Caution and optimism lead the way

VCU recruitment marketing

This isn’t an obligatory pandemic story – it’s just a glimpse at how VCU adapted to its share of the experience.

Higher education changes fast and that includes competing with online skills training and discovering the heightened demands on students after college. Convincing prospective 2021 students to see their futures while in a global pandemic was daunting.

Our team’s progress still tracked along as usual throughout the summer. After connecting with a marketing strategist and receiving a communication plan, I worked up an initial draft of a messaging matrix based on the plan’s core items. This matrix draft was passed to a senior copywriter for a full work-up as I transitioned to a sprint of creative concepting.

In this challenge, the traditional photography of students in their environment was a lost option but we had a wealth of visuals from the sessions on the first day of 2019 classes, an event called “candid campus.” I then developed a saturated color palette that would complement VCU’s brand colors and draw more attention within our heavy rotation of display ads. This palette of pop, models with striking personalities, and campus backgrounds made the components that would illustrate the chosen theme of “Meet this moment.”

The components functioned in a similar way at the display and social levels. With a view of the user’s pathway from paid media to landing page, I was able to construct a body of placements that would ladder up to a singular CTA, specific to each phase of the media plan.

The candids and colorful shapes proved to be adaptable in motion, as well. Video was a layered approach of model, typography, color, and background footage. I created initial sketches that established a rhythm and introduced supers to reinforce the message strategy. In conjunction with the video editor and writer, I worked up frames that would support the split script and be taken into the rendering process.

Given the circumstances, our click-through and view rates improved over the previous year and our team was able to apply the creative strategy to a yield effort and the upcoming campaign for 2022 prospectives.