The Heart of Campus: Why Students' Unions Matter More Than Ever

Why Students' Unions Matter More Than Ever

From belonging and wellbeing to leadership and future careers, the modern Students' Union plays a deeper role in student life than many realise.

For brands and media planners, that role represents an opportunity worth understanding.

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Ask any graduate about university. They'll mention the degree. Then they'll talk about everything else. The society that changed their outlook. The committee role that taught them to speak up. The careers fair that opened the door. The night in the SU that turned strangers into friends for life.

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For millions of students, the Students' Union is where university stops being a course and starts being an experience. Where they lead, campaign, find their people and find out who they're becoming. It is, in the truest sense, the heart of campus. And its importance has only grown.

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Forget What You Think You Know

Some people still picture Students' Unions as bars with sticky floors and student nights. Those still exist, and they still pack out. But walk into a modern SU and you'll find something far more interesting.

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These are large, busy, multipurpose hubs at the centre of campus life. Study spaces alongside affordable cafes, meeting rooms, advice centres, event venues, shops, social areas, gaming zones, 3 story nightclubs and climbing walls! Students arrive between lectures and stay for hours. They work, eat, rehearse, organise, decompress and socialise, often in the same visit.

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No other space on campus works this way. Academic departments serve subjects. Accommodation serves residents. Libraries serve study. The SU serves everyone.

It cuts across course, year group and background, and in many cases it's the space that gives a university its identity. The part of the experience that stays with people long after graduation.

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The Context Has Changed

Today's students face a more pressurised landscape than previous generations. Living costs demand careful management. The graduate jobs market is competitive and shifting, shaped by economic uncertainty and the rapid rise of AI. Social media intensifies comparison. Climate anxiety and political polarisation are lived concerns, not distant headlines.

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None of this makes students passive. It makes them deliberate. They make sharper choices about where their time, energy and money go. And they keep choosing the Students' Union.

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In a world that's increasingly lived through screens, the SU remains a physical space where conversations happen face to face. Where plans are made over coffee rather than over DMs. Where recommendations carry the weight of real relationships. That's an environment most digital channels can only simulate.

Students' Unions have always mattered. In 2026, they matter more than ever.

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Why This Matters For Brands

Students are not just a youth demographic. They are future employees, future decision makers and future households. The preferences and loyalties they form at university carry forward for decades. Campus presence is not only about immediate response. It's about being visible in the environments where opinions form and ambitions take shape.

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What makes the SU distinctive is context. A message seen inside a Students' Union sits alongside content that matters to that audience: event listings, society updates, welfare campaigns, careers information. It's not interrupting a feed. It's part of a space students trust and actively choose to spend time in.

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High footfall. High dwell time. A diverse, engaged audience with genuine emotional connection to the environment around them. That combination is rare in any media channel.

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Where We Come In

At Eighteen24 we provide the largest network of premium DOOH screens in Students' Unions across the UK. Our screens carry the content that matters to campus life, and when brand messages appear alongside it, they're seen in a setting students value. Every campaign on our network generates revenue for the unions themselves, supporting the spaces and services that make this environment what it is.

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Step inside a Students' Union today and you'll see where student life happens.

Not a relic of a campus tradition. The heart of the experience, and the place where a generation are making the choices that will define their future.

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If you're a marketeer, media planner or OOH Specialist interested in seeing the inside of an SU for yourself why not drop us an email to arrange a tour?