Last spring I shared a look at the University of Texas’ updated “What Starts Here” TV campaign. Another refresh was introduced this past fall in conjunction with the launch of UT’s Longhorn Network (which nearly caused the disintegration of the Big 12, but that’s another post). The end result is impressive in both scale and execution.
The PSA’s feature an amazing display of 3-D graphics projected on the university’s iconic tower.
The animation work was performed by production house Klip Collective with GSD&M responsible for concepting.
The projection technology works so well that at first glance you’d assume all the imagery is done in post. Here are two of the :30′s from the campaign, “Competition” and “Footsteps”. They’re followed by the behind the scenes video which should give you a full appreciation of the effort involved.
University Lipdub started in 2008 with an amibitious idea from some students in Germany. The subtitle for the original video was “What do you do after studying?” You could argue it should have been “What do you do instead of studying?”, but it doesn’t make the projects any less fun.
Since the initial video, nearly 100 universities have submitted their projects to the site. Similarly inspired prep schools, high schools and the like have created their own work as well.
The homegrown productions continue to be enormously popular, with positive comments filling YouTube posts for universities from Warsaw to Wisconsin.
Perhaps the king of lipdubs comes from last year’s efforts at the University of British Columbia. 1,000+ students came out to show their school pride last March (the credits alone run for nearly 2 minutes in this one).
I get the feeling that underwater camera work at the 6 minute mark and the helicopter photography might have been the “can’t top that moments” which have slowed the production of lipdubs since this one came out.
If you want still more lipdubs check out the University Lipdub site, there’s over 75 videos to that you can watch in the name of “market research” like this German language piece from University of Munich.
I don’t often share stories that come from primarily online institutions. But the recent V campaign for Virginia College is a bit of a standout for its power and simplicity. It recently picked up a nice handful of SIAA awards and I thought you might like to see samples.
Typically this space is reserved for marketing created to reach potential students. But an interesting article on SFGate.com yesterday reported on the California State Universities’ efforts to lower textbook costs by signing a discount deal on e-books and then advertising the reduced price options to their current student body and faculty.
In exchange for putting the name “Cengage” in front of textbook consumers at the nation’s largest university system, the company will rent its electronic textbooks for 60 percent off the hard-copy price – about a 10 percent drop from what students are now charged for temporary access to e-books.
The University of Tennessee is just about three weeks into their new branding campaign, “Big Orange, Big Ideas”. I’d say kudos are in order for the effort to get this out across the entire university community.
Wednesday, February 1st, students at UT began their normal morning walks to campus greeted by the slogan in banners draped across buildings and even painted on The Rock, a Knoxville campus icon. Students received t-shirts, bumper stickers and lots of other orange tchocktkes for the rollout of the new campaign.
In an unusual step, the full university community received the new Brand Book as well. Typically a document for internal audiences and vendors, UT is pushing distribution of the Brand Guidelines to anyone and everyone associated with the university.
Here’s a blurb from the back cover that fairly well sums up the far-reaching effort:
WHAT YOU CAN DO
We’re all responsible for promoting the university and upholding our great reputation, whether we’re developing publications and websites or just talking with others about UT.
We all benefit from a better UT. And if we’re consistent in what we say and do when representing UT, we make our university an even better place.
As you can imagine there’s a full mix of reactions and a good bit of blowback has shown up from students and alums, especially in the campus paper, such as this article from guest student columnist Lindsay Lee “Big Orange, Big Ideas” falls flat.
To help answer questions UT created a website with the full story of “Big Orange, Big Ideas” at big.utk.edu where you can see more of the story, including this introductory video.
In spite of the push back, give the marketing and communications folks at UT some credit, they went big with the new idea. Essentially they’ve done what most marketing offices only talk about, they’ve fully embraced the idea that the brand lives with their students, their faculty and staff, and their alumni. So they’ve tried to give them the tools to tell the story well.
- 52% of prospective students have viewed a school’s website on a mobile device
- 48% of those using a school’s mobile site said it improved their opinion of the school, while only 2% said it gave them a worse opinion
- Academic program listings and cost/scholarship calculators lead the way in terms of importance to students browsing the site.
The four page brief is really just a chance to dip your toe in the water, but if you want to go deeper Noel-Levitz has a whole series of white papers available on topics like this one available for download. It’s useful information and I encourage you to check in on them regularly.
I wanted some sort of romantic theme for the 14th and I suppose I could have looked for ad campaigns from Université de Paris on this Valentines Day. But my former language teachers would tell you my French is très mauvais.
So I’ve pulled some materials from Philly’s Drexel University. Drexel started there “Live It” campaign in 2007 and the theme is prevalent throughout their materials five years later. Below you’ll find some print and direct mail samples, as well as spot produced in 2009. I know you’ll love it.
Some of his assessments I agree with (University North Dakota does a nice job) and some I don’t (a little more credit to Oklahoma State is in order). But the most interesting part of the article was the discussion thread it created.
The comments were an intro course in the pitfalls of redesigning a university website. See if you recognize any of these issues:
- Design by committee
- Understaffed in-house teams
- 100′s or 1,000′s of sub-sites that are off the “template” and lacking a clear contact for revisions
- disagreement on primary audience (prospective students, current students, parents, alum, faculty)
One thing the group seemed to be able to agree on, the University of Chicago as a model site that should have been included in the review.
I like to start my Fridays with a little fun and these spots from the University of Alaska are just the trick.
The campaign is called “Do Something Major” and it debuted a few years back on ’08. The best of the lot is “Culinary and Fisheries” for my taste, but all of them are nicely done. And a special nod to the choice in voiceover talent which is spot on for the tone the commercials are trying to achieve.
Andrew Cherwenka’s article on Huffington Post today, Social Media Marketing: Chasing Likes and Other Ad Agency Mistakes has a few nice reminders as we try to build metrics for social media efforts. Possibly the most significant, don’t force your way into the conversation nonstop. Contribute occasionally and spend more time creating things that users will want to integrate into conversations with their own friends.
Right now, higher education’s relationship with social media is more middle school dance than glamorous cocktail party. We’re awkwardly shuffling our feet on the dance floor, hoping the cool kids will notice us, occasionally trying too hard. But we’re getting there.
I agree with Becca and Andrew that there’s entirely too much focus on quantity of “likes” right now and not enough on quality of material being offered to those users.
dandunlop
Stephanie Cohen
Ashley Andrews
dmooring
bbjennings
