Awareness advertising is the bread and butter of many marketing departments, and Capital University’s Integrated Marketing and Communication (IMC) is no exception. Yet for all of the effort and funds poured into each year’s awareness campaign, a representative survey of prospective students found that the University scored poorly in recognition among many of its peer institutions.
Coupled with the fact that fast-application platforms such as the Common App make it easier than ever for a student to apply to schools with which she has no familiarity, Capital often finds itself with high performing ads (based on agency identified benchmarks for KPIs such as VCR and CTR among comparable institutions), increased application volume, and lower enrollment year over year.
Discussions with Capital’s Admission office reveal that students who visit campus are significantly more likely to enroll than those who don’t. This is corroborated by numerous interviews with students and alumni who, when asked why they chose Capital, did not cite its academic programs, rankings, or extracurricular activities, but rather the feeling they got when visiting campus.
Since joining the IMC team, I have produced ads encouraging students to visit. These ads, however, often felt targeted toward the University producing them rather than the students watching them.
Faced with an impending ad delivery deadline, I was afforded one final opportunity to record audio assets with current Capital students. I kept replaying interview clips that said the same thing in a dozen different ways: visiting campus is what made the difference between enrolling here and somewhere else.
Statistics, mission statements, and market differentiators are all fine when presenting to the Board, but for students deciding where they will spend the next four years of their life these simply aren’t enough.
Thinking back to student testimonials, I considered what a message focusing on individual experience rather than facts and figures might look like. With only a couple days to go before the final recording session of the production season, I drafted a script and asked the Director of Marketing to trust me.
The first half of the one hour recording session was spent recording audio of pre-recorded scripts. In the remaining 30 minutes, I took the three Capital students around campus, collecting footage as we went. By the end of the day, a draft of the message was under review by the Creative Director.
This initiative did not follow the conventions of how video ads are produced within the IMC, and the resulting ads are unlike anything created in my tenure with the department.
That is not to say these are the best or most effective ads, but they are different. The evolution of a brand or messaging strategy is not linear, and opportunities such as this may open the door for better things to come.
