come here because they want to come to Ireland and for the quality of the programmes, not because they can’t get into the UK.
The PIE: You’ve been in the industry for over 20 years; as CEO of MEI for three years and a school owner before that. How has the industry evolved?
“Because of our own economic downturn there aren’t jobs to be had so the profile of students who want to come here is more educational”
DO: It’s swings and roundabouts; there are things out of your control that can be beneficial or harmful. Markets fade and you find new ones. When I was working we had huge numbers from Mexico. It’s not a good market now because they have had lots of currency devaluations and culturally they’re very close to America. There was a period in the 90s when Ireland was very “in”. U2 and The Cranberries were big at the time and gave us a great international profile.
The PIE: What characteristics do you need to succeed in this industry?
DO: Adaptability, flexibility and being constantly aware of where your competitors are garnering business. Compared with our competitors, our scale is smaller. We have to be much more nimble. We have to run faster to keep at the same pace. But that’s the nature of things. You can be a small country of limited resources but exploit them fully.
