So I was kicking it with Alyssa at the office the other day when our boss, Steve, called us into his office. 

He was like, “Yo, Medaille College needs some of that sweet, sweet marketing.”

And we were like, “Oh, word?”

And he was like, “Hells yeah, Dog.”

I don’t know why I remember this conversation sounding like something from a high school cafeteria circa 2003. 

Is it because I peaked in high school? 

Maybe. 

Probably, actually. Almost definitely. 

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Or maybe it’s because working on the project transported me back to my high school years. My getting-ready-for-college years. My “Oh, sh*t, I’m supposed to do something with my life, now?!” years.

But that’s not really the point of this blog. 

The point is this: Medaille College came to us to help promote its 2022 enrollment campaign, so that’s what we did. 

And because we’re here to help you with your marketing efforts, here’s a quick checklist of things we did to make it happen.

You’re invited to use this list as a guide when you embark on your own creative campaign.

1. Where’s the brief?

It had been a minute since we worked on something for Medaille College, so we needed to answer some key questions before we could start the creative. Some such questions included:

• What’re we doing?
• Why’re we doing it?
• Who’re we speaking to?
• What would they currently think?
• What do we like them to think?
• Why should they think that?

We drummed up some answers and shared ’em with our partners at Medaille so they could get their heads nodding. With the creative brief approved, we used it to drive everything else moving forward. (For the sake of any campaign, your creative brief is gospel.)

In short, some of our goals were to get people to:

• Sign up for Shadow Day and Open House events at Medaille College
• Submit applications to attend college and graduate school at Medaille College
• Perceive Medaille College as the perfect school for them (or their children)

2. Set the tone.

Based on the brief, we knew we needed to speak to three different audiences:

• Prospective undergraduate students
• Parents of prospective undergraduate students
• Prospective graduate students

Three different audiences. Three different expectations. One brand story. One creative campaign.

How could we bring them together? We created a universal messaging strategy that would resonate with each individual audience without sacrificing the overarching themes of the creative campaign.

To speak to multiple audiences at once, we pinpointed different words, ideas, or experiences that could live together in the same place, which brings us to the creative.

3. Use these creative elements.

It was time to get to work. Here are some of the elements we put together that are up and running as we speak:

LANDING PAGE
What’s the difference between a landing page and a web page? Find out here. Generally speaking, though, a good landing page should include the following:

• Bright, welcoming, informational header
• Immediate call to action (preferably just one)*
• On-brand language, images, and design elements
• Attractive video, embedded
• Snappy yet meaningful takeaways for visitors
• Incentives for visitors to act
• Fillable forms to collect data

*Sometimes you have to be flexible and double-dip the chip, which is why we have more than one CTA in the landing page for Medaille College: medaille.edu/shadowday

VIDEO
Live-action video. Static images. Animations. Whatever you think you can use, use it! We took existing assets and combined them with a fresh script to produce a 60-second video that lives on the landing page. We also converted the same video to a 15-second version that is now playing for targeted audiences on YouTube.

DIGITAL ADS
If you’re trying to crush a marketing campaign, you have to appreciate the reality of ruthlessness. That’s where digital ads come in. We created a series of Google Display Ads to appear to targeted audiences based on their Google search history. Ours look like this:

Like what you see?

Let us know if you want to work together! And if you or anyone you know is hunting for colleges, check out Shadow Day at Medaille College!

Until then, check us out on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo. Thanks for visiting.