This month’s edition of “It Takes Nuts” takes us on a trip in the Wayback Machine – way back to just three years ago.

St. Bonaventure University was launching a new Bachelor’s degree program in Industrial Management – an up-and-coming field that combines business management with high-tech engineering. It’s the kind of degree program that procures forward-thinking individuals who bring the world things like fully automated cars, or next-gen water purification systems.

In order to successfully launch this shiny, brand new program, we needed to position it in a way that appealed to high-school aged students (since it was an undergraduate degree program) who loved the techie side of engineering, had leadership qualities, but maybe weren’t quite ready for or interested in the complicated mathematical equations involved with traditional engineering.

Given the target audience and the nature of the program, we knew our marketing efforts couldn’t appear to be too “sales-y.” Prospective students don’t want to be “sold” a degree program. They want to be educated on the program offerings and resulting opportunities. They need to “see themselves” in that degree, so to speak. The messaging has to resonate with them, not just reach them.

All in, this wasn’t an uncommon challenge for us: Create a campaign that will stand out in a crowded market and speak the language of the target audience.

The result: We created some of our best work to date (in our humble opinion). The campaign elements featured a distinct graphic style, paired with compelling content that only a true, aspiring Industrial Management professional would appreciate.

• 90-second motion graphics-style video
• Program landing page
  
  
• Faux-gazine – This was a custom Industrial Management magazine featuring articles about the various fields and initiatives encompassed by this degree. The magazine replaced that traditional, bullet-point laden, “About This Program” piece of print collateral that nearly every other college uses (no offense to everyone who uses those; you just haven’t had TQS develop your print collateral – yet).

This degree program needed a unique look and feel to match it’s unique nature – and we’re confident we delivered just that. Sometimes it helps to look at things from a slightly different perspective. Or in our case, sometimes it simply takes nuts.