How do you better attract students, allow them to engage with you and ultimately to choose you?

The Challenge

Facing a potentially significant drop in intake in 2012 following the regions devastating earthquakes, University of Canterbury (UC) had even more to overcome than the usual challenge – of standing out and successfully recruiting their share of new students from within a very competitive regional and national market. UC have unique strengths in some areas, the college of Engineering as an example, but they have a full suite of degrees across 5 Colleges that need to ‘get the numbers’ each year.

After the earthquakes of 2010/2011 the core focus for much of Canterbury is to rebuild and refocus – for UC its also about clearly messaging what you do, how you do it and why you are vital and valuable for your region and your stakeholders. The recruitment challenge needed to be met with a realistic, frank and yet confident proposition. Just stating you are still operating is not enough – validating this in ‘customer’ terms and showing how current students cave coped and are thriving at UC seemed an essential factor this year.

The challenge was to drive enrolments among final year high school students – the logical focus was to concentrate on the local catchment. Validation around ‘new barriers’ was going to be critical – as was the long term need to better engage with potential students right through the consideration to application journey. A review had recently identified the need to support key audiences in prime channels more singularly – and example being the UC website which was underpowered as a sales tool, and lacking in appeal for the target audience of 17-18 year olds.

The Solution

We believe access and insight can open up a world of difference – the UC 2012 campaign has been the embodiment of this. The UC acquisition campaign for 2012 undergraduate intake launched with a media schedule focussed heavily on the local catchment (Christchurch and the Canterbury region). The campaign uses digital, outdoor and print - with a central driver being content where students can see the goals, lives and experiences of current students and get an inside view in to the the diversity of colleges, passion of teaching staff, calibre of facilities plus the student learning, living and Campus experiences.

As an integrated campaign with a Microsite at the heart – the interaction model was to build on and around the real life stories of UC students. These stories were told in a short video format, shot in a direct and authentic style to best capture the authentic students’ voice. The campaign has heavily used digital as a central element - being a site where students can see the career aspirations and journeys of seven current students, gain insight in to and get a real world view the diversity of the UC Colleges and student experiences while studying at UC.

Our campaign activity allowed for a user journey that met needs at 3 core stages – and set out to best meet user goals, needs and content requirements at each possible interaction. Url’s, QR codes on media placements and digital advertising offer up access to a rich digital experience to cover off all the core information potential students need – using peers in frank and grounded situations to show it like it is. The stages that lead to conversion/application to study at UC were:

Attract

• ATL, mostly outdoor/ambient for reach and communication of headline messages
• Online advertising, using a mix of Flash and video creative (including TVNZ OnDemand)
• Natural search, through the creation of a large body of video content hosted on YouTube
• Viral appeal, primarily through audience sharing content on social networks. 

Engage.

• Rather than deploy typical ‘voice of the brand’ content, we built the Microsite around the ‘voice of our students’, told almost entirely through video.
• These seven stories were augmented with a series of shorter vignettes that explored particular aspects of student life at UC.
• The addition of these vignettes was a cost effective way of significantly increasing the amount of content in the campaign. This made for a fuller, more interesting experience on the Microsite, but also provided a lot more content for YouTube. This boosted natural search on YouTube and Google as a discovery mechanism, as well as extended the impact of the campaign well past the few months of ATL.
• Videos of the students’ lecturers were also featured, providing an additional perspective supporting the UC positioning.

Inform

• While student voices were the front of the campaign, the Microsite also offered light UC content about studying, enrolment and accommodation.
• This combination of emotional and rational reasons to believe in UC was all designed to drive as much traffic as possible to the UC website, and stimulate the number of enrolments received there.

Social Media’s role in the lives of potential students can not be ignored. For UC this was key to the approach, and the campaign consisted of:

• All video content hosted on YouTube for ease of sharing to websites and social networks. Other benefits include immediate indexing on Google, and zero hosting cost to client.
• Integrated Facebook discussion onto the Microsite.
• Short video vignettes offer more shareable appeal.
• Post to Twitter and Facebook integration.

Key considerations: Recruitment campaign and multi stakeholder engagement platform required to ensure numbers for second semester, business continuity and setting platform for 2012 UC recruitment. Undergraduate the prime focus and with a focus on protecting the ‘Local’ catchment.

Segmentation: Prospective Undergraduates and their influencer groups. Media and Staff.

Media: Press and outdoor, bus backs and bus shelters. Core deliverable a digital engine and social strategy to allow prospects to access ‘real peers’ and see the under the hood workings of the University. Supported with PR and collateral, and the liaison team at UC.

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